The feeding frenzy of the men’s college basketball transfer portal is basically over. Former Memphis wing Emoni Bates was the last remaining player on our best available transfer list before he settled on Eastern Michigan last week; more than 85 top targets are spending the summer adjusting to their new campus homes.
Now that the dust has settled, which teams came out as the biggest winners and losers of the sport’s de facto free agency? We asked some of our national college basketball experts to decide, and they start by looking at the programs that helped themselves the most through the portal this offseason.
Dana O’Neil: Creighton
So you walk into Target, intent on buying one thing — a new $50 toaster to replace the one that just conked out, let’s say — and suddenly you walk out with eight bags and $350 worth of stuff you don’t necessarily need but figure it can’t hurt to buy. (Odds are you also forgot the toaster.) This is the essence of the transfer portal. With a smorgasbord of tempting talent up for grabs, some coaches load up the cart even if they don’t necessarily need to.
Creighton actually just got the toaster. The Bluejays don’t need a lot. The returning roster is loaded, with four starters back (and redshirt freshman Mason Miller), including Big East rookie of the year Ryan Nembhard and defensive player of the year Ryan Kalkbrenner, both recently cleared to resume playing after wrist and knee injuries, respectively. But the normally hot-shooting Bluejays were considerably cooler last season from long range, hitting just 31 percent from the arc, and their two best 3-point scorers, Ryan Hawkins and Alex O’Connell, have moved on.
Enter Baylor Scheierman, the South Dakota State transfer who plugs the one hole that needs plugging. Scheierman, arguably one of the most popular guys in the portal, shot 46.7 percent from the arc last year, averaging 16.2 points per game on his way to Summit League player of the year honors. Far from a one-trick pony, Scheierman is also a deft passer (4.5 assists per game) and solid rebounder (7.8), which suits the Bluejays perfectly. The Jackrabbits weren’t necessarily known for their defense — 217th per KenPom — but Scheierman comes to a team that has him covered. Creighton ranked 19th in adjusted defense last year, the program’s best since Pomeroy started tracking the stat in 1977. With Kalkbrenner and Arthur Kaluma to assist, Scheierman doesn’t have to worry about taking on a primary assignment.
There is also something to be said about timing. Since the Big East reformed in 2013-14, Villanova has won or shared seven of the nine available Big East regular-season titles and five tournament titles. In that same span, the Bluejays have finished as regular-season runner-up twice (they shared the title with Villanova and Seton Hall in 2019-20) and three times as the tournament bridesmaid. But Jay Wright has retired, and though Kyle Neptune is a Wright disciple, the Wildcats are arguably more vulnerable than they have been in nearly a decade.
Creighton, in the meantime, is old, seasoned and now has its toaster.
CJ Moore: Illinois
If there’s a team that went into the offseason set on building a replica of national champion Kansas with big, switchable wings who can also score the ball, it’s Illinois.
Brad Underwood landed two of the best wings in the portal in Terrance Shannon Jr. and Matthew Mayer. Both players come from elite defensive programs that have done a ton of switching, and they both are players NBA scouts have kept tabs on. Shannon would have probably been drafted a year ago if he’d stayed in the draft, and you could make an argument that he’s not only the best talent in the transfer portal but also the most talented returning wing. He battled a back injury this past season, and it’s like he was trying to make up for lost time when he returned. He didn’t always play the smartest game in his final season at Texas Tech, but few guys in college basketball can move like him. He looks like what an NBA wing looks like.
“He’s 220 pounds. He’s cut. He’s ripped. He’s an incredible worker,” Underwood told The Athletic earlier this summer. “People forget he was an elite football prospect at receiver, and he’s so fast. I’m excited to coach him. I’m excited to have him healthy, and here’s a kid most people had as a first-round pick two years ago, and I’m hopeful we can get back to getting that TJ Shannon.”
Underwood basically set out to completely change how his team plays. The Illini had a simple formula last year, built around feeding Kofi Cockburn and spreading the floor around him with shooting. The Illini were small in the backcourt and limited what they could do defensively with Cockburn. Now they’re stocked with long wings.
The other player many might forget about is Dain Dainja, another transfer from Baylor who made the move at semester last year. He’s had two years to develop after redshirting as a freshman. The old method of sitting out a year after transferring was really valuable to development, and Dainja could benefit from all that work in the shadows. Former Baylor assistant Jerome Tang once told me Dainja has some Elton Brand in his game, so I’m intrigued to see him get his shot. At the very least, he provides depth up front and could either play with Coleman Hawkins or be the center in smaller lineups.
Underwood’s wheels are spinning thinking of new ways he can play. “That’s what I love,” he said. “That the best part about it.”
