So what do we make of the just-completed Division I men’s and women’s college basketball seasons?
And, more to the point, how were they impacted by the NCAA’s controversial transfer portal which gives athletes free rein to change schools on the slightest whim?
We’ve already seen it locally.
St. Bonaventure men’s coach Mark Schmidt lost his entire roster from the 2021-22 season and restocked his squad with six transfers: Daryl Banks III (St. Peters), Kyrell Luc (Holy Cross), Moses Flowers (Hartford), Chad Venning (Morgan State), Max Amadasun (Pitt) and Anquan Hill (Fairleigh Dickinson).
Flowers and Banks each have one year of eligibility remaining and the other four have two.
Presumably those six will return, but the other five scholarship players, all sophomores, could well be termed uncertain.
And it’s not just the men.
Though the Bona women’s team struggled all season, and coach Jesse Fleming was fired three-quarters of the way into the campaign, his squad had a quartet of transfers from four-year schools, and three from junior colleges.
Former coach Jim Crowley, rehired last month after seven seasons at Providence College, anticipates that half the roster he inherited will leave the program. However, although Bona has yet to announce it, his restocking is off to an impressive start with the signing of Canisius guard Dani Haskell, the former Franklinville star who finished as the second-leading girls’ high school hoops scorer in New York State history with 3,227 points.
It’s a double coup for Crowley as the high-scoring guard with shooting skills from distance fits perfectly in his system. She also brings the added bonus of being well-known locally since she was in seventh grade and is assured to bring more fans into the Reilly Center. Plus, though being an academic senior-to-be, Haskell still has two years of basketball eligibility.
BUT THE national impact of the transfer portal has been obvious the last two weeks.
In the men’s NCAA Tournament, it was glaring. No Top 3 seed made the Final Four meaning not one team that the selection committee deemed to be the 12-best in the country made it to the tourney’s showcase event.
But NCAA champion, Connecticut, a No. 4 seed, had four prominent transfers, two starters and two key subs. And runner-up San Diego State had five transfers, including a pair of starters and two top substitutes.
The Final Four losing teams, fifth-seeded Miami, and Florida Atlantic, a No. 9 seed, each had three transfers, all of them starters.
The women’s bracket was interesting as well.
Third-seeded LSU won the title in impressive fashion over Iowa, a No. 2 seed. Each of them beat a No. 1 seed to get to the final, Virginia Tech and South Carolina, respectively.
LSU’s win, though, wasn’t a shocker. The Tigers had six transfers, four starters and two key subs. Oddly, Iowa was one of the two homegrown teams with only one transfer, she being the No. 1 sub, the same as Virginia Tech.
South Carolina, the undefeated, odds-on favorite to win the title, had two transfers, a starter and key sub.
MOST COACHES have a love-hate relationship with the transfer portal, they hate it when they lose certain players and love it when they gain some, but still worry whether they’ll eventually lose them, as well.
St. Bonaventure losing all of that 2021-22 team, which made the NIT semifinals, forced Schmidt to rebuild an entire team on the fly and he needed the portal to do it.
But as Crowley pointed out, “Every coach is making the assumption that they’re going to get a couple of kids out of the portal that are going to make them better. There are 650 kids in the portal, but not every kid in the portal chose to be there and there are not enough quality ones to give every team what it hopes to get.”
In other words, it’s like recruiting, the best teams usually get the best players in the portal, after that, it’s a dice roll.
(Chuck Pollock, a Times Herald senior sports columnist, can be reached at cpollock@oleantimesherald.com)
