The UF men’s basketball team’s backcourt got a welcomed boost on Monday when coach Mike White announced that guard Canyon Barry was transferring to Florida.
Barry spent his first four years attending the College of Charleston, where he averaged 12.8 points in 70 career games. In his final season with the Cougars, Barry averaged 19.7 points in 13 games before suffering a season-ending shoulder injury.
Standing at 6-foot-6, Barry brings size to a group of guards that averages close to 6-foot-2. Currently, the tallest of the group are Zach Hodskins and Jhonny Victor, who are both 6-foot-4 and played a combined 12 minutes this past season.
But in addition to his scoring ability and size, Barry brings three things that not many recruits can: proven academic success, basketball lineage and a unique entertainment value.
At Charleston, Barry earned a 4.0 GPA while double majoring in physics and computer science. He plans to continue his studies at UF by pursuing nuclear engineering, which he said was a big reason why he chose to come to UF in the first place.
“(Florida has) an exceptional nuclear engineering program and actually have one of the only nuclear training reactors in the southeast,” Barry said in a release.
In addition to his academic success, Barry’s family has a history of success on the hardwood.
His father, Rick Barry, is an eight-time NBA All-Star and a member of the Basketball Hall of Fame. Three of Canyon’s half-brothers also played in the NBA.
And like his father, Canyon has gained internet notoriety for taking free throws “granny style,” or underhanded.
Barry is the fourth member of UF’s 2017 recruiting class, joining Dontay Bassett, Gorjok Gak and fellow guard Eric Hester.
UF wideout transferring
While UF’s basketball team added a player on Monday, the football team lost one.
Ryan Sousa, a reserve wide receiver, announced his intentions to transfer on his personal Twitter account at around 5:30 p.m. on Monday.
In his two years at UF, Sousa played in two games — both in 2015 — and didn’t register any stats.
Before arriving in Gainesville, Sousa was a three-star wideout out of Orlando’s Lake Nona High School who signed with Florida as part of the 2014 recruiting class.
Even in his own class, though, Sousa was buried by future contributors Brandon Powell and C.J. Worton. And with early enrollees Dre Massey, Freddie Swain and Josh Hammond all built similarly to Sousa and having played more in the Orange and Blue Debut, it was unlikely he would have seen a significant increase in playing time in 2016.
As of press time, Sousa hadn’t announced his transfer destination.
Contact Ethan Bauer at ebauer@alligator.org and follow him on Twitter @ebaueri.
