Isaiah Elohim seems like a stretch but may as well take big shots. His former Sierra Canyon teammate, Justin Pippen (that’s Scottie’s son), is also in the transfer portal. Package deal?
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@LucasLandon When you say “That’s not how scholarships and the portal work.” Do mean at Santa Clara, or in general?
In general athletic scholarships are for the academic year and renewed each year. So even though a player enters the portal their scholarship doesn’t end cuz there’s always the possibility a player enters the portal and decides to remain. Thats also how a coaching staff can suggest to a player he may want to move onto another school cuz they’re looking in a different direction and won’t be extending the scholarship
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No, the scholarships pay out per semester, or in the case of SCU, quarter.
The athletes in the portal have to answer questions that recruiting coaches can see. One of those questions asks if they’re on athletic aid. The next asks if the aid is being cancelled because of entering the portal. It’s up to the coach and institution. Anyone in the portal has to make it public if they were on aid and if it’s being cancelled.
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Oregon State’s Parsa Fallah goes to the portal. The Beavers are now down three starters before even playing their last game. A hearty laugh at those who though the “College Basketball Crown” was going to be a better tournament than the NIT–some of these teams may be starting their walk-ons.
Wazzu also loses Marcus Wilson. The Cougars are only down a mere two starters, for whatever that is worth.
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I imagine the Fox, Big10 and the SEC will, by 2032, have this fixed to ensure this tournament becomes viable and crushes the NIT. Either by their out worldly influence on the NCAA or just by breaking off with the Power Conferences.
The portal timing is a problem that both football and hoops has to deal with. It is making a mockery of the post season and they and fans know it.
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There are now at least 50 WCC players in the transfer portal and roughly 1400 across all of Division 1. Remember that there are only 143 scholarship spots in the WCC and about 4700 in D1 basketball. But then you take out the folks who have actually just run out of eligibility, and the numbers get even worse.
Estimating–I’ll count when portal activity winds down–that at least 25 WCC players are just out of eligibility the normal way, we are probably at or close to 40% of all players with remaining eligibility in the portal.
By my rough count, the following teams have to fill 50+% of their roster spots before next season: Gonzaga, Santa Clara, LMU, Pacific, Pepperdine, Portland, and San Diego. Both USF and Wazzu are one transfer away from joining that list.
Anyways, for the above reasons, I think this season or next is finally the peak of transfer activity. The dialogue is very sharply turning to how this is bad for the sport and unsustainable from all levels. Something will give. Or betterer may be proven right…
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It’s madness.
My level of interest in watching sports of any kind has plummeted to “having the Giants on in the background while I read a book.”
You need a multi-tabbed spreadsheet to keep track of even just your and your couple rival’s roster moves over a year or two, let alone a single league. And our team is relatively stable!
Pac-12 football, which was meaningful to me for much of my life, is gone. The NCAA tournament - which I once watched religiously - had all power conference teams by the Sweet 16, a natural result when you take 14 of 16 SEC teams, and so on.
All of this coupled with the truly aggressive number of sport-gambling ads plastered all over, and it becomes clear to me that the whole thing is meant to (i) sell TV ads (ii) get folks, especially young men, to gamble all the time and (iii) sell beer and delivered junk food. And the powers that be are more than happy to foster a divorce between conference mates a century old if their calculations show the new alignment will increase (i)-(iii)…
I am truly gravitating away from it all. At least major league baseball has been unabashedly capitalist and favoring the big markets forever, with no pretenses of meaningful safeguards for fairness. If what they want is our eyeballs, I’m going to start looking away.
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I’m with you ‘nashty. And the ‘sports on TV in the background’ rings true. Much to my wife’s chagrin, ESPN and sports in general are on our TV regularly. But often, I’m barely paying attention…..reading the paper or on my news feed (mostly non-sports related), work stuff on my my laptop, tinkering around the house and checking in on whatever game is on occasionally….or posting here.
I’m watching women’s tourney games as I type and I’v been consuming hoops in large doses the last 2 weeks and watching more intently. But regular season viewing has become more casual for me….watch a game of interest for 15mins then move on.
And I still root the for the same pro teams I’ve been a fan of since I was 6 or 7, but my passion for it all has waned. I simply don’t care about the outcomes as much as I did in the past.
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Some other names I have seen mentioned with Santa Clara. The list of schools for each guy is quite long and filled with Power 4 schools so I won’t get my hopes up.
Tanner Toolson , Utah Valley
https://x.com/247HSHoops/status/1906193876005601764
Koren Johnson , Louisville
https://x.com/247HSHoops/status/1906034046972416003
Also saw Kevin Patton Jr was leaving USC (had a good freshman year at San Diego). I believe the Broncos were in his final two or three coming out of high school so maybe he is a possibility as well.
Toolson started is career at BYU.
Patton…was impressed with him at USD as a frosh. Skills and fundamentals were raw but tons of upside. Long lanky wing / forward who was able to impact games in many ways…good defender, blocked shots, steals, rebounding, good slasher who could be dangerous on the break. PT was sparse at USC but I believe he was hurt early season so maybe that put him behind in trying to crack the rotation.
The 2025 transfer portal is now over a week old! The names have slowed with a WCC player or two joining each day, including a new Beaver today right before the Crown tips off. Between Oregon State and their opponent, UCF, the teams have lost a combined 11 players to transfer before finishing their seasons.
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When do we hire a general manager?
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We finally have our first Gael in the portal: Ashton Hard away, son of Penny and who transferred from Penny’s Memphis squad to SMC just a year ago. Hardaway was only the 7th or 8th guy in the rotation this past season but was likely to move into a bigger role. So not an enormous loss but certainly shows that no one is immune to the portal.
With the realization that the chance of being an NBA player is near 0 (only 1.2% of D1 players make the NBA), I look for the following to become popular with parents who want to maximize their child’s NIL years in college.
- Hold your kid back one year in grade school.
- Have him take a gap year after he graduates high school where only basketball training is done (NCAA says 5 year clock does not start until you enroll in college, and you have 1 year to enroll in college after graduating high school.)
- Redshirt his first year on campus.
- Use his 4 years of NCAA Eligibility between ages 21-25 when he is more physically developed and a better player.
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Would love to see us go after the Diaz Graham twins from Pittsburgh (either one or both). Think they could really flourish with increased usage in our system.
Great advice. Pushing for a 5th yr for Cam now. Seems a lot of the HS class of 2021 are using mental duress and NCAA is allowing it. Funny thing is Cam actually does have a valid claim. Probably more so than most.
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Potentially, but I think that’s a better NIL play than NBA. The NBA wants players as young as possible. It was a knock against Jalen that he was already 21 on draft day–that was considered a risk of drafting him. The thinking, right or wrong, is that it takes 2-3 seasons for a player to adjust to the NBA, so better to get them in the system at 19 than later.
That said, for maximizing NIL value, older is definitely better. And for big men who are not likely to fit into today’s NBA (Timme, Ike, Saxen), NIL is now their peak earning potential for basketball.
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Yeah, I agree. Just saying that a kid is almost 100x more likely to be a D1 Basketball Player than an NBA player so might as well plan for the much more likely outcome and then you can speed up the process later if he ends up being a Top 20 overall player in his age group. And to be fair, even becoming a D1 Player is almost impossible… but I have seen parents hold kids back who I think will be lucky to even make their varsity team some day. I am predicting how these types of parents will behave.
Glad to hear it. It is sort of ridiculous that JUCO players get an extra year but not a kid who played 5 minutes a game as a freshman at D1.
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