Player development in the era of the portal

[18IsTheMan]

It'll be interesting to see how this plays out long-term with rosters now being fluid from year-to-year. One prominent P5 head coach said coaches now have to treat each year like a rebuilding year. In the old days, you could take a guy and develop him from a raw freshman into a productive junior or senior. Now, with the advent of the portal, many guys just aren't willing to sit around and be developed. Particularly with mama, daddy and uncle constantly in their ear about how they should be playing more or could be playing more somewhere else. Or you might take that player, put your time and energy into developing him, and then he leaves to play his senior year somewhere else, so you're left with nothing to show for your efforts. Or you just say screw development altogether and just feast on the portal.

A coach may look at a guy and have a vision of where that player can be in 2-3 seasons and how he fits with the program's future, but they no longer have the luxury to look that far ahead. You simply can't count on anything year to year roster-wise.

It would be nice if the NCAA had struck a nice balance. They didn't have to go from "nearly impossible to transfer" to "total free-for-all."

One thing's for sure: character has never been more important when evaluating recruits.

 

[Maxcy]

It'll be interesting to see how this plays out long-term with rosters now being fluid from year-to-year. One prominent P5 head coach said coaches now have to treat each year like a rebuilding year. In the old days, you could take a guy and develop him from a raw freshman into a productive junior or senior. Now, with the advent of the portal, many guys just aren't willing to sit around and be developed. Particularly with mama, daddy and uncle constantly in their ear about how they should be playing more or could be playing more somewhere else. Or you might take that player, put your time and energy into developing him, and then he leaves to play his senior year somewhere else, so you're left with nothing to show for your efforts. Or you just say screw development altogether and just feast on the portal.

A coach may look at a guy and have a vision of where that player can be in 2-3 seasons and how he fits with the program's future, but they no longer have the luxury to look that far ahead. You simply can't count on anything year to year roster-wise.

It would be nice if the NCAA had struck a nice balance. They didn't have to go from "nearly impossible to transfer" to "total free-for-all."

One thing's for sure: character has never been more important when evaluating recruits.

Bold comments = bingo.

It's typically not that hard to figure out who is likely to be a future headache. Those kids are to be avoided. Some coaches won't care, however, if the raw talent is there.

 

[Blues man]

The portal could have worked by itself imo, but not with NIL money in play. Now if you spend the time developing a talent, on top of making him a better ball player you best have the money to keep him. Too many variables now to tempt a guy to leave. Cant say I blame a coach for focusing on the plug and play players. It's not the coaches fault this is where we are at. Adapt or die. What I'm interested in seeing is how much the talent drops and how it affects the quality of the game because development takes a hit. We may have already seen it's quality peak.