Don’t forget Stefan Todorovic, Serbian forward formerly of USF, who became another intra-conference transfer by heading to Pepperdine. Todorovic never took off at USF. It’s hard for me to believe that he does so at Pepperdine in his last season.
GU, SMC, USF, SCU, and LMU all seem to be putting together rosters with at least some talent and potential. Wazzu will get there under David Riley as well, I’m sure. I expect that OSU will still be bad–but “Pac-12 bad” rather than “Terry-Porter-at-Portland” bad–and will pick up some conference wins no matter what.
But USD, Pepperdine, Portland, and Pacific look just moribund. I think Pacific made the best hire they could reasonably hope for, but they still have almost no players. Recruiting Todorovic smacks of desperation in Malibu. Portland could only go as far as Robertson could carry them, and now he’s gone. Yikes.
For those curious, Torvik now has his 2025 projections up. They are changing day-to-day with roster additions/subtractions but will be fun to check in on. SCU comes in at a respectable 73, assuming the return of Bal. USF is all the way up at 30 which strikes me as insane but then, I am no computer. Poor Pacific languishes at 324 which still seems high given that they cannot even put a full team on the court. In any event, look for a WCC next season that has some clear haves and have-nots.
That’s unfortunate to have our teams so unbalanced. That does not do well for the conf as a whole. Prefer an all around competitive conf.
As for the Porter family curse. I’d shy away from that too. It’s bad enough for ONE child to get into hot water. But TWO. That becomes a pattern I’d avoid as a program.
Have to feel for Lavin.
Was trying to build organically, brought in a large and good freshman class. Patton was the gem of that class, is raw but with significant potential.
USD was kind of the surprise of the WCC and had a solid season but with Deuce Turner and McKinney (both all-WCC) previously entering the portal, they lost what would have been their veteran backcourt and now lose their most talented young guy. Lavin is now somewhat starting over again.
I feel for Lavin, but welcome to 2024. If you didn’t see this coming…. Then you haven’t been paying attention to the landscape (talking directly to Lavin!)
Unfortunately, non-P6 (I’m adding MWC) conferences are going to become the equivalent of AAA- or G-league teams, with a few exceptions here and there (Gonzaga being one of those). The NCAA rules introduced over the past few years (no waiting out 1 year after transfer, NIL) are wrecking the college game. Just to be clear, I am supportive of NIL given that the players have been the ones making so much money for the universities (it is a fairness issue), but the consequences are not good for schools like ours.
NIL is either just a fortunate stroke of luck for the big schools, or a Machiavellian chess move by those conferences. NIL ensures that the top players will make more money playing for a school than going directly professional to the G-league or overseas.
What is the status of the Dartmouth players’ lawsuit/efforts to unionize? I’m trying to figure out what the consequences of that could be.
Where it’s going, the solution may be worse still. I don’t think that Congress will allow this status quo to continue. Regulating college sports is the sort of issue that could get bipartisan support if only because, well, everyone likes college sports (especially football), and it’s an easy thing to pitch to constituents as an across-the-aisle success. Congress will eventually give the NCAA antitrust protection and allow, as Virginia is barely starting to do, students to be employees of the universities.
That would solve the worst NIL excesses where it’s a pay-for-play scheme with no connection to a player’s actual value–how many college players really can boost a brand, even locally? Players would have 4-year contracts and buy-out clauses, just like for coaches. If a high major program wants to poach a player from a school, they’ll have to pay for it. And low majors will at least be able to leverage player development to fund their programs.
But that will make college sports a lot more expensive for the schools. The biggest and best counterargument to the “pay the players” rationale is that there are basically 200, at best, programs that actually create meaningful value that could be passed onto players–maybe 60-80 football teams and 100-120 basketball teams almost entirely on the men’s side. The other 97% of college athletes are being “overcompensated” by their scholarships in terms of actual revenues generated for the university.
We are in the wild west right now as the NCAA has been thoroughly defanged, and Congress has yet to do anything. But I don’t think that lasts. The political interests are too significant and flow in the same direction for both major parties. But once players become employees, expect most non-revenue sports to be downgraded to clubs with nominal scholarships, if any. The universities will focus on being competitive in football, basketball, and maybe soccer. Everybody else will be on the chopping block.
Not disagreeing with your general argument but I think it is worth pointing out that, outside of basketball and football, the remaining Div 1 athletes only have about 10-20% of their college costs covered by scholarships. For example, baseball is allowed 11.7 scholarships and many schools can’t fully utilize these scholarships due to title IX restrictions. I believe I read that the average D1 baseball team utilizes 9 scholarships (for a team that averages 35 players). I think you will see a trend towards endowed coaching positions and athletic scholarships. It sounds like a lot but, at most schools, $10-15M would almost endow all the scholarships needed for a sport like baseball. I went to Notre Dame so I don’t know Santa Clara as well but potentially a benefactor like the Schott’s would do that to keep D1 baseball at Santa Clara. You might not be able to keep all the sports but I think you would find enough to keep most.
San Diego guard Wayne McKinney has entered the transfer portal, per source. Second-team All-WCC selection averaged 13.5 points and 2.9 assists this past season.
Anyone keeping track of the #/% of WCC players who have entered the portal
as compared to other conferences? (Or is that available and i am too lazy to google it?)
Man, my interest in tracking all of this and trying to pay attention to college basketball in general has been significantly diminished by all of this.
Glad SCU is experiencing minimal turn-over so far. But how brutal is all of this?
Agree Nashty.
While it’s nice we haven’t experienced significant departures this offseason, let’s not forget we had 5 guys (Stewart, Bediako, Braun, Holt, G Williams) depart last offseason, including 3 starters.
Chaos is just that…lack of predictability will reign. I suspect we’ll experience different things from season to season as we have the past two seasons.
I recall a coach quoted a couple of years ago say that coaches now have to re-recruit their existing roster (at least the guys they want to keep).
My interest in ALL sports is diminishing rather rapidly. The monetization of what once was “amateur” sport in pursuit of a quality education leaves a very sour taste in my mouth. Now high school sport is quickly becoming polluted.
Honestly, the future of the NCAA likely won’t extend into the next decade. I figure we have a couple more March Madness tournaments before the big schools break away from the NCAA and forge a more profitable future for themselves and the rest of D1 essentially becomes D2.
Unfortunately that’s likely to crush SCU athletics. I guess enjoy it while it lasts, and embrace the small time nature of obscure low budget ball when it does happen.