Virginia Tech has added another perimeter piece to its men’s basketball roster, with Clemson guard Butta Johnson signing with the Hokies, according to CBS Sports’ Matt Zenitz.
Johnson, listed at 6-4 and 180 pounds, arrives with one year remaining as a senior, though his status remains unresolved for now. At the moment, he is not eligible. That could change.
The Huntsville, Ala., native played in every one of Clemson’s 35 games in 2025-26 and made nine starts. He finished the season averaging 6.3 points and 2.1 rebounds while shooting 38.5 percent from the field and 35.5 percent from beyond the arc. He reached double figures seven times, with his best scoring night coming in a 15-point game against Georgia Tech.
Before his lone season with the Tigers, Johnson spent three years at UAB. He played a rotational role as a freshman in 2022-23, then stepped into the starting lineup as a sophomore and averaged 11.2 points per game. As a junior, he put up 8.8 points per contest before moving on to play for Brad Brownell at Clemson.
Over his college career, Johnson has scored 1,030 points and has connected on 34.7 percent of his 3-pointers, going 163-for-470. He has five career 20-point games.
Johnson entered the transfer portal in April seeking an additional year of eligibility, but as of Wednesday evening he had not received a waiver or been named in a lawsuit seeking an injunction. Sources told Tech Sideline that he will be added as a plaintiff to Dalley v.
NCAA in Pickens County, S.C., before Monday’s hearing. There are 18 student-athletes listed as plaintiffs in that case, including Miami forward Malik Reneau.
Six court cases have produced eligibility relief for student-athletes at the trial-court level, though two of those injunctions have been stayed on appeal, including Washington v. NCAA in Tennessee on Wednesday. Another state-court case was denied preliminary relief.
If Johnson does gain eligibility relief, Virginia Tech would have 15 scholarship players for the 2026-27 season, the NCAA maximum.
In Other News...
Notre Dame Helped Spark A Fight LSU Is Daring To Ignore
Several college athletic conferences, including the Big Ten, SEC and ACC, have already voted or are moving toward banning NFL players from jumping into college football programs, part of a broader push to keep the line between pro and college sports from blurring any further. The NFL has answered with its own restriction, barring players who leave the league for college football from signing with any team in the 2026 season, and that backdrop has only sharpened the attention around LSUs unusual recruiting activity.
Against that backdrop, LSU has kept chasing former NFL players for both football and basketball, with tight end Dae'Quan Wright, defensive lineman Zxavian Harris and guard RJ Luis Jr. all in the mix. Luis has already been granted a preliminary injunction to play basketball for LSU in the 2026-27 season, and the schools willingness to push ahead leaves a bigger question hanging over the rest of those pursuits, especially as more of college sports moves to close the door. [Read more 🡒]
Virginia Tech's James Franklin Era Comes With One Big 2026 Debate
Virginia Tech is about to open its season under James Franklin with a Sept. 5 date against VMI, and the early conversation around the Hokies has already shifted beyond kickoff. The new staff brings a fresh look, and with it comes a round of 2026 projections that suggest this group can be better than the one that came before it, even as the roster still has plenty of moving parts and a schedule that will test how real that improvement is.
The biggest question is how quickly the offense comes together around Ethan Grunkemeyer, with Greene and Reynolds expected to be key pieces in giving him help. Virginia Tech has enough returning and emerging talent to make optimism feel reasonable, but there are still concerns on both sides of the ball and enough uncertainty in the setup that the long-range forecast feels more like a debate than a conclusion. [Read more 🡒]
Virginia Techs 2026 Schedule Has A Few Traps Fans Cant Ignore
Virginia Techs 2026 football schedule sets up as a season with a few clear pressure points, even before a snap is played. The slate is being framed with a tiered look at every matchup, weighing travel, opponent quality and the Hokies own recent history to sort out which games look manageable, which ones are true coin flips and which could swing the entire year.
A big part of the early outlook rests on quarterback stability, with Ethan Grunkemeyer expected to be the guy under center as the Hokies try to build some continuity. From there, the schedules shape does the rest of the work: a handful of games look favorable enough to build momentum, but the deeper challenge is avoiding the kind of trap weeks that can turn a promising start into an uneven fall. [Read more 🡒]