I doubt many will pick the Illini as the preseason Big Ten favorite, but I’ll go there. I’d be really confident if I knew Illinois was getting the good Shannon, but I’ll bet on the talent and Underwood’s ability to motivate. The Illini win the Big Ten with Shannon and Mayer pivotal to that success.
Baylor transfer Matthew Mayer is part of a new-look Illinois. (Chris Jones / USA Today)
Eamonn Brennan: North Carolina
For a lot of teams — and especially teams you would conventionally label transfer portal winners — the quantity is the thing. That team landed three high-profile transfers who will all start immediately; ergo, that team won the portal. Science.
Except it doesn’t actually work that way. Bringing in a bunch of new faces is a totally viable team-building strategy, obviously, but it is also an inherently uncertain enterprise. Teams with tons of transfers have to build the airplane while they fly it. They have to get experienced players to half-forget their (often extensive) tenures at previous schools, and their own well-honed sense of personal importance, and buy in together to a new system, coaching staff and culture. This nebulous process usually takes time. Sometimes teams get there early. Sometimes they don’t get there at all. You’re never really sure what outcome is in store.
With North Carolina 2022-23, well, let’s just say we’re sure. The Tar Heels landed exactly one player in the portal this spring. Good news: He is pretty much the perfect player for them.
We know this because we just saw a version of this same team make an epic run to within a few buckets of a national title. Four of the five crucial pieces in that run — starters Armando Bacot, Caleb Love, R.J. Davis and Leaky Black, all of them stars in their own way — decided to return to Chapel Hill to run it back. This is a luxury most teams don’t have, of course. (Though it looks likely to be a more common one in the NIL era.) But this luxury allowed North Carolina to home in on exactly the kind of player they needed in the transfer portal and then pursue that player with focus. So it was for former Northwestern forward Pete Nance.
As analogues to graduated one-year-transfer star Brady Manek go, UNC couldn’t have done much better than Nance. The 6-foot-10 senior tested the draft waters this year, and likely would have gotten picked up on a two-way contract at some point, but decided instead to come back to college and fit in with the Tar Heels’ returning cast. And fit is the key word. Nance is an excellent forward player, particularly on the defensive end, where he is a mobile rim protector and rebounder who can fluidly switch assignments. Offensively, he spaces the floor similarly to Manek; Nance shot 45 percent from 3 last season, and even if that seems like it will come down with more usage (Manek had a ton more shot volume in 2021-22, especially as the season rolled on) it seems possible for Nance to give the Tar Heels a similar level of perimeter threat when the ball cycles out from Bacot and Co. And there is a little more dynamism to Nance’s game than the catch-and-shoot stretch-four Manek template. He can put it on the floor in a way Manek never could, and he recorded quality assist and turnover rate numbers last season in the Big Ten, where he was consistently underrated.
In short, the move makes a precise, completionist sort of sense. After a rush of returners made their decisions, North Carolina’s biggest question this offseason was straightforward: “How do we replace Brady?” With Nance, at minimum, they did that. It is as elegant a portal as any team had this summer.
Brian Hamilton: Florida
Full disclosure? I’m days removed from a visit to Gainesville, and I can understand why some might scream “Recency bias!” in this evaluation. Here’s my counterpoint: I saw Will Richard, formerly of Belmont and currently a player Todd Golden and Co. plucked from the portal, hit 24 top-of-the-key 3-pointers in 66 seconds during one shooting workout. That is not a misprint. The dude can shoot it a little.
But Richard and his marksmanship alone wouldn’t earn the Gators this spot. There’s also Kyle Lofton, with 1,613 career points and 604 career assists, arriving from St. Bonaventure to run the operation for a year. There’s Alex Fudge, a former four-star, top 60 prospect from Jacksonville who didn’t make much of a dent at LSU but who effectively gives the Florida staff a win in bringing some in-state talent aboard. There’s even Trey Bonham, who had a true shooting percentage of nearly 60 percent in two years at VMI and an assist rate of 28.4 percent in his sophomore year — making him maybe one of the first analytically based steals for this Gators staff. To boot, Richard, Fudge and Bonham have multiple years of eligibility left, which means Florida restocked its roster and can hope to benefit from continuity in seasons to come.
Also consider that Golden didn’t entertain bringing some of his former San Francisco players to his new gig, in part because he felt he didn’t have to. A young coach making a gigantic leap in job expectations and pressure gave himself a chance, and maybe then some, with portal acquisitions that should ensure the Gators are at least competitive in the viper pit of the SEC. That’s significant. There’s no guarantee Golden and Co. could catch up if they started from way behind. It doesn’t look like they will, thanks to swift and keen work in the portal.
(Top photo of Baylor Scheierman: James Snook / USA Today)
