After one season on the Forty Acres, Texas Longhorns guard Simeon Wilcher entered the NCAA transfer portal on Thursday as head coach Sean Miller seeks to upgrade guard depth off the bench.
The 6’4, 200-pounder has one season of eligibility remaining.
Advertisement
A consensus four-star prospect ranked as the No. 34 player and No. 7 combo guard in the 2023 recruiting class out of Roselle (N.J.) Roselle Catholic, Wilcher originally signed with North Carolina before requesting a release from his national letter of intent and landing at St. John’s to play for Rick Pitino.
As a freshman, Wilcher played sparingly, averaging less than 10 minutes per game and scoring 2.8 points per game on 43.1-percent shooting. In 2024-25, Wilcher emerged as a capable contributor, increasing his scoring average to 8.0 with 1.9 rebounds and 1.4 assists in 25.4 minutes per game, but his shooting percentage dropped 40.7 percent and he only made 29.7 percent of his three-point attempts on 3.1 attempts per game.
In addition to overall offensive inefficiency, one of the glaring concerns when Wilcher arrived in Austin was a turnover rate higher than his assist rate, an area that the New Jersey product was unable to address under Miller, finishing with an assist rate of 15.7 percent and a turnover rate of 21.1 percent as Wilcer averaged 5.6 points in 18.6 minutes per game.
After the shooting struggles from beyond the arc for Wilcher at St. John’s, he was able to bolster his three-point shooting percentage to 33.7 percent for Texas, but saw his overall shooting percentage drop to 36.6 percent, in addition to his defensive box plus/minus dropping from 4.2 to 1.9.
Advertisement
So the poor decision making on the ball continued for Wilcher as his improvement from three-point range was negated by shooting an abysmal 37.8 percent around the rim and his inability to continue making a positive impact defensively.
A lowlight from the NCAA Tournament when Wilcher grabbed the basketball on an airball while he was out of bounds even though he ball had not yet touched out of bounds was indicative of his struggles in burnt orange and white.
Given Wilcher’s overall statistical profile, Miller and his staff should be able to upgrade the backup point guard position after achieving the staff’s first-year proof of concept in making the run from the First Four to the Sweet 16.
