Transfers bring new wrinkle to season

Teams are using games to allow players to mesh

PARADISE ISLAND, Bahamas — North Carolina State coach Kevin Keatts knows he needs to work fast to bring along a team that added four transfers this season in key roles.

For coaches across college basketball in the transfer-portal era, playing in an early season tournament offers a boost in finding the right rotations, establishing roles and forging a team’s identity. Those chances come this week with holiday events like the Maui Invitational and the Phil Knight tournaments in Oregon.

For Keatts, it’s the Battle 4 Atlantis in the Bahamas opening Wednesday with No. 3 Kansas, No. 22 Tennessee, Wisconsin, Southern California, Dayton, BYU and Butler.

“For us, it’s trying to figure out, ‘All right, where do we go from here? What steps?’” Keatts said Tuesday. “Obviously with transfers, you’re trying to get as much chemistry as you can. And it’s really hard to do it in practice situations. So you’re kind of thrown into the fire of the game.”

It’s a challenge facing coaches across the sport, first in the offseason with issues of roster management as players come and go while putting their names in the portal.

From there, it’s about fully integrating those players and building cohesion.

“That’s the world of transfers,” Massachusetts coach Frank Martin said last week before winning the Myrtle Beach Invitational. “That’s the hardest thing we as coaches deal with. Everyone’s brand new. The beginning of the season, it’s a get-toknow ceremony for lack of a better word.”

Kansas coach Bill Self sees it, too. His reigning national champions brought in 6-foot-6 wing Kevin Mccullar from Texas Tech, and Mccullar has started all four games for the Jayhawks entering Wednesday’s Atlantis opener against N.C. State.

“Whether it be transfers or incoming freshmen, I think that a lot of people get a false sense that you can actually become a team a heck of a lot earlier in the season than you actually can,” said Self, who will make his season debut on the bench after serving a four-game suspension tied to an NCAA infractions case.

“There’s not one team here yet. Everybody will become a team at some point in time this season, but it usually doesn’t happen in early November. We didn’t become a team last year until February.”

That’s why Dayton coach Anthony Grant, who brought in forward Tyrone Baker from Georgia, says teams are “still in that discovery stage.”

These tournaments have long been part of the early stages of forging a team’s identity.

“They’re necessary because there’s a really important set of data points that you need,” BYU coach Mark Pope said. “So many more programs are dealing with new rosters and new kinds of fits. So kind of this race towards understanding your team is even bigger.”