The Transfer Portal Winners
The winners of the one-time transfer waiver have included some of the expected teams, but several mid-majors are reaping rewards as well.
Tipoff
When the NCAA adopted the one-time transfer waiver, which allows players transferring between teams to play immediately rather than sitting out a season, there were many voices that criticized the move due to the potential of high-major teams to treat the transfer portal as a version of free agency. The scary scenario was about blue bloods raiding the mid-majors of the best players, leaving the sport with a greater imbalance between the haves and the have-nots. College basketball superfan Dickie V, who we love for his unequaled passion for the sport, still tweets about the horrors of the one-time transfer waiver.
The good news for Dickie V is that mid-majors have benefitted from the portal, often more so than the “super-elite.” Take Ques Glover as an example. Glover, a guard, played his first two seasons at Florida. As a Gator, Glover averaged 3.6 points per game in less than 11 minutes per game across two seasons. Now at Samford, Glover is the leading scorer at 18.1 points and 3rd in the Southern Conference overall, where he has a chance of making an all-conference team. Foster Loyer, formerly a bench player for Michigan State, is having a breakout season for Davidson as the starting point guard. The portal goes both ways, so to speak.
Further to the point, many of the top transfers in college basketball, including Kentucky’s Oscar Tshiebwe, Wake Forest’s Alondes Williams, and Illinois’s Alfonso Plummer, transferred from other high-major teams. Tshiebwe came from West Virginia, Williams from Oklahoma, and Plummer from Utah. The portal has more often than not been about opportunity for the players from super-elite destinations and those of more modest profiles. Players that did not fit with the roster or coaching staff were being punished for seeking a better fit. I have no doubt that some players have been led astray by a coach or those close to them about their prospects in a new landing spot. However, there are plenty of cases like Glover and Loyer that suggest the net effect of the one-time transfer waiver is neutral at worst and likely beneficial to mid-major teams looking to add a talented but under-utilized player to their roster.
BREAKING NEWS: Field of 68 Goes Global
Tune into SiriusXM ESPNU Channel to listen to Field of 68: After Dark!
The Field of 68 made a big announcement last week. The media network’s After Dark program will be broadcast nightly throughout the rest of the season on SiriusXM’s ESPNU channel. You can now subscribe to the podcast, watch on YouTube, or catch it anywhere you can get a satellite signal.
The Mixtape
The Field of 68 team puts out lots of great content each week. Let’s take a look at some of the highlights.
Auburn has one of the best frontcourts in the country between sophomore center Walker Kessler and freshman sensation Jabari Smith. The backcourt was another question, most notably the point guard position. On the Goodman & Hummel podcast, Auburn head coach Bruce Pearl joined the pod to talk about the development of Wendell Green, Jr. Pearl isn’t buying the hype around the Tigers. Thank goodness Green was available in the transfer portal, right?
Michigan-Illinois on Monday afternoon was one of the top games of the year. On Field of 68: After Dark!, Illini guard Trent Frazier joined the pod to talk about the big win, how the “little guys” like him are flying under the radar, and goals for the rest of the year.
Things are getting real in college basketball. The top teams are emerging and Rob Dauster, Terrence Oglesby, and John Fanta are ready to survey the field. The trio discussed which 10 teams are legit title contenders on the Dauster, T.O., & Fanta show. You’ll want to hear T.O.’s hot take about a certain top-ranked team. It is nuclear hot and rather subtle.
Wednesday Superlatives
Each week, we will shine a light on a team and an individual player that has captured the hearts of the world of college basketball.
Team of the Week: Oregon
There have been two teams in the history of men’s college basketball that have won consecutive road games against AP top-5 teams. Oregon is the first since Clemson accomplished the same feat in 1978 according to ESPN’s Jared Berson (a wealth of useful information). Picked in the top 15 in both the preseason AP and coaches polls, Oregon had a rough go of it this season, until this week. The Ducks knocked off UCLA, 84-81 in Overtime and then followed up their LA sweep by beating USC 79-69 in a game Oregon led wire-to-wire. Now, the Ducks are right back in the thick of things in the Pac-12 and trending towards the NCAA Tournament.
Player of the Week: Darius McGhee
Two of my favorite genres of college basketball stars are big men with good footwork and undersized scoring guards. You don’t see much of either in the NBA. Liberty’s Darius McGhee is the latter, a dynamo on the court at just 5’9” tall. The reigning Atlantic Sun Player of the Year dropped a school-record 48 points against FGCU on Saturday night behind a barrage of 8 3-pointers, 8 2-point field goals, and another 8 free throws for good measure. The performance helped the Flames take control of the Atlantic Sun Conference, where Liberty is 4-0 on the season.
Box Score
Basketball can be told through the numbers. We take a look at some of the numbers from the last week of college hoops.
55. Leonard Hamilton, head coach of Florida State men’s basketball, recorded his 55th win over an AP Top 25 while coaching an unranked team on Tuesday night as FSU defeated Duke in overtime (more on that later), 79-78. Hamilton has more victories over teams ranked in the Top 25 while his team is unranked than any coach in history. Hamilton had been tied with Bobby Knight with 54 wins. (ESPN Stats & Info)
30. Loyola-Chicago head coach Drew Valentine, at the age of 30, is the youngest head coach of a team ranked in the AP Top 25 since Todd Bozeman (29) was head coach of Cal in 1993. (Jared Berson, ESPN Stats & Info)
13. Florida State has now won 13 consecutive overtime games following their win over Duke on Tuesday night. It extends the longest streak of OT wins. (Fox College Hoops)
2. Auburn has never been the #1 team in the Associated Press Top 25 Poll for men’s college basketball, a streak that almost came to an end on Monday. The Eagles received the most first-place votes in this week’s poll. Jesse Newell of the Kansas City Star, however, ranked Auburn 9th. Had he ranked them in the top 4, Auburn would have enjoyed their first-ever #1 ranking. Alas. (Gary Parrish, CBS Sports)
1. After losing to Kansas State at home on Tuesday night, Texas gained a Quadrant 1 win based on the NET rating. Texas previously defeated Kansas State. After the Wildcats beat Texas on Tuesday night, KState’s NET rating rose from 75 to 65, which qualified that road win for Texas as a Q1 victory, their first of the season. (Gary Parrish, CBS Sports)
Around the Rim
This section highlights some of the best writing on college basketball to hit the web. Consider these your extra credit assignments for spring semester.
You will want to bookmark this series from Field of 68 contributor Sean Paul when the brackets come out. “Mr. Mid-Major” (I’m trying to make this nickname stick) goes deep into why he believes the Tigers, yes the Ivy League team based in New Jersey, are legitimate Cinderella candidates this year. Only in college basketball can kids that attend one of the premier academic institutions in the world be considered underdogs (or is it undercats?).
Speaking of Cinderella, here’s another source of insight, a sort of magic mirror that will tell you who is fairest of all. The team behind Heat Check claims this to be the most accurate tool for predicting the NCAA Tournament. The model factors in both likelihood of early upset as well as teams poised for deep runs. Excluding the WCC teams and other obvious mid-major candidates such as Loyola-Chicago, the model likes the chances of Colorado State, Murray State, and Wagner as potential bracket busters.
Have you ever wondered what it is like to cover a game as a member of the media? Ky McKeon of Three Man Weave took the extremely long trip from his home in Chicago to Evanston, Illinois to cover the Wisconsin-Northwestern game. The series provides an inside account of the experience of being a reporter at the game, including the venue, the game itself, and the comments from head coaches afterwards. The series provides a slightly different perspective than a traditional game recap.