Portal opens wide
NCAA’s transfer system presents possibilities for college players, challenges for coaches, high school hopefuls
In a perfect world, Richard Pitino could sit back in his office inside The Pit, look at a map and envision a giant rectangle that extends from the south-central coast of California to the eastern edge of Texas.
All the space within, he said, could easily serve as the base of operations for a University of New Mexico men’s basketball program looking to plant roots as a destination spot for high school recruits.
“I do think it’s very important that we are recruiting Southern California, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Texas — that’s kind of the region we really, really want to hone in on to go along with the transfer portal, which has really rocked college sports,” Pitino said. “It’s really changed it.”
As anyone in this neck of the woods can attest, UNM has hovered painfully close to irrelevance the last few years — in part, some might say, because of shoddy recruiting.
The wrench in Pitino’s plan is the NCAA transfer portal.
In its simplest form, the portal offers onestop shopping for any school desperate for an overnight makeover. As much as a coach like Pitino wants to corner the market on the high school recruiting scene, the simple fact is 60 percent of high school recruits transfer out of their original college program before their junior year.
All of them funnel into the portal, a place where any player can enter his or her name without telling their coach they intend to transfer. Within 48 hours, their names are publicized to every school in the country, often creating a feeding frenzy that exceeds the one most players faced when they left high school.
As New Mexico State coach Chris Jans talked about in January during his team’s shutdown due to the coronavirus, players in the portal are older, more experienced and better able to provide instant help to any team that needs them.
“Obviously, we’re in a unique time,” Pitino said. “There’s not great stability in any program right now because of the transfer
portal, and everybody’s dealing with it.”
Hired away from Minnesota less than a month ago, Pitino said the portal gives any program the ability to go from doormat to contender virtually overnight.
As of Saturday night, 1,294 names were on the transfer wish list. With 345 Division I teams, that’s an average of nearly four players per team.
UNM has — or had — five players in the portal following Paul Weir’s disastrous final year as the Lobos’ coach. One of them, guard Nolan Dorsey, has already signed with Holy Cross, while the remaining four — center Bayron Matos, forward Logan Padgett and guards Isaiah Marin and Keith McGee — remain unsigned.
Of those, Matos has turned to his Instagram account to make it abundantly clear he isn’t long for UNM. After a disappointing freshman season, the 6-foot-9 big man entered the portal March 17 and has posted a series of recruiting updates on social media. Among his suitors are some big names, including Illinois, St. John’s, Xavier, Missouri, Texas Tech, BYU, Oklahoma State and New Mexico State.
Pitino said he’s treating the Lobos in the portal like he would any other prospective recruit. He said last week he has not yet had
the chance to speak with Matos, but given the fluidity of the portal he might not have to.
Pitino’s former school has seven players in the portal, including one of the most sought-after guards in the country in 6-foot-2 junior Marcus Carr and 6-2 freshman Jamal Mashburn Jr., not to mention a pair of 6-10 centers in Matrice Mitchell and Sam Freeman, and 7-footer Liam Robbins.
“There’s new names popping into that portal every single day,” Pitino said. “When you’re a transfer, you have a specific need that you want. Because this portal has changed college sports, normally those guys are leaving because they want something else. We’ll see if that situation here works.”
The biggest victim in all of this? High school recruits.
The 1-2 punch of the coronavirus and the portal have made it virtually impossible to accurately evaluate high school talent the past 13 months. The pandemic shut down regional and national AAU tournaments, events that are critical to getting players on the recruiting map.
Travel restrictions and local health guidelines that canceled or delayed high school sporting events have further put a chokehold
on getting coaches into gyms to assess players.
“The real difficult spot for high school kids is COVID,” Pitino said. “We absolutely want to get in these gyms and develop these relationships with these high school coaches and recruit these high school kids early, but because we’re not allowed to go out on the road, that’s where the challenges lie with everybody and every staff.”
Until the country gets back to something close to normal, the transfer portal will only intensify in its size and scope. This year’s total is the most in history, surpassing the next-closest year by nearly 400 players.
“When the world resumes, 100 percent we’ll be recruiting high school kids hard,” Pitino said. “But we’re also in the middle of a pandemic, and it’s not normal, and that’s why I think you’re seeing a lot of people recruit transfers.”