I started to write the Omar Payne LLUOI post and I realized that the post was more about the Transfer Portal than it was about Omar Payne. So that post becomes this post and then I'll write another one for Payne. This one is more or less a continuation of the post I wrote on Friday about Changing Landscapes in college basketball. If you haven't read that one, start there and then come back here for part two.

I noted in that post that the rule to be voted on by the NCAA has the phrase "one time" in it. Meaning, you can transfer one time without having to sit out. If you transfer after that, the old rules apply: you sit out a year from competition and then the next year you are eligible. The obvious takeaway there: say Adam Miller were to play four years in college. Then it's better to be the second school to land him, not the first. The first school loses him after one year. The second school gets him for one, maybe two, possibly three years.

Brad Underwood covered exactly that in his press conference yesterday. When asked by Jeremy Werner if there's anything you can spot in high school athletes you're recruiting that might lead you to believe they'll stick around and not put their name in the portal after one year, Underwood joked that when Jeremy figures out what that is to let him know. And then he said this:

"The advantage to the Transfer Portal is that they've transferred and they can't again. You get a chance to get a student athlete for more than one year, potentially. So there's some advantage in retention, there's no doubt. But that's the downside to a freshman. They could obviously leave or, if they're good enough, go pro."

OK, so, yeah... there's about a dozen things to cover from just that one quote. Where my brain goes:

• First, the obvious: is the Transfer Portal now more important than high school recruiting?
• Was 2021 the last year for the "here are the top-100 high school recruits" lists? Hybrid lists from here on out, right? But how do you do a hybrid list when you don't know the transfers until April?
• Speaking of high school recruits, this whole thing is awful for them, right? Marginal recruits are going to have to go to a mid-major to prove themselves first, yes?
• I mean, just think of the numbers. If, in 2015, 80% of high major scholarships were filled by the early signing day in November, what percentage will be filled this November? 35%? Everyone will wait until spring, right?
• Is APR dead? How do you even calculate Academic Progress Rate (and Graduation Rate) when so many players are transferring?
• Perhaps most importantly, has "the best thing about freshmen is that they become sophomores" been replaced by Underwood's "that's the downside to a freshman"?

Let me take a few of these questions and stretch them out a bit.

School Two

This is at the core of Underwood's quote. This is the very specific "advantage" to the Transfer Portal he's referencing. You add a freshman and he might leave after only one year (like Adam Miller). You add someone else's sophomore and he's cap tied.

Basically, he's saying that School Two is the prime spot now. Think about it. Coaches have always tossed out the "the best thing about freshmen is they become sophomores" trope, but they're willing to put up with freshman mistakes because there's such a thing as the Sophomore Leap. But if you tell coaches that the freshmen can leave immediately - you deal with all their mistakes and then some other school gets the payoff of the sophomore leap - then coaches have to be saying "uh, why would I recruit any freshmen?".

Perhaps I should clarify that. A freshman like Cade Cunningham, obviously, will be recruited again. A freshman like Hunter Dickinson will also be recruited again. But with such a big risk attached (they can leave whenever they want), wouldn't it maybe be better to wait around until after the season and then try to be School Two for a bunch of these guys? They can play immediately, they got their freshman year out of the way elsewhere, you get the benefit of their sophomore leap, and they're now transfer-restricted. A lot of coaches will start thinking that way, right?

Yes, there's a big risk of a market crash. By the end of the school year I'm guessing there will be something like 1,500 players in the transfer portal. Say some coach sees those statistics this year, says "that's it, I'm chasing one high school recruit this summer and then saving four scholarships for the portal next spring", and then the portal market crashes and only 600 players transfer after next season. That coach is then left holding his scholarships with many of the incoming freshmen already committed elsewhere.

But will they be committed elsewhere? Will we see very few high school players sign during the November signing period followed by a free-for-all in the spring as coaches fill rosters with high schoolers and transfers? I mean, if coaches are going to be hesitant to bring in freshmen, then that means more will be on the market in the spring. Does this whole thing just mean that spring recruiting is the new "fall visits followed by November signing"? Will everyone skip being School One in hopes of being School Two?

Transfer Portal vs. High School Recruiting

Here's something I tweeted a few weeks ago:

The Athletic has started doing a "35 best players available - either HS recruits or transfer portal" list, and honestly, it feels like that's the future. Simple top-100 high school lists are somewhat... obsolete?

All teams will recruit a mix so they should be ranked together.

— Robert Rosenthal (@ALionEye) March 23, 2021

One of the responses to that first post said "he knows Missouri will be awful next year". My question: "does he?". Do we know if anyone will be awful next year? We used to - just look at the players graduating and the players who signed in November - but do we really "know" anymore? How can the national writers write their "Way Too Early Top-25" articles today? Who could possibly say at this point?

That's why I'm openly questioning if the top-100 list is obsolete. I'm not saying there won't be AAU Tournaments and I'm not saying that there won't be top-100 lists at the end of the summer. I'm just saying that the list The Athletic put together - transfers and high school recruits all mixed together - seems like the only way to do it at this point. September and October visits used to be THE timeframe for college basketball. Final Four trips were made and broken with those decisions. Now, I'm not sure you can say that. If Underwood is noting that being School Two is important, it feels like much of college basketball will move in a School Two direction.

