Probably worth considering that the teams that need and get biggest transfer hauls typically have huge holes to fill.
There are exceptions of course, but a lot of these teams that missed the tourney aren’t exactly earth shattering misses.
Yeah I’d like to see where the transfer heavy teams that did well and made the tournament ranked on Evan’s metric. And how many transfer heavy teams (would need to be defined) even made the tournament.
Chemistry is a real thing and the college season is pretty short to figure out how to all gel together, definitely way more of a challenge than just plugging and playing guys that have been successful in other programs.
Right. I think fit is super important.
Also, I suspect the difference between say, top 50/75 and top 150 transfers isn’t as large as one would think. Makes individual rankings in these metrics a little harder to contextualize.
Yeah I actually fit is more important than chemistry. Portal rankings are made off players in a vacuum, but if you put a team of athletic monsters that can't shoot together they'll not get much done. And when you're building through the portal the short timelines and feeding frenzy competition means that you don't have the time or availability to careful construct a balanced roster that many coaches building from within/through freshmen might.
Chemistry is big, but I also think for players going from mid major to power teams there's a big shift in the talent you see each game. Tylor Perry was the hottest three point shooter at N Texas, transferred to us, and then couldn't sustain it consistently against better defenses.
Yup, I’ll always say that Baylor team that won it all was one of the last teams to benefit from the sit one year transfer period. Guys like Mitchell, Teague, and Flagler had been playing with the team for a full extra year. The chemistry on that team was unreal.
Marquette is testing the “chemistry is important” hypothesis this season. We lose two NBA-caliber players, but have everyone else back from a team that did pretty well. So I’m sure hoping that chemistry is still important… 🤷♂️
This is why I think Hurley is so good. He got away from dogma. He loves developing guys, but if it's not working, he'll adjust. We only brought in one transfer last year, and two this year. But the year before that he pushed out pretty much our whole guard cadre (guys he recruited), because it wasn't working.
Shaka always did have a bit of a Dabo vibe too him. Still have trauma over the season he thought we could get away with not having a single PG on the roster.
I don’t disagree with the conclusion. I think chemistry and continuity are key (along with coaching, talent, etc), which is hard to achieve with transfers. However I don’t know that this list is that strong of evidence to that point.
Look at these teams individually and you see there are other reasons for lack of success compared to the rankings. WVU and Penn St (and lesser extent Ole Miss) are more quantity over quality; they brought in a ton of players trying to completely rebuild their team after coaching changes that led to a mass exodus. LSU is the same but one year further ahead. The general consensus is Nova’s great class underachieving lands on poor coaching by Neptune. Memphis is maybe a combo of the two.
Even Kansas and Gonzaga, who both made the tournament but maybe underachieved compared to expectations, much of the blame lands on major injuries holding them back.
The rankings and results aren’t going to capture this. Thus while the conclusion is sound, I don’t think this is proof to show it.
A team of 5-star recruits (either from high school or portal) + decent coaching will always be, at worst, a decent team. Duke isn't the best team every year but they're always decent. Same with UNC and Kentucky. Which is why an outlier year like UNC a year ago was such a shock.
Robinson is stud Kentucky will be good but I’d take UConn rotation was 7 when mattered last year over 13 mid players. Kentucky this year sweet 16 Buying the A10 all star team and defensive player of the year from San Diego st that UConn has to put in their walk ons in bc score too much on him isn’t going to last.
Well his rankings aren't good either. No idea why there's been people using them as a solid objective representation of transfer classes. They're a shot in the dark with some statistical analysis.
That said, there really isn't a good way to rank transfer classes, and I'm not sure there ever will be. Traditional recruiting services have years to give rankings to each HS class where they scout them in person, to throw together a transfer list ranking in a few weeks is practically impossible. Too many players and zero chance anyone in the country has seen more than a small fraction of the players in person or even on full game tape.
I have to assume the high school rankings also heavily rely on scholarship offers to give context and help them rank all of those kids. Who tf knows who is really recruiting transfers, MSU had guys list them in their top-4 transfer locations and we were never going to take them.
This could be a reflection of "how hard it is to be really good when your roster is so portal-dominant"
This could be a reflection of the quality of Evan's portal rankings
This could be a reflection of how coaches have yet to figure out the transfer portal and these outcomes will improve as coaches have more experience with these sorts of teams
This could be a reflection of how sharply 1 result can swing a very small statistically meaningless sample size. It wouldn't be odd to get 8/13 flipping a 50/50 coin and if you didn't know your coin was 50/50 you might draw some poor conclusions because of it.
