Hoping for a distraction from the crazy ending a few days ago, and I want to believe we will back next season.
I have no inside knowledge of players staying/leaving but I wanted to give my quick gut feeling of what next year looks like…
Starting 5:
Sash, Hammond, Normand, Ensminger, Bukky
Next 5:
Longcor, Cochran, Darlan, Tadjo, Francis
Roster recap - assuming we lose Graves, I think our depth is still incredibly strong. I’d say that our second 5 could win a few WCC games on their own.
Longcor and Normand will be the biggest question marks to make up for the scoring lost by Mahi/graves.
Off the court:
IF Randy Bennett leaves SMC, then this team is absolutely strong enough to win the WCC regular season and tourney.
Other Factors:
We saw Bryan and Tilly seek power 5 offers, so we are probably due to lose 1-2 players from the listed above… I could see Bukky draw interest, and Darlan perhaps, but I’m not sure the rest have the power 5 build that Bryan and Tilly had last year.
I think Sash, Hammond and Bukky fetch the biggest offers.
Jake should. Once he found his three point shot, he became a tremendous connector. I do wonder if he has the size to play the 4 at a power 4 school for 30 games.
I don’t expect Darlan back, but I feel it he worked with the staff for a year it could be a really strong play.
We’d likely going to lose 2/3 guys. I would love to be wrong, but that’s the reality of today’s landscape. What I would do to watch another season of Graves.
I forgot to mention that we’re probably due to have a few enter IN that aren’t even on anyone’s radar yet.
Sash was immense for us, we have to wait on Tadjo and Normand to see what kind of impact they’ll have (if they stay). But last year we had 3 top program guys transfer in. And now we have potentially a third NBA player in 5 years AND an ncaa tourney berth as part of our selling story.
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A few too-long-ish thoughts:
- Last year was widely (but not universally) predicted to be the peak of transfer portal/NIL madness for a while. This is because NIL collectives were largely winding down to make way for the House Settlement and revenue-sharing model where schools can compensate athletes directly. The collectives were a pure pay-to-play scheme, and they basically spent down all of the money in April through June last year before the July 1 start date for the House Settlement. So last year, there was a ton of money sloshing around for players, and the market is predicted to reset downward rather than continue going up. NIL still exists but is subject to the NCAA clearinghouse to make sure it’s actually approximating real value rather than a pay-to-play scheme, and there are only like a dozen college athletes in the country who can claim 6-7 figures in legitimate NIL value (5 will be quarterbacks for various SEC/B1G teams and one will be a frosh phenom for Duke). Now that could all fall apart with the next lawsuit. But the point is that Ohio State probably wouldn’t spend an alleged $1.3 million on the successor for Christoph Tilly this off-season.
- On that last note, you have to wonder if some of the NIL mania calms down because it’s also harder to justify a lot of the investments made for this season. Kentucky’s $22 million roster shouldn’t have made it out of the first round and got beat down in the second. Texas Tech spent a boatload of money on its team, also to lose badly in the second round. AJ Dybantsa supposedly got $6 million from BYU without winning a single NCAA Tournament game. Michigan has a highly-successful mercenary army, but there seem to be way more counter-examples suggesting that millions of dollars on a single basketball player is a bad investment. Never try to call the top in stupidity, but are schools and donor pools really going to continue putting multiple millions into a single college basketball player after the 2025-26 returns were so mixed/poor?
- This is maybe more of a WCC or SCU-specific narrative point, but to the extent that players actually want some preparation for pro ball and to maximize playing time and overall success, how many transfers “up” have really worked out? Tilly, of course, got a bag but didn’t majorly improve his statistical profile and exited the Tournament in the same round as SCU and with much less excitement. Texas Tech feels like a real cautionary tale: Tyeree Bryan and LeJuan Watts were both heroes at their respective WCC schools. Both saw their playing time and production dip. Bryan spent a lot of the season buried on the bench. Watts is basically despised by many of the Tech fans at this point who see him as a total bust against the reported investment. Then there are the earlier examples of Trey Wertz, Carlos Stewart, etc. Mahi, by contrast, stayed and had a primary role and clearly improved. Say nothing of Jalen, Podz, Bal, O’Neil, et al. The trend has been fairly consistent that it’s better to transfer into Santa Clara than transfer out and “up” if your goal is to prepare for a pro career and maximize role and development.
- The transfer portal is only open for 2 weeks this year, and schools are not allowed to contact currently rostered players before their names are in the portal (lol–no I don’t believe anyone will comply, to be clear). I doubt that does much to affect the actual portal madness, but it will at least be briefer misery this year for us fans.
All of this is to say that SCU may be in a decent spot to survive the off-season. I’m sure there will be a bump or two. But if the market is actually down a bit, Santa Clara has the resources and the narrative to make a compelling pitch to its current and potential players.
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I agree that we will lose at least 1, maybe 2 to the transfer portal, and I’d expect one impactful transfer coming in too, but in our case it would be really three as Normand and Tadjo didn’t see the floor this season.
Does anyone want to give odds or percentage of Allen Graves returning? Is even 20% returning overly optimistic?