Skyhawks men’s basketball players junior guard Samier Kinsler and redshirt freshman guard Chris Schlesinger have entered the transfer portal.
Kinsler and Schlesinger are the second and third players from Fort Lewis to have entered the transfer portal after junior guard Obi Agbim entered the portal on Tuesday.
“We appreciate Samier and Chris’s contributions to our championship season,” Fort Lewis men’s basketball head coach Bob Pietrack said. “Like all former student-athletes, we support them in their future endeavors.”
Schlesinger didn’t have a large role on this past season’s team. After redshirting in 2022-2023, Schlesinger appeared in 11 games and only played 33 minutes total. Schlesinger’s name was found in the transfer portal on verbalcommitts.com
Kinsler was a key player off the bench for the Skyhawks and was a part of Pietrack’s 10-man rotation. The junior lefty averaged 7.1 points per game in 17 minutes per game in his one year as a Skyhawk. Kinsler announced his plans to enter the transfer portal on X (formerly known as Twitter) on Wednesday.
Before Fort Lewis, Kinsler played a season at West Virginia State University and two seasons at Grayson College.
Pietrack will be busy this offseason reconstructing his roster after back-to-back 29-4 seasons. Agbim and Kinsler are key contributors who are in the transfer portal and seniors Junior Garbrah, Sekou Dembele and Malik Whitaker will be graduating in May.
Expect the Fort Lewis coaching staff to recruit players out of the transfer portal to join the remaining Fort Lewis roster from the 2023-2024 season.
Luckily for Pietrack, he isn’t the only one in this situation.
Colorado Mesa, which beat Fort Lewis in the second round of the NCAA tournament, has lost its coach and the Mavericks’ top five scorers from the 2023-2024 season are in the transfer portal, including Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference Player of the Year Trevor Baskin.
Mike DeGeorge resigned after coaching six seasons at Colorado Mesa to accept the head coaching job at Division I Cal Poly. Colorado Mesa has not named a new head coach at the time this article was written.
bkelly@durangoherald.com
