College basketball transfer epidemic hits Bedlam rivals
Staff Writers
Trae Young’s announcement that he would leave Oklahoma after the season came as no surprise.
But in the days after the end of the Sooners’ basketball season, following an NCAA Tournament loss to Rhode Island in the first round, two more departures caused a wave of concern among OU fans.
Jordan Shepherd and Kameron McGusty, both having just finished their sophomore seasons, announced their decisions to transfer.
In Stillwater, Oklahoma State had a similar rash of early departures.
Sophomore point guard Brandon Averette announced his decision to transfer a few days after the Cowboys’ season ended with an NIT loss to Western Kentucky.
A few days later, two other OSU players, Yankuba Sima and Tavarius Shine, announced that they were leaving early to pursue professional careers.
While plenty of fans of both the Sooners and Cowboys panicked about the spate of moves, both coaches say people should take a deep breath.
Sooners coach Lon Kruger said the departures were par for the course in college basketball, even if the state schools have been largely immune.
“You look at the turnover across the country, it’s kind of the nature of the game today,” Kruger said.
In almost every season since he arrived at Oklahoma in 2011, Kruger’s Sooners have lost at least one scholarship player
before their was out.
But until this year, there hadn’t been more than one departure in the same offseason.
Cowboys coach Mike Boynton said he understands the pull to transfer early in a player’s career if things aren’t going well.
“I think like anything else, it’s just cool to see if things can be better for me,” Boynton said. “I don’t agree with it, and I speak as a guy who as a freshman was recruited and played for one coach. That coach retired after my freshman year, and I was asked if I wanted to leave, not by my coaches, but by people back in my personal circle. ... I contemplated transferring, and I probably contemplated transferring again after my sophomore year, and I’m glad I didn’t. It wasn’t easy. I didn’t play a whole lot as a sophomore and really didn’t play a ton my junior year.
“I don’t know if it’s going back unless the rules change. Just one of those things that’s kind of morphed out of control a little bit, with the undergraduate transfer guys. I hope there’s a better way to operate for everybody because it doesn’t look good.”
Men’s basketball has the highest transfer rate among major sports at the Division I level, with more than three times the percentage of transfers than football and more than six times the amount for baseball.
And transfer rates in the sport have steadily risen since 2004, going from less than 10 percent that year to 13 percent in 2016, according to the most recent numbers available by the NCAA.
Those numbers show that approximately 40 percent of all men’s basketball players who come into a Division I program directly out of high school wind up leaving that school by the eligibility end of their sophomore year.
Averette, McGusty and Shepherd had all just finished their sophomore seasons when they asked for their releases.
To fill those spots, the Cowboys and Sooners have turned their attention to another transfer hotbed —graduates.
Graduate transfers are given immediate eligibility and have the added benefit of being players, in general, who are more mature and ready to help immediately.
The Sooners have already signed one graduate transfer in Pacific guard Miles Reynolds and hosted Maine point guard Aaron Calixte over the weekend.
Oklahoma State has pursued several grad transfers, including USC Upstate point guard Mike Cunningham.
Kruger said his fear was that the lower levels of Division I basketball were turning into a farm team of sorts for the power-conference programs.
“I’m not sure it’s healthy for the game, especially for the non-Power Five,” Kruger said. “The Power Five, it has probably been a positive. You hate to see a school invest four years in a guy and then have him transfer in what should be his most productive year.”
But that’s the way the game has gone and without changes, it figures to remain.
“There’s come unintended consequences and people have taken advantage of it,” Boynton said. “But at the same time ... I lean toward the studentathlete’s side of things. Those kids come in and they do what you ask them to do, right? The goal is for them to get a degree, and if they do that, then there should be some flexibility with regards to their athletic side on what they think is best at that point. I don’t know if that one can change. I probably would have a different opinion if I was a head coach at a midmajor school. It’s probably not as easy to support that. I would hope not (though) because I still think I would want the best for the kids.”