ATHENS – Teddy Wheeler can’t say for sure why nine Georgia players opted to leave the Bulldogs after this past season. But he points to one major factor that drove his son to leave, and he suspects it might have something to do with a record 1,600 Division I basketball entering the NCAA’s transfer portal in the past year.

Isolation, basically.

Wheeler’s son is Sahvir Wheeler. The Bulldogs’ star point guard and single-season assists record-holder was the seventh of nine players that left UGA for parts unknown. He’s been back at home with his parents in Houston in the three weeks since.

Being able to be back home is a major part of Sahvir’s decision.

“Kids are fatigued,” said Teddy Wheeler, who is an assistant basketball coach at Houston Christian School and for multi-age AAU outfit known as Basketball University. “There was a calendar change in college basketball, and I don’t think there’s been a lot of thought going into the process. Kids are graduating (from high school) in May and literally a week later, they’re in college. Then when the season gets over, they’re stating spring workouts two weeks later. Five years ago, that wasn’t the case.”

Add into that equation a pandemic year like the one U.S. just had, and isolation and loneliness can become an issue.

It did for Sahvir, the oldest of Teddy and Jacqueline Wheeler’s six children. The AJC profiled Wheeler and his family’s dynamics earlier this year.

“This past year, there was nothing from the NCAA to support those kids,” Teddy Wheeler said. “Then you put in this one-time, transfer-portal thing. Because I’m involved in grassroots basketball, I hear these stories, and most of them are really similar. The kids are fatigued. They just want to get home. That season is long.”

The NCAA in 2012 approved a rule that allows coaches two hours a week for up to eight weeks during the summer on the basketball court working with groups of four players or less.

Meanwhile, Teddy Wheeler said he was able to make it to only two of Georgia’s 26 games last season. The last one they attended – Georgia’s home game against Alabama on March 6 – he said they came only because Sahvir begged them to.

Otherwise, Teddy said they got to visit with their son for only 48 hours at Christmas and 48 hours immediately after the season ended. The rest of time, Sahvir was on UGA’s campus, often without many other students around.

“Coaches and faculty don’t have to deal with that,” Teddy Wheeler said. “They can go home and see their wives and decompress and recharge. What do the kids do after the coaches get their two hours of access? What do they do with the other 22 hours?”

Teddy Wheeler said he shared his concerns with Georgia coach Tom Crean as well as all the coaches who are recruiting his son now. But Sahvir’s father was quick to defend Crean’s coaching abilities.

“I think Crean did a great job with Sahvir; I have nothing negative to say from a basketball standpoint,” Wheeler said. “And how he was treated; Sahvir was treated well. It was just a question of what Sahvir wants right now, at this point. All that isolation forced him to look at himself and think about what he wanted to get out of the sport.”

Whatever the motivations, the Wheelers are entertaining many other college basketball opportunities. Sahvir also entered his name in the NBA Draft but didn’t hire an agent, thus keeping his amateur options available. At this point, Wheeler is being vigorously pursued by several high-profile basketball programs. Most of them are not especially close to Houston, either.

Sahvir posted a professionally produced video on his Instagram page earlier this week in which he reveals the four finalists in that pursuit. They are LSU, Kansas, Kentucky and Oklahoma State.

Respectively, those schools are 268 miles, 757 miles, 990 miles and 500 miles away from Houston. Then, again, Sahvir Wheeler himself listed being able to play in the NCAA Tournament as a top priority for his next school.

For those wondering, UGA is 850 miles from Houston.

That video sent the college basketball world aflutter as Sahvir mentioned in his comments section that “it’s Final Four Friday!” Fans took that to mean that Wheeler would be making his choice public this Friday.

Teddy Wheeler said that’s not the case.

“There is no imminent (decision) date,” he said. “There’s no hard schedule or anything like that. He’s been in the portal three weeks. Sahvir is concentrating on finishing his finals strong academically and being in a good space before he makes his decision.”

A decision will have to come pretty soon. Division I players are expected to report to campus the first of June.

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