The Florida State Seminoles emphatically closed the transfer portal window, landing Wake Forest forward Cooper Schwieger as the fifth and final portal addition of Luke Loucks' most productive offseason. From an unranked prospect to a dominant mid-major force and now a high-major transfer with something to prove, Schwieger’s journey sets the stage for one of the more fascinating breakout candidates on Florida State’s roster.
The 6-foot-10 junior gives the Seminoles impressive front-court depth, rim protection, and a proven scoring pedigree that spans three college programs. Before Schwieger puts on garnet and gold for the first time, here are five things every Seminoles fan should know about FSU's newest big man.
The addition of Schwieger doesn't just fill a roster spot, it completes a front court rotation that has no real comparison in the ACC heading into 2026-27. Across his three-year college career, Schwieger has accumulated a 49.6% career field-goal percentage and an 81.5% career free-throw mark.
He joins Sebastian Rancik, Shon Abaev, and incoming freshman Marcis Ponder in a frontcourt depth chart that gives Loucks four legitimate options capable of contributing meaningful minutes at the four and five. When Wake Forest head coach Steve Forbes recruited Schwieger a year ago, he drew a direct comparison to Jake LaRavia, who transferred to Wake Forest from Indiana State after his sophomore season, went in the first round of the NBA Draft, and is now a rotation player in the NBA.
The basketball gene runs deep in the Schwieger family — twice over. Schwieger has a twin brother, Carson, who also attended Blue Valley Southwest High School and followed Cooper to Link Year Academy before signing with Valparaiso as well. Cooper has noted that his faith grew significantly during his time at Link Year Academy, and both the prep school and Valparaiso had strong Christian faith components that factored into his initial college decision.
The twins' shared path through prep school and into college basketball is a unique subplot to one of the portal cycle's most compelling stories, and Cooper arrives in Tallahassee with the kind of grounded, team-first character that Loucks has consistently prioritized in every portal addition this offseason.
The honest accounting of Schwieger's one season in Winston-Salem is that the ACC transition was difficult. His Player Efficiency Rating dropped from 17.7 over his two Valparaiso seasons to 11.1 at Wake Forest, and his scoring average fell from 15.8 points per game to 5.1. He appeared in 34 games with 11 starts, totaling 172 points and 84 rebounds while ranking second on the team in blocked shots with 20. The bright spots were real, however.
Schwieger scored a season-high 13 points at Georgia Tech and posted a season-high 11 rebounds at Pitt, starting 11 of Wake Forest's 12 games between Jan. 7 and Feb 21. — a stretch that suggests the coaching staff trusted him when the roster was healthiest. At Valparaiso, Schwieger showed he could shoot, making 36.3% of his 3-pointers on 91 attempts as a freshman, and the belief at FSU is that a full offseason in a system built around his strengths will unlock the player who dominated the MVC for two years.
The single most jaw-dropping entry on Schwieger's resume has nothing to do with conference awards or draft projections, it has to do with the names he stands beside in the Missouri Valley Conference history books.
In the final week of his sophomore regular season, Schwieger put up 33 points, 18 rebounds, and 5 assists against UIC — becoming just the third player in Missouri Valley Conference history to record a 30-15-5 line in a single game, joining Larry Bird on March 24, 1979, and Oscar Robertson on March 31, 1959. That performance earned him both the Missouri Valley Conference Player of the Week and the Oscar Robertson National Player of the Week award.
Schwieger's journey to Tallahassee is a remarkable story about a late-blooming prospect. He was unranked as a high school recruit coming out of Blue Valley Southwest High School in Overland Park, Kansas, drawing almost no high-major attention despite his physical profile. Rather than sign directly with a Division I program, Schwieger attended Link Year Academy in Branson, Missouri, on the advice of his AAU coach Pip Dukes, using the year to develop his ball-handling and shooting ability before signing with Valparaiso.
From unrecruited to one of the portal's most coveted front-court pieces in three years, Schwieger's trajectory is unlike almost anyone on FSU's roster.
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This article originally appeared on FSU Wire: Cooper Schwieger: What to know about FSU's new transfer