Report: DJ Harvey enters transfer portal

Welp.

Per Matt Zemitz, Vanderbilt basketball’s DJ Harvey has entered the transfer portal after playing a single season for the Commodores. Harvey appeared in 23 games, starting 10, in the 2020-21 season, and averaged 6.3 points and 2.9 rebounds per game in 19.6 minutes of action.

Harvey felt like a disappointment, though, after transferring from Notre Dame. There, he had started all 29 games as a sophomore and averaged 10.7 points and 4.2 rebounds. Those would have been good numbers for Vanderbilt, but Harvey never really seemed right after an early-season bout with COVID. Surprisingly, he couldn’t hold a starting spot, losing the spot after a January loss to Arkansas and proceeding to score 18 points, total, over the next eight games. But he did get his spot back in the SEC Tournament and scored 29 points in Vanderbilt’s two games.

There are two ways to read this: on the one hand, Harvey could have stuck around for his senior season and potentially been a factor for Vanderbilt, but Harvey also might have been emblematic of some problems with Vanderbilt’s roster construction. For most of the season, Vanderbilt actually got better production of Jordan Wright, a player who was less heralded as a recruit but was effectively playing the role that Harvey was supposed to play for the team as a 6’6” swingman who could hit a few jump shots and grab an inordinate amount of loose balls. So who knows what to think of this.

And, of course, we will note that this is yet another player who transferred in to Vanderbilt and left without making much of an impact.