Transfer portal opens new world for Lobos basketball
NCAA’s transfer portal profoundly changed how transfers work
Despite an all-state career and three straight championship seasons as a basketball star at Philadelphia’s Saints Neumann Goretti, Zane Martin was barely recruited out of high school.
It wasn’t until the muscular 6-foot-4 guard dipped his toes into the NCAA transfer waters following his sophomore year at Towson that he fully realized his value.
“I think I had like two or three offers,” Martin said of his senior year in Philly. “My phone didn’t stop ringing when I decided I was going to leave [Towson]. It was crazy. Didn’t expect that.”
Martin went from being a virtual unknown to one of the hottest players on the open market after he averaged 19.8 points in his second season at Towson, a mid-major program in the Colonial Athletic Association. What went unseen at the prep level was suddenly all the rage once word got out that he was looking for a new home.
Moving forward, it’s going to be even easier for players walking in Martin’s shoes. Sweeping changes to the NCAA transfer policy in 2018 have put more power in the players’ hands and given birth to what is known as the transfer portal.
Launched in October 2018, the portal has quickly become a one-stop shop for college recruiting. Coaches say it’s essentially a free agent listing for athletes in all 23 NCAA-sponsored sports.
“It’s changing the way we recruit, no doubt about it,” said University of New Mexico men’s basketball coach Paul Weir. “I actually think it’s a good thing for the players because it gives them more say in where they go, in what they do. It puts the decisionmaking in their hands instead of keeping them in one place.”
Weir admits it’s far easier to have a designated assistant from his staff — in this case, Brandon Mason — check the portal every 24 to 48 hours than spend months or even years cultivating relationships with high school players and their families. Studies have shown that about 40 percent of college basketball players seek a transfer by the end of their sophomore seasons.
“That’s more of the downside of
taking the high school kid if you’re realizing that, man, you’re going to invest all this time into him for a year or two, whatever, and then they’re going to go somewhere else,” Weir says. “If you’re going to go into the transfer portal, you’re on the receiving end of that. So-in-so’s taking the two years to develop them and grow them and mature them and then you kind of get them on the back end, so I think there’s probably a balance in there. I don’t think you want to go exclusively into that.”
Few schools have taken advantage of the transfer business quite like UNM. Seven players on the current 15-man roster are refugees from Division I programs. Seven were signed directly out of high school and one, backup point guard Keith McGee, is a junior college product.
At least four of the Lobos’ projected starters are D-I transfers. Martin is one, but so is senior guard JaQuan Lyle and junior swing man Vance Jackson.
Lyle arrived at UNM in 2017, long before the transfer portal came into existence. He and Jackson were the first big-time commitments under Weir’s watch.
“Sometimes getting a fresh start, you know, is a good thing for some guys,” Lyle says. “You make that first choice and you’re, like, ‘OK this could work.’ Sometimes it doesn’t and when you put your name out there it’s like getting recruited all over again. It’s confusing, you know?”
Curbing the confusion and frustration is part of the goal of the transfer portal. Created, in part, because of the litigious nature of players in football and basketball seeking holes in the system, it makes life easier for the swarms of athletes looking to hit the reset button.
Many are still subject to the “year in residence” requirement that forces athletes to sit out a year, but others are taking matters into their own hands by seeking waivers for immediate eligibility. Most petitions aren’t granted and others take time, like those of current UNM center Carlton Bragg and former Lobo Connor MacDougall.
Bragg took a circuitous route to UNM. A McDonald’s All-America out of high school, he originally signed with Kansas before heading to Arizona State. He was cleared to join UNM at the mid-way point of last season.
MacDougall skipped most of his final year at UNM while seeking a medical waiver to get one final season. He got it, then used it to transfer to Utah Valley State.
Until last year, a player who wanted out needed the permission of his or her coach and the school before being granted a release. Even then, the options were often limited and at the sole discretion of the coach. For instance, many refused to grant a release if it meant transferring to a conference or regional rival.
The portal makes it far simpler. A player doesn’t even need to tell the coach. All it takes is a written request to the school’s compliance officer and then a 48-hour grace period before the athlete’s name is entered into the portal. From there it’s a feeding frenzy.
A recent example was the much-publicized exit of former Lobo shooting guard Anthony Mathis. Granted an additional year of eligibility last spring — essentially gaining a second senior year — he immediately entered the portal and just days later signed with Oregon. Weir says he had no idea Mathis was even on the market.
“I found out like the rest of you guys did,” he says. “I read it on social media.”
Over 900 players were in the men’s basketball portal this year alone, joining a list of thousands more in every other sport at all three NCAA levels. Given the convenience of it, Weir says it’s reasonable to assume it will only get bigger. The freedom for a player to pick and leave has never been easier.
“It’s a far more efficient, even professional way of approaching things,” he says. “Besides, and this gets said a lot, it gives more power to the players. They get more of a choice in where they go if that’s what they want.”
Building a program on the backs of transfers is nothing new. Nevada’s entire starting lineup in men’s basketball last season was D-I transfers, and this year’s Wolf Pack roster has six players from other schools — second only to UNM and UNLV in the Mountain West, each of which have seven.
Fresno State, Colorado State and Boise State have four each while San Diego State and San Jose State have three each. The only schools with zero are Utah State, Wyoming and, of course, the Air Force Academy, which does not accept transfers.
New Mexico State has four former D-I players, including one of Lyle’s teammates at Ohio State, senior guard A.J. Harris. Even the UNM women’s basketball team is busy in that regard with four major college transfers.
“I kind of like it,” Martin says. “It’s all changing, you know? A lot of the guys went through this and now, you know, it’s getting even easier to make the move.”