News On The Horizon 5/7/2021

College basketball players are transferring at a record rate. What does it mean for the sport?--Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Sometimes, a coaching change necessitates a move. In other instances, rifts can develop.

“Here at Oakland, I feel like I wasn’t able to show my versatility as a player,” said Daniel Oladapo, a transfer from Oakland University who signed with Pitt in April. “I kind of felt like coach was just holding me back. ... I was just telling him to get to where I want to get to, I need to show more of my game. We really didn’t see eye to eye.”

In that way, the portal can provide a valuable, much-needed reset.

Robert Morris coach Andy Toole can empathize with exiting players. He, too, transferred, leaving Elon in 1999 for Penn, where he helped lead the Quakers to a pair of NCAA tournament appearances. At the time, Toole remembered feeling as if there was something wrong with him for making such a move. In the two decades since, it’s a mindset that has evolved dramatically.

“You’ll see guys that are successful players who play a lot of minutes on their team and they’ll say to you, ‘I just want to see what’s out there,’” Toole said. “You’ll hear guys say, ‘Well, I didn’t really get recruited that hard the first time. I want to get recruited.’ Some of the stuff doesn’t necessarily add up versus, ‘Hey, I’m in a good situation where I’m a big part of a team. There’s a plan in place for me. I have an opportunity to continue to grow and develop.’ Sometimes, that’s not even enough.”

Unintended consequences

What the transfer portal and the one-time transfer exemption offer for players on a micro level has larger, potentially lasting ramifications.

Perhaps the most apparent and immediate development comes with high school recruits, who some in grassroots basketball believe are being overlooked as college coaches devote time and resources to pursuing transfers.

College coaches have noticed, too, with Toole noting that he and his assistants hear regularly from high school and junior college coaches imploring them to take a look at one of their players. But the portal, a perpetually updating list of available players, is often too enticing.

While no program is immune to defections, there’s some fear that schools from outside the major conferences will serve as a farm system of sorts, even more than they have previously.

In the past four seasons, Duquesne and Robert Morris have lost four players who led the team in scoring in a given season, all of whom transferred to programs in bigger, more prominent leagues. The standout with remaining eligibility at a mid-major who guides his or her program on an NCAA tournament run now has options previously unavailable, as does the player working their way up the rotation in a program that gets old and stays old, much like Pitt did in its most decorated years.

Kailey Coffey garners third-straight CoSIDA Academic All-District recognition--nkunorse.com