While his career as a Clemson Tiger didn’t exactly pan out, D.J. Uiagalelei is still one of the most highly-sought-after quarterbacks in this year’s transfer class.
According to recent reports from 247Sports’ Chris Hummer, the Hawaii Rainbow Warriors are “gaining legitimate smoke” when it comes to landing Uiagalelei in the portal.
“Yeah, I mean, there’s some smoke out there,” Hummer said on the Signing Day show Wednesday. “Jackson Moore, obviously, put in that Crystal Ball — he’s a West Coast expert for us, covers several sites, does a really nice job and I’m checking around with some industry sources and it’s some legitimate buzz with Hawaii, legitimate smoke. I know Matayo Uiagalelei has a Crystal Ball to Oregon today. Obviously, Bo Nix is going back there. That doesn’t seem like a natural fit for D.J., but maybe he finds a place in the islands. I’m not convinced that he’ll end up there, but you can’t rule it out. There’s some legitimate smoke to it. D.J.’s been pretty quiet in his recruitment.
“He took a trip to UCLA earlier this offseason. UCLA added another quarterback instead in Collin Schlee, coming over from Kent State, who’s a four-star prospect for us in the portal rankings. But D.J.’s eventually going to find a chair. I don’t know if it’ll be Timmy Chang and Hawaii, but that would be a coup for that program. Hawaii can really use some momentum and D.J. would certainly provide it. He’d definitely be the highest-ranked prospect in Hawaii history, and that would be one of the bigger recruiting surprises in modern history, I think, if DJU ended up in Hawaii.”
After a disappointing final stretch of the 2022 season, Uiagalelei was benched early in the ACC Championship game to make way for the team’s new starter: five-star freshman Cade Klubnik.
In his first season as head coach at Hawaii, Timmy Chang led the team to a 3-10 record. The program is clearly in need of some sort of spark to turn things around.
Uiagalelei would be the highest-ranked transfer recruit in program history.