Let the shopping begin: Basketball transfer portal window opens today

The NCAA basketball transfer portal opens in earnest today, and the 60-day window ends May 11.

As with football, the window for non-grad transfer students opens the day after championship selections are made. In football, that’s the day after the College Football Playoff field is selected. In basketball, for men and women, that’s the day after the NCAA tournament field is announced.

The window for basketball is 60 days. The initial window for football is 45 days. But there’s another window that runs April 15-30, after most schools finish spring practice.

This is the first academic year that the windows for non-grad students have been in place. Last year, without the window, 1,292 Division I men’s scholarship basketball players entered the portal in March and April, with 805 of those coming in March.

Basketball coaches whose teams are in postseason tournaments now will toe the same fine line that their football counterparts whose teams qualified for bowls did: You have to prepare for the postseason but you also need to keep an eye on the portal. And football coaches have the added burden of also readying for the early signing period, which comes amid both portal shopping and bowl prep.

In September, Illinois coach Brad Underwood presumably voiced the opinion of a lot of coaches in both sports, telling Fox Sports, “The one thing I would say is that I don’t love the particular start time of the window opening. I guess I wish that it would start a little later than the day right after Selection Sunday.”

As for the importance of the portal? While it may not necessarily be big-name guys – quick, name the best transfer this season in basketball; it’s easy in football because the guy won the Heisman – transfers are vital to building a roster in this era. Fifteen of the top 16 seeds in the tournament (all but No. 2 seed UCLA) have a transfer on their roster, and 12 of the 16 get key contributions from transfers.

In late October, Arkansas coach Eric Musselman – whose team is a No. 8 seed – compared the portal to NBA free agency. “With college transfers, there is a body of work and less projection on how a player’s impact can be,” he told the Associated Press, citing the experience transfers bring from “a game-playing standpoint and a culture standpoint.”

Iona coach Rick Pitino – whose team is a No. 13 seed – also compared the portal to free agency, telling reporters in January, “You can’t build for the future anymore. … It’s new times, I understand it, and there will be no more freshmen recruiting except for one or two a year.”

Musselman and Pitino are veteran coaches who have been at their schools for four and three years, respectively, and used the portal last year to fill some roster holes. Then there’s Matt McMahon, who just finished a tough first season at LSU. Two weeks into his time as Tigers coach, he had zero scholarship players. Zero. None. Within two months, after dipping heavily into the portal, he had 13.

Thus, while the likes of Georgetown, Ole Miss, St. John’s and Texas Tech are looking for a new coach, rebuilding in this era isn’t as daunting as it used to be because of the portal. Yes, as the LSU roster decimation showed, the transfer portal can taketh away. But as the LSU roster rebuild showed, the portal also can giveth and a roster can quickly be replenished – though maybe not always with enough guys who can make a difference right away. Still, rebuilding a roster is easier than it used to be.

And expect NIL to continue to play a role, as it does in football. While No. 2 seed Marquette gets key contributions from transfers Tyler Kolek and Olivier-Maxence Prosper, both arrived after the 2021 season. The Eagles didn’t sign any Division I transfers last year and that’s because of NIL, Marquette coach Shaka Smart said.

“You ain’t getting a lot of these guys unless they’re getting some sort of bag,” Smart told CBSSports.com last month. “Number one, we weren’t in position to do that. Number two, we’re not comfortable doing that.”

Smart did say he was not opposed to transfers per se, just that he would stay away from “some guys [who] try to come in here for a straight transaction.”

There will be good players in the transfer portal this month. Among the players who entered last March were Texas guard Sir’Jabari Price (from New Mexico State, which was an NCAA tourney team), Illinois forward Terrence Shannon (from Texas Tech, an NCAA tourney team), Arizona guard Courtney Ramey (from Texas, an NCAA tourney team), West Virginia guard Erik Stevenson (from South Carolina via Wichita State and Washington), UConn guard Tristen Newton (from East Carolina), Kentucky wing Antonio Reeves (from Illinois State) and San Diego State guard Darrion Trammell (from Seattle).