East Carolina junior forward Jayden Gardner has announced his intentions on Monday to enter the NCAA transfer portal.
Gardner earned All-AAC first team honors this past year and led the Pirates in scoring at 18.3 points and 8.3 rebounds a game. He also led ECU in minutes played.
“Greenville, all I can say is thank you. You took me in when no one else believed in me and I grew into the man I am today. You took me in when nobody else believed in me and I grew into the man I am today,” said Gardner on Twitter, “I thank you for all the relationships and bonds that I’ve formed here. Thank you to all of the players I’ve had the pleasure to play with. Thank you to Coach Dooley and the coaching staff who helped me develop along the way. To the Pirate fans, thank you for always supporting me. I truly gave you my all.”
The Wake Forest, N.C. native finishes his Pirate basketball career with 1,462 career points which stands eighth all-time in East Carolina basketball history along with 705 rebounds.
Gardner has already heard from Arkansas, Virginia Tech, Pitt, Ole Miss, Tennessee, Miami, Virginia, NC State, Oklahoma State and Texas A&M and joins forwards Bitumba Baruti and Edra Luster, highly touted freshman guard Noah Farrakhan who have also decided to enter the transfer portal along with Miles James who entered the portal in just the last hour.
James’ exit ends two years with the Pirates where he averaged 1.2 points and just under one rebound a game in 7.9 minutes per game. He appeared in 32 games in his career with ECU with just one start.
James has two seasons of eligibility remaining. The 6-foot-6, 210-pound guard is out of Inglewood, California. He played at Palm Beach State in Florida for one year before joining the Pirates as part of the 2019 recruiting class.
The Pirates went 8-11 season after starting the season at 7-2 under head coach Joe Dooley, who just wrapped up his third season of his second go-round in Greenville. The Pirates lost 10 of its last 11 games with their biggest win coming over nationally ranked Houston.
