As the calendar turns over into July, Alex Jensen\u2019s program has received another commitment for his first season leading University of Utah men\u2019s basketball.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, On3\u2019s Joe Tipton first reported \u2014 and others followed \u2014 that JUCO big man Joshua Hayes has committed to the Runnin\u2019 Utes.<\/p>\n
Who is Joshua Hayes?<\/p>\n
Hayes is a 6-foot-10, 220-pound power forward\/center who played the 2024-25 season at Northwest Florida State College.<\/p>\n
During his lone season playing for the Raiders, Hayes averaged 9.9 points, 5.2 rebounds and 1.0 assists per game while shooting 57.8% from the field and 47.4% from 3, going 9 of 19 from long range.<\/p>\n
He earned second-team all-conference honors at Northwest Florida State.<\/p>\n
Prior to playing at the junior college school, Hayes played in seven games at the Division I level as a freshman in 2023-24 for Appalachian State of the Sun Belt Conference.<\/p>\n
In those limited opportunities, he averaged 1.7 points, 1.3 rebounds and 4.6 minutes per game for the Mountaineers.<\/p>\n
Hayes was not rated as a recruit coming out of high school. He held scholarship offers from Appalachian State and Jacksonville at the D-I level.<\/p>\n
How is Utah basketball\u2019s 2025-26 roster shaping up?<\/p>\n
At 6-foot-10, Hayes will be the tallest player on Utah\u2019s team next season and will add depth to the front court.<\/p>\n
Hayes is the latest offseason addition for Utah, joining a group that also includes Terrence Brown, Babacar Faye, Jahki Howard, Don McHenry, Elijah \u201cChoppa\u201d Moore, James Okonkwo, Seydou Traore, Jacob Patrick and Kendyl Sanders.<\/p>\n
While Finnish point guard Elmeri Abbey isn\u2019t officially on the roster, KSL Sports\u2019 Steve Bartle reported he is currently fulfilling mandatory service for the Finnish Army and will join the program later this summer.<\/p>\n
That group of newcomers joins three holdovers from last season in Keanu Dawes, Ibi Traore and Jerry Huang.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the calendar turns over into July, Alex Jensen\u2019s program has received another commitment for his first season…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":34253,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[1339,1317,1337,1338,1680,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-34252","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-basketball","11":"tag-ncaabasketball","12":"tag-news-feed-local","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114787135332605408","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34252\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}