Ualbany coach pans portal

Says it lets athletes “run away from their problems”

University at Albany men’s lacrosse coach Scott Marr is not a fan of the NCAA transfer portal.

Criticizing the portal, adopted in 2018, as a way for athletes to “run away from their problems,” Marr said the NCAA should go back to the model that required athletes to ask their coaches for permission to contact other schools.

If the coach denied the request, the athlete could still appeal to that school’s athletic director.

Now an athlete asks the school’s compliance administrator to place their name in the portal, and the school has two business days to submit the information.

“You get rid of the portal and you go back to the old way of doing it,” Marr said on a Zoom call Wednesday. “Hold kids accountable for why they’re transferring. Am I transferring for legitimate reasons? If a kid comes to me and says, ‘Coach, I’m not fitting in with the team’ or ‘Academically I want to do something different,’ then I would release him. But if a kid comes and like, well, he’s disgruntled because he (thinks) he should be playing or that type of stuff, or reasons that he sees different than you, then you have the ability to hold it over him.”

The topic came up when Marr was asked about his former record-setting faceoff specialist TD Ierlan, who is becoming eligible for Denver with the Pioneers already eight games into their season. He applied to the NCAA for a waiver.

Ierlan could be eligible as soon as Sunday’s game against Villanova. Marr said he doesn’t hold any grudge against Ierlan for leaving for Yale.

Siena staying home

The Siena men’s lacrosse team won’t have to go on the road this weekend to seek its first victory, after all.

The Saints (0-2 overall, 0-1 Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference) will play host to Canisius at 1 p.m. Saturday at Hickey Field. Siena was supposed to travel to Quinnipiac on Saturday, but that match was postponed because of COVID -19 protocols within the Bobcats program.

This will be the Saints’ third straight home game to open the season and a rematch with Canisius, which beat Siena 8-7 in the opener that didn’t count in the league standings. This will be a MAAC contest. The rematch was moved up from April 10.