Do you know what a big deal is? The transfer portal. Pretty important. such a thing.
That’s been the case for a few years, of course, but the men’s college basketball landscape has now reached a kind of self-fulfilling acceleration, with the combination of instant eligibility and money for names, pictures and likenesses making the enticement to get on the portal clearer than ever . It would be practically stupid not to do it! Meanwhile, coaches can completely revitalize their rosters in a month, accelerating the previously multi-year rebuild cycle (and/or undercutting up-and-coming conference rivals) in ways they never thought possible five or six years ago.
It’s exciting and confusing in equal measure. This applies not only to those of us who oversee the sport, but also to coaches. Some teams go from 0 to 60 very quickly; others go backwards. (Meanwhile, think about the real freshmen out there on the fringes of the recruitment rankings who have never had a harder time getting a scholarship. Why take a raw 18-year-old when you can use that spot for a grown-up fifth? )-year-old instead?)
In the coming months, we’ll spend a lot of time figuring out how college basketball team rosters have changed, how they come together, and how many of those changes will make a difference. We’ll go into more detail on this by October. Following the portal’s formal closure on Thursday at 11:59 p.m., here’s a first look at three teams that have benefited the most from the 2023 portal period, as well as three teams that might mourn its existence altogether.
These are the winners and losers of the transfer portal 2023.
winner
gonzaga
As of 2022-23, the Zags had the most efficient offensive line in the country. A remarkable feat, if only because it happened without really great deckplay. When the best assist ratio on the team belongs to a mustachioed power forward who is most effective back-to-basket, that’s not exactly ideal, even if the results are.
So Mark Few and company fixed that problem by securing arguably the best field general available in Ryan Nembhard, who assisted on a quarter of Creighton’s shots while on the field during his two seasons with the Bluejays. The context of the decision — that most people thought Nembhard was going to Arizona, probably Arizona, and then few went all out on Logan Roy and ripping the rug out from under his junior coaches to get what he wanted — underlines the value.
Gonzaga may also benefit from two or more seasons without Nembhard, as does Graham Ike, who was nearly a 20-and-10 for Wyoming in 2022-23. The 6ft 9 center is a pretty ideal replacement for Drew Timme, if only because the Zags don’t have to change much offensively to make the most of Ike’s opportunities on the blocks. Also, you shouldn’t abruptly drop off the 3-point line when Steele Venters’ shooting performance remains stable and the level of competition increases. The 6-7 winger scored 40.3 percent of his 3-point attempts over his three years in East Washington and you can imagine he’ll find it even easier to pull off clean looks with Nembhard and Nolan Hickman on the field achieve.
This isn’t the first time this team has managed a transition after a single artist moved on. Still, Timme had something of a different bulk about him, as if he took up two or three times the space of everyone else. Gonzaga had to do big things in the portal to make sure the room didn’t feel empty starting this summer. It did that and more.
West Virginia
Here we establish that much more important (and much worse) news related to Bob Huggins needs everyone’s attention right now. However, if we can focus solely on basketball operations, arguably no program has caught on better than the Mountaineers.
At the macro level, a lot of people left and had to be replaced. West Virginia did this by adding two of the best Portal players available (Jesse Edwards and Kerr Kriisa) while also signing a veteran player who had had a breakthrough season at a lower level (RaeQuan Battle) and a couple of veteran journeymen (Jose Perez and Omar). Silverio). By drilling a little deeper, Edwards will help mitigate any rebound falloff while enhancing West Virginia’s rim protection. Kriisa isn’t a guaranteed asset as a shooter, but he’s a better distributor than anyone the Mountaineers had last year. Battle averaged 54.3 and 52.5 field goal percentages over the past two years at Montana State, while Perez averaged nearly 19 points for Manhattan two seasons ago; If even some of that feat is implemented while Kriisa makes everyone look efficient, West Virginia has a shot at another top-20 offense.
Much is expected of a somewhat explosive mix of old boys on their final runs. This is a team that excelled in offensive balance last season and it won’t automatically be possible to repeat that. But it’s better to have talents to sync than to fight with little talent.
Kansas
This one is pretty easy. Last week, Hunter Dickinson announced to the world that he would be playing for the Kansas Jayhawks men’s basketball team in 2023-24. He crowned Kansas one of the big winners of the transfer portal 2023. The end. blurb over! Okay, well, since we’re here, we might as well break the case: Dickinson is an All-American player with a season average of 18.5 points, 9.0 rebounds, and 1.8 blocks who happens to be perfect at fits what he wants Kansas wants to finish with the ball in his hands.
It’s easy to forget when you consider Coach Bill Self’s fortunate trajectory over the past decade—Self’s teams are now stretching the floor and shooting more three-pointers than he ever could have done 15 years ago—but the cornerstone of Self’s KU era have always been the big ones. Even two years ago, when Self won his second national title, a side emotionally dominated by wingers Ochai Agbaji and Christian Braun devoted the lion’s share of their attacking play to the ever-underrated lower blocker David McCormack, who was regularly called upon to simply give up play Log in and get his team a bucket. That’s exactly what Dickinson will do again and again at efficient rates, with the added bonus of a newly designed perimeter jumper.