OK, yes, I'm pushing against the edges here. I'm taking each point and seeing how far it might go. But I feel like that's the best way to approach a "did college basketball recruiting just substantially shift?" moment like this. Before, you'd land a player ranked 55th and think "he might struggle as a freshman but by his junior year...". Now, you look at him and think "maybe we should wait until April and grab one of the dozen shooting guards who have already proven themselves at this level?".

The guard who is transferring from Davidson to Kentucky (Kellan Grady) is way better than the freshman guard ranked 31st they have in their 2021 recruiting class (Nolan Hickman). So how can we have "recruiting class rankings" that don't even acknowledge Grady as part of the class?

More About The Freshman Thing

Please note that I'm not just saying "players today won't have any loyalty and that's why coaches won't recruit freshmen - they'll be afraid that freshmen will just leave on a whim". I'm saying that letting freshmen be someone else's problem might be attractive to certain college coaches.

Years ago, freshmen were ineligible. The NCAA wanted all freshmen to adapt to college first while practicing with the team and then they'd be eligible once they were sophomores. That rule didn't change until the 1972-73 season. As I recall (well, not as I "recall" because I was born during the 72/73 season which now that I think about it might have been the reason for the rule change), the changes were made because of Title IX and all college athletes needing to be immediately eligible.

So at the time, you had your "roster" (sophomores, juniors, and seniors) and you had your "prep-year" kids (the freshmen who could only practice). That's probably not the best way to put it because "prep-year" sounds like "prep school" but now that I type that out maybe that is what I'm trying to say. Are we headed for a two tier arrangement where only a few recruits go straight from high school to the college court and everyone else is searching for the place where they prove themselves with one or two "prep years"?

Let's use the only player signed so far in the 2021 class: Luke Goode. He's ranked 94th in the 247 Composite rankings. Probably isn't expected to be a big contributor next season (needs some weight room work, needs to adjust to the college game). Still a solid recruit - could be a big contributor in the future.

My question here. In the future, will a Luke Goode do that "adjust to the college game" year somewhere else? If Brad Underwood has a scholarship available for a wing, will he use it on a freshman or sophomore transfer from some mid-major while Goode spends a year or two at Ball State building film for better offers?

Again, I'm not talking in absolutes here. Coaches will see high school players they think are a perfect fit and will want to lock them down immediately. I'm just saying that with this seismic shift in college basketball, will players like Goode be viewed on this "needs to prep somewhere else first" tier? Will coaches look at their rosters like a 1966 coach would look at his roster (seniors, juniors, and sophomores) with freshmen being viewed as "if he's not ready to immediately contribute, he should prove himself elsewhere"?

I'm asking.

Watershed

Yes, the rule change will go into effect in 2021 (once they finally vote on the delayed vote). That's what's bringing about all of my questions. But the way this season played out is probably contributing to it as well. Lots of questions I could ask there as well. The biggest being "is the Kentucky/Duke model dead?".

I don't think it's "dead". But I do think 5-star guard Devin Askew transferring OUT of Kentucky and Davidson guard Kellan Grady transferring IN is a big sign that even Kentucky is saying "yeah, maybe this transfer thing is better than playing a bunch of 5-star freshmen". That's now two transfers coming in for Kentucky (including West Virginia big man Oscar Tshiebwe) after three this past offseason. On the flipside, their #1 recruiting class in 2020 just went 9-16, saw three players declare for the draft last week, and two others are transferring out. That leaves only Lance Ware (2 ppg, 3 rpg) from that #1 class.

But it's not just Kentucky. There was that stat someone tweeted in early February when Kansas fell out of the top-25 where the top 13 teams in all-time NCAA wins were unranked. Duke, North Carolina, Kansas, Kentucky, UCLA, and so on... none of the top-13 were ranked. I think that's a pretty good signal that there's a shift happening in college basketball. Tired: bluebloods. Wired: newbloods.

And the biggest difference, I think, is transfers. Of the 20 starters in the Final Four, eight were transfers. One more time: Twenty players started in the two games on Saturday. 12 were players the teams had recruited out of high school and 8 were recruited as transfers. The national champion Baylor Bears? Four transfers in their rotation: Davion Mitchell was a transfer from Auburn, Macio Teague was a transfer from UNC-Asheville, Adam Flagler was a transfer from Presbyterian, and Jonathan Tchamwa Tchatchoua was a transfer from UNLV. Baylor scored 86 points last night - 53 from transfers.

So this feels like a watershed moment, right? Yes, we'll remember the 2020-21 season because of Covid and no fans, but we also might remember it as the season when roster construction completely changed. Way Too Early Top-25 lists? Impossible the day after the title game. Top-25 recruiting classes? Meaningless rankings if transfers aren't re-ranked and included.

Juwan Howard had holes in his 2021 roster and he filled them with Mike Smith from Columbia and Chaundee Brown from Wake Forest. Chris Holtmann had holes in his 2021 roster and he filled them with Seth Towns from Harvard and Justice Sueing from California. Brad Underwood has holes in his 2022 roster and he's going to fill them with Omar Payne from Florida and {fill in at least two more transfers here}.

Remember the old Jim Calhoun "it takes two years for a great season to pay off in recruiting"? Well, now it needs to happen in the next three weeks. We need to take "we climbed as high as #2 in the polls" and immediately sell it to some transfers. The success of these next few weeks determines our success next winter.

It's a new world and we need to live in it.