Former Boise State guard will be closer to home after joining this MAC program

Rachel Roberts
·2 min read

Road trips to watch their son play college basketball just got a lot easier for Ray and Carla Dennis.

After entering his name in the transfer portal March 30, former Boise State guard RayJ Dennis announced Tuesday that he will join the Toledo men’s basketball program. Dennis played his first two seasons at BSU, and his parents once drove 24 hours straight from their home in Oswego, Illinois, to watch him play in Boise.

Toledo is less than a 5-hour drive from the Dennis family home.

“We’re extremely excited to have RayJ join our family,” Toledo coach Tod Kowalczyk said in a news release. “We recruited RayJ extremely hard three years ago and when he went into the transfer portal, he quickly became our No. 1 priority. He can impact our program immediately in a lot of ways. He plays with toughness on the defensive end, he has proven he can run a winning basketball team and he can score at a high level.”

Dennis, a 6-foot-2 sophomore, started 25 of the Broncos’ 28 games last season and averaged 8.6 points, 3.0 rebounds and a team-best 2.9 assists per game. He also grabbed a team-high 34 steals.

However, Dennis did not start the final three games of the 2020-21 season, and his playing time was reduced. He averaged 27.2 minutes per game on the season, but played only 21, 17 and 16 minutes the last three games.

Dennis brought fans at ExtraMile Arena to their feet his freshman year when he scored all 19 of his points in the final 3:27 of regulation to lead Boise State to an 88-83 overtime victory against Utah State. The Broncos were down 18 points with 4:02 left when Dennis went off.

Dennis was inserted into the Broncos’ starting lineup after that performance and stayed there the rest of the way, aside from senior night against New Mexico.

He then started Boise State’s first 25 games of the 2020-21 season, scoring in double figures in nine of the Broncos’ first 13 games. Dennis’ 761 minutes played last season was the second-most on the team behind redshirt senior Derrick Alston Jr.

Toledo finished the 2020-21 season with a record of 21-9 and won the Mid-American Conference regular-season title at 15-4. The Rockets were the No. 1 seed in the MAC Tournament but lost in the semifinals to eventual tournament champion Ohio, 87-80.