On Monday, Willie Fritz and the Houston Cougars added a new player through the transfer portal with the commitment of Rice running back transfer Dean Connors.
Connors, a 6-foot senior from Kamuela, Hawaii, spent the previous three seasons with the Rice Owls, where he became one of the team’s biggest playmakers.
In his three-year career with Rice, Connors has recorded 307 carries for 1,679 yards and 16 touchdowns. He’s fresh off of back-to-back 700-yard seasons where he averaged upwards of five yards per carry.
Coming out of Riverside C.C. in the Class of 2022, Connors was listed as a three-star prospect by the 247Sports index and the nation’s 110th-ranked JUCO prospect. He also checked in as the fifth-ranked player at his position and the 21st-ranked player in the state of California.
With the commitment, Houston has now added a total of 17 players in the transfer portal and holds the ninth-ranked portal class in the Big 12 Conference.
The transfer portal officially opened on Monday, December 9, 2024, and will remain open until Saturday, December 28, with an exception for players on teams who play bowl games after the window closes. According to NCAA data, 2,273 FBS football players entered the transfer portal in 2023-24 school year, with 1,558 (68.5%) undergraduates and 715 (31.5%) graduate transfers. Of the entrants, 57% reported that they enrolled in another school, 8% withdrew their names from the portal, and 35% are still active, transferred to a non-NCAA school, or left their sport.
The Heartland College Sports Twitter account is an excellent resource for keeping up with the latest Big 12 news and announcements. Make sure you check out our HCS member forum to connect with other Big 12 sports fans.
