There was no NCAA Tournament this year because of the novel coronavirus pandemic and far fewer coaching changes, which meant the silly season was all transfers, all the time. It’s been a busy couple of months since the college basketball season ended prematurely, full of player turnover and roster upheaval.
Though there are still changes to come, and uncertainty about when the cutoff date for players testing the NBA draft waters will be moved to with the draft likely being pushed back, below is a list of our winners and losers of this wild offseason so far:
Winners
Arizona State
Bobby Hurley has the makings of his best team yet in the desert, after beating out Michigan for top-10 prospect Josh Christopher and landing Ohio State transfer Luther Muhammad, a lockdown perimeter defender. As long as two of the three Sun Devils — Remy Martin, Romello White and Alonzo Verge — testing the draft waters return, and none of them are projected to be selected, Hurley may have a top-10 team.
Bobby HurleyAPTexas
If not for the pandemic, Shaka Smart may be out of a job. Instead, he stayed at Texas and landed a monster recruit, five-star forward Greg Brown who significantly adds to the Longhorns’ upside with no major defections expected.
Texas Tech
The Red Raiders’ run to the 2019 title game was fueled by transfers, and they’re loading up again. Chris Beard and Co. picked two of the best players on the market in VCU forward Marcus Santos-Silva and Wichita State wing Jamarius Burton — two experienced and tough-minded upperclassmen that should fit seamlessly into Tech Tech’s grinding, defense-first style. The only question is, will this duo be able to play this coming year? Santos-Silva has work to do this summer to graduate while Burton would need a waiver.
Minnesota
No school has done better on the transfer market than the Golden Gophers, who have added versatile Western Michigan graduate transfer forward Brandon Johnson and sit-out 7-foot center Liam Robbins from Drake, an All-Missouri Valley second team selection and nephew of Minnesota associate head coach Ed Conroy.
Losers
Creighton
Most national pundits still consider Creighton a top-10 team despite the stinging loss of Ty-Shon Alexander to the NBA draft. They are wrong. This will be a costly loss, dropping Creighton to the 20-25 range. Alexander wasn’t just its leading scorer, he was the Big East program’s top defender, frequently impacting the game at both ends of the floor, freeing up point guard Marcus Zegarowski to guard a less potent option. The ceiling isn’t nearly as high without him.
Kentucky
The entire starting five made the jump to the NBA. That was somewhat expected. Unexpected, however, was John Calipari being unable to land a big man on the transfer market thus far — losing out on Purdue’s Matt Haarms to BYU, among others. The Wildcats did add two transfers: Creighton guard Davion Mintz and Rhode Island wing Jacob Toppin, neither of whom necessarily screams impact player. Kentucky is still looking to add to its top-ranked recruiting class, in the hunt for four-star prospect Frank Anselem and Wake Forest 7-foot transfer Olivier Sarr.
Georgetown
Omer Yurtseven is gone to the professional ranks, Mac McClung may follow — he’s testing the waters — and the Hoyas whiffed on their top and even secondary transfer targets, creating a bottom of the barrel Big East roster in Patrick Ewing’s fourth season. Consider this: Georgetown will return just two of its top eight scorers from a year ago, counting mid-season transfers James Akinjo and Josh LeBlanc.
Wichita State
The Shockers, an NCAA Tournament bubble team, lost a stunning six rotation players to the transfer portal, though one of them, forward Morris Udeze, did opt to return. Impact players Grant Sherfield (Nevada), Burton (Texas Tech) and Erik Stevenson (Washington), however, did not.
