Five-star junior college All-American, 6-9 forward Antonio Chol, commits to Lobo basketball

Antonio Chol fell in love with the Pit in December.

While being recruited by former University of New Mexico basketball coach Richard Pitino, the 6-foot-9-inch junior college All-American was in Albuquerque for an unofficial visit and attended the Dec. 18 Lobos win over VCU.

Thursday, despite the Lobos having a new coach and despite being courted by dozens of high-major basketball programs around the country, Chol made public his commitment to play for Eric Olen and UNM next season, becoming the third new Lobo to be added to the roster in the past 10 days.

Chol, who spent two seasons at Rutgers in 2022 and 2023, played this past season at Garden City Community College in Kansas.

Earlier this week he was named a Second Team NJCAA All-American and is ranked as the No. 5 junior college recruit in the country according to JucoRecruiting.com. He is one of just a handful of players to earn a five-star rating from JucoScoop.com — a pay service offering coaches scouting reports and services on junior college players.

This season, Chol averaged 19.5 points per game and shot 39.7% on 3-pointers on 3.0 made threes per game.

He is a face up big man who shoots a high volume of 3-pointers, seemingly fitting Olen’s preferred offensive style.

He joins former UC San Diego transfer guard Chris Howell (6-6), who started all 35-games for Olen’s 30-win Tritons this past season, and Carlsbad (California) prep star Jake Hall (6-4), who scored 3,100 points in high school as the first two new recruits to become Lobos under Olen.

Q HEADING WEST: Quinton Webb is on his way back home to California, announcing on his Instagram page on Thursday he has committed to play for Cal. State University Northridge of the Big West.

The 6-foot-6-inch guard was on the UNM Lobos roster the past three seasons, redshirting as a freshman in 2023 and playing sparingly the past two seasons (32 total games over two seasons, averaging 1.4 points and 6.9 minutes per game).

“How you gonna win if you too scared to take the risk #committed #blessed” was the message Webb posted under a picture of him in a CSUN uniform with the word “committed” on the side.

Webb, one of eight Lobo scholarship players to enter the transfer portal in the past two weeks, is the sixth to announce he has committed to a new program. The list includes (alphabetically):

• G Braden Appelhans (to Drake)
• G/F Filip Borovicanin (to Xavier)
• PG Donovan Dent (to UCLA)
• G Kayde Dotson (uncommitted)
• F Jovan Milicevic (to Xavier)
• F Daniel Thomas (uncommitted)
• G Tru Washington (to Miami)
• G Webb (to CSUN)

Forwards Ibrahima Sacko and walk-on Deraje Agbaosi were both still on the UNM roster as of Thursday night.

The NCAA transfer portal closes April 22 — the date any current Division I player must “enter” or declare his intention to transfer to another school and be eligible to play next season.

Schools can continue recruiting and signing players for the 2025-26 season up until the start of the fall semester (early September at UNM).

LOVO ON THE POD: UNM Athletic Director Fernando Lovo joined the Talking Grammer podcast on Thursday and talked about a busy first 120 days on the job that included conducting a national search and hiring a new football coach (Jason Eck replacing Bronco Mendenhall), lobbying throughout the 60-day New Mexico Legislative Session in Santa Fe trying to secure millions of dollars in state support for facilities and the athletic department budget, forming his new leadership team, conducting a national search and hiring a new basketball coach (Olen replacing Pitino) and, of course, moving a family of four from Austin to Albuquerque.

The podcast can be viewed on the Journal’s YouTube page or the audio version is available wherever you download podcasts.