NCAA previews
◆ Men: Transfer leading Final Four teams ◆ Women: Stanford, Ariz to meet in title game
INDIANAPOLIS — As the Houston men’s basketball team celebrated its Final Four berth, a jumbled crew of athletes from various places deserved much of the credit. These players didn’t intend to play for Houston. They started their careers elsewhere. But eventually, they landed with the Cougars on coach Kelvin Sampson’s transfer-ridden team. And together, they have thrived.
A former Kansas Jayhawk (Quentin Grimes) scored more points than any other Houston player through the four wins on the path to the national semifinals. In Sampson’s system that values rebounding as much as scoring, a former Towson player (Justin Gorham) has grabbed the most boards during his team’s extended Indianapolis stay. And the leading assist man? That’s DeJon Jarreau, formerly of the University of Massachusetts, who also happens to be the team’s best defender.
The second-seeded Cougars, with four transfers in their starting lineup and two more on the roster, are an extreme example of a program that leans on players from elsewhere. But they’re also a reflection of their peers, both in the men’s Final Four and across the college basketball landscape, as players take advantage of more freedom to transfer and programs embrace how those athletes can be valuable additions.
“Thirty years ago, people that didn’t know what they didn’t know turned their nose up at transfers,” Sampson said. “They thought something was wrong with them. It shows you how little they knew, though. Now, if you’re not taking transfers, you’re behind.”
After Sampson led his group to Houston’s first Final Four since 1984, an Elite Eight matchup began at Lucas Oil Stadium on the other side of a curtain. In that game, another team from Texas with a handful of transfers helped guide top-seeded Baylor to the win. MaCio Teague, formerly of UNC-Asheville, hit a game-sealing pair of three-pointers late in the second half. Teammate Davion Mitchell, who used to play for Auburn, has served as the Bears’ defensive stopper all season. They led Baylor to its first Final Four since 1950, and they did so by beating an Arkansas team Sampson referred to as “Transfer U” earlier in the tournament. These players — Mitchell and Teague, Grimes and Gorham — are no longer outliers.
In the Final Four, eight of the 20 projected starters from Gonzaga, Baylor, Houston and UCLA will be transfers. With more than 1,000 men’s players already in the transfer portal this offseason, these Final Four squads are perhaps a glimpse into the future.
From 2011-15, the men’s Final Four never featured more than one transfer starter. That total gradually grew in recent seasons, with five in 2018.
That season, each national semifinalist had at least one transfer who started, and Loyola-Chicago, the Cinderella team of the tournament, had two. Now, with transferring becoming more common and all players granted immediately eligibility this season because of the pandemic, that number has surged. The NCAA is expected to soon approve a rule change that allows all players to transfer once without sitting out for a year.
“It’s been a long time since anybody’s gone on the road recruiting,” Sampson said. “Transfer portal is like a menu. You’ve got appetizers and desserts. You’ve got your entrees. You kind of just say, ‘What do you need?’ It’s like one-stop shopping looking at that transfer portal.”