Last week, UVa added a commitment from VCU transfer Martin Carrere. A native of Pontonx-sur-l’Adour, France, Carrere comes to Virginia after one year with the Rams, and four years of eligibility remaining after taking a redshirt year. Carrere is a 6-foot-8 wing player that didn’t see the floor for the Rams this season, but was considered a stealthy signing when Ryan Odom and his staff landed him. Carrere was part of a very international roster at VCU that also featured several players from Great Britain and another from Ukraine.

Prior to VCU, Carrere played in France for Limoges CSP’s U21 team. He averaged 8.6 points per game, and shot 38.8 percent from three. Carrere also played on youth teams for France, featuring on the U18 roster that won the Next Generation tournament. With France in that tournament, which took place last summer, Carrere was 13 of 31 from three, or 41.9 percent, and scored a total of 47 points, including a tournament-high 11 against Denmark in just 17 minutes.

This is clearly an example of the staff betting on one of their guys to be able to make the move up to the ACC level, even if it doesn’t have to pay off right away. Carrere should be viewed as a developmental addition to the roster, but the staff clearly has faith that he will reach that potential, at some point. If they felt that Carrere was too big of a project to make it at this level, or the payoff was years and years away, they probably wouldn’t have invited him to come along. Under the new roster rules, UVa has 15 roster spots to work with, and all of them can be scholarship players if they choose to go that route. While UVa still has plenty of slots available, they also have a lot of needs, so its unlikely that they’d use up a spot on a player that they didn’t believe in. Carrere’s addition also makes sense because many of UVa’s other transfer additions are one-year players that will be gone in 2026-27. Carrere is one of several that could return for the second year of the Odom era, when playing time may be more attainable.

While the staff certainly thinks high enough of Carrere to bring him to Charlottesville, the same is true about Carrere’s feeling about the staff. And that’s the main reason this move makes sense for the player. He clearly believes in the staff’s ability to develop him, and sees an opportunity to have that happen with ACC-level resources. The move to Virginia allows Carrere to continue on his current development path under the same staff leadership, while also getting access to the resources that a place like UVa has to offer. Carrere can continue to work on his physical development but doesn’t have to worry so much about learning the staff’s expectations or how the schemes will work. Time will tell whether Carrere is an ACC-level player and will have major opportunities at Virginia, but it’s a bet he’s clearly willing to take, rather than staying at VCU where a path to playing time may have been more clear.

This one is tough to project. Obviously, Odom and his staff are filling out the roster with players that have more experience or are more known commodities than Carrere. There’s very little chance that Carrere believes he’s coming to Virginia to play a very significant role in 2025-26, barring some major step up in physical development. While Carrere should play this season, because there’s no downside to doing so and the season is long, we’d expect this season to be a bit of a second redshirt year, in a way, for the French forward. Carrere can take this year to get adjusted to life in the ACC, and work on his physical development with strength coach Mike Curtis, and will still have three years of eligibility remaining. And if Carrere is as good a shooter as he’s been hyped to be, then he should be able to find a role in an offense that is heavy on three-point attempts. Perhaps Carrere can surprise and play more minutes than we currently expect in his redshirt freshman season, but even if he doesn’t, he still has a lot of runway left in his collegiate career.