There’s also something to be said for What This All Means: Dickinson is almost certainly the most individually successful transfer in modern college basketball history. Normally such good players don’t change. They go pro or they stay there. But new rules have created a new landscape in which one of the best — and most lucrative — programs in the country can attract one of the best collegiate players of the past five years. The importance of this transfer cannot be underestimated, not only for the overall status of the game but also for Kansas’ chances of winning a national title next spring.
loser
Arizona
There are other programs that have lost more. There are other programs that have lost more and have not signed players who could be equivalent substitutes. But it’s hard to match the Liu Kang-worthy combination the Wildcats pulled off on this trip through the portal.
First, the point guard who started 70 of the 76 games he played in three seasons, a guy who averaged nearly 30 minutes a night throughout his college career, got up and left. Most unusual. But let’s be generous and say that Arizona foresaw Kriisa’s departure and might even end up ok with it in the end, because Arizona had a pretty good idea of who it would let in control in 2023-24. And then this guy, Nembhard, didn’t end up in Tucson at all. In the end, he actually chose to play for Gonzaga, the man that coach Tommy Lloyd used to work for. That’s all fine, of course…but this is something to eat your kids up on.
So here’s the part where Arizona fans are rightly pointing out the arrival of Jaden Bradley, a former five-star recruit who tussled in his freshman season in Alabama but still assisted on the floor at nearly 27 percent of the points . It’s entirely possible that Lloyd will unlock something in Bradley and the player will grow into something superior than the guy he more or less replaced. There is still plenty of time (and suitability) to make it happen. However, Bradley remains a relatively unknown quantity for the time being. And Arizona probably didn’t expect to be twice unsure of what its putative launch point guard had to offer.
After his transfer to Arizona, Jaden Bradley will be under a lot of pressure to perform. (Kevin C. Cox / Getty Images)
Michigan
Just as the premise underlying the Kansas selection was simple, Michigan’s inclusion in this section is simple: When you lose a player as good as Dickinson, I’m sorry, but you did have a very good one bad transfer portal.
It is really that easy. When Dickinson joined UM three seasons ago, he immediately became the focus of a national title contender; It was proof of Juwan Howard’s great success, hard proof of life after John Beilein. The supporting cast around him has changed twice, progressively for the worse, as the Wolverines were no more than 11 seeded in 2021-22 and didn’t even make the tournament in 2022-23. Dickinson has been just as good (if not better) in each subsequent season. So you can understand the star’s apparent frustration at Michigan’s even bleaker prospects for next season — especially back when he came onto the portal because things were looking really bleak — and his desire to explore his options. Kansas will have a better year than Michigan next season, not only because Dickinson is there, but also because the Wolverines’ team generally failed to improve staffing before and after Dickinson’s departure.
What they have now, after Dickinson, is intrigue and risk. Caleb Love is her portal’s blatant acquisition, but good luck finding a North Carolina fan who wanted Caleb Love to return to Chapel Hill for another year. He was brilliant in the final month of the 2021-22 season, yes. But his shot selection and sheer volume requirements were way over the top a year ago – the dude managed 244 3s (!!) and only managed 29 percent of them, which is kind of amazing – and it’ll take some convincing to get him into a more efficient mode at Ann Arbor. Alabama winger Nimari Burnett was fascinating after high school but couldn’t excel in minutes at the Tide a year ago, and Seton Hall center Trey Jackson is a veteran player but has limited rotations has.
Add in a single-player recruiting class (shooting guard George Washington III at No. 92) and Michigan’s spring makes little for an improved Wolverines roster. Minus Dickinson, given previous results, this suggests a continued, slow decline.
Virginia
Again, there are programs that have lost more net-net. But despite the purely symbolic loss, it’s hard to overlook Virginia’s loss of Isaac Traudt. Tony Bennett’s Virginia program has been based on long-term player development for years. Often that meant outfitting potentially capable young players with redshirts, sending them to the lab for a year, and then presenting them when they were more fully trained and had a better understanding of Virginia’s stylistic needs – particularly on defense. This has generally worked very well for UVa’s players and coaches. Virginia’s success since Bennett’s arrival has been based on the constant regeneration of highly skilled veterans.
The problem? What if your folks aren’t being patient at a time when it’s (rightfully so!) very easy to get up and leave? Or what if, as in the case of Traudt, they get homesick and want to get closer to family and familiarity? This spring, that meant the loss of a highly sought-after player with many other top-notch big major offers from a strong recruiting class who worked for Virginia for a year, trained under her tutelage, and then left before ever playing a minute. That would be a huge blow to any program, but especially in a place where the whole idea is a long-term shared investment, an ethos where “over time, you get what we all invest.”
It’s also about the departure of veteran big man Kadin Shedrick for Texas. Shedrick undertook the long-term development process, becoming a very effective true center in his sophomore year, coming on as a clear starter last season and then being deployed mid-season in favor of Ben Vander Plas. He was one of the most sought-after bigs in the portal when the Longhorns’ staff lured him to Austin. Virginia has four players arriving via the portal, as well as two top 70 freshman talent, and solid talent is already in the pipeline. But the loss of Shedrick is a blow, and the loss of Traudt hurts for a variety of reasons – reasons that go beyond the difficulty of unexpected moves.
(Top Photo by Gonzaga’s Mark Few: Ethan Miller/Getty Images)