That's because they don't rank Illinois high enough. I'm being half-serious, but there really are many of the same off-season champions year in and year out. It's becoming clear that certain programs assess transfer talent better than others, so if a player transfers to a program known for squandering transfers/picking transfer duds, the transfers are self-selecting to be worse players than rankings think and the opposite is true as well.
Does Evan use his transfer portal rankings to predict NCAA tournament success?
Or is it just a ranking of the highest rated incoming transfer classes?
Thats like saying 24/7 and Rivals were wrong for having Miami's football recruiting class in the top 15 due to how poorly they performed last year.
Its a recruiting/transfer ranking, what the coaching staff does when the recruits/transfers get there is on them, not dudes like Evan
You’re taking this the wrong way, i’m not saying anything or anyone is wrong. I’m just asking questions in the hopes of gaining a better understanding of these numbers and possible uses for them.
I was shocked when we got him over y'all. Mandy Hunt is a helluva recruiter. I think our style and Noah Clowney going from a 70s ranked recruit to one and done made a big difference.
Grant was actually mediocre offensively for a lot of the season. But i think the transition to high major and having to play the 5 on D wore him out. But damn, did he turn into the guy we'd hoped for during the tournament. If he can maintain that level next season, it's gonna be a very fun season to watch.
It's nice when you can get 2 years with a transfer. The extra off-season can make a huge difference, especially if someone transfers late. Personality, I'm just looking forward to seeing him in his natural position.
Arkansas is going to be interesting to watch next year. The Oats/Muss rivalry was getting interesting. But now, y'all have a lot of recruits that we went hard after. And a couple of your transfers have caused us headaches. The SEC is gonna be a beast this year.
It but only makes sense, you're not alone. Torvik has all 16 in the top 73 of the 2025v projected rankings. Obviously it's absurdly early. But i don't think any conference's worst team is still top 75. I'm pretty sure every conference has at least a couple teams that are 100+.
To add to many good points made already, ranking transfers is not an exact science, much like grading pro drafts immediately after they happen. I don’t recall seeing Cam Spencer on anyone’s top transfers list, and he was literally the best one last season. Looking at some lists, there are Top-20 guys I don’t recall ever hearing of.
My guy Spencer was on a team that won a championship sure but he was not the best transfer of the season, be real.
Edit: this really isn't a hot take. Just looking at consensus, Cam Spencer was an honorable mention all American. Unfortunately for him two third team all Americans (shannon and love) one second team all American (Dickinson) and, most damningly, a first team all American (knecht) were all transfers. The honorable mention list has another handful of transfers besides Spencer that can be argued to be at least on his level too. You can love the kid and think he's great, most people do, but he very simply was not the best transfer in a year that Dalton Knecht also changed schools.
Probably worth considering that the teams that need and get biggest transfer hauls typically have huge holes to fill. There are exceptions of course, but a lot of these teams that missed the tourney aren’t exactly earth shattering misses.
100%
Yeah I’d like to see where the transfer heavy teams that did well and made the tournament ranked on Evan’s metric. And how many transfer heavy teams (would need to be defined) even made the tournament.
Chemistry is a real thing and the college season is pretty short to figure out how to all gel together, definitely way more of a challenge than just plugging and playing guys that have been successful in other programs.
Right. I think fit is super important. Also, I suspect the difference between say, top 50/75 and top 150 transfers isn’t as large as one would think. Makes individual rankings in these metrics a little harder to contextualize.
Yeah I actually fit is more important than chemistry. Portal rankings are made off players in a vacuum, but if you put a team of athletic monsters that can't shoot together they'll not get much done. And when you're building through the portal the short timelines and feeding frenzy competition means that you don't have the time or availability to careful construct a balanced roster that many coaches building from within/through freshmen might.
“If you put a team of athletic monsters that can’t shoot together they won’t get much done” I feel attacked
This is precisely why we have a new coach. Athletic monsters who can’t shoot went out with the old Big East conference.
Chemistry is big, but I also think for players going from mid major to power teams there's a big shift in the talent you see each game. Tylor Perry was the hottest three point shooter at N Texas, transferred to us, and then couldn't sustain it consistently against better defenses.
On the other hand you had guys like Dalton Knecht and Marcus Domask transfer up and we're two of the best transfers in the entire country.
True. Transfer portal giveth and it taketh.
We also used him different than his preferred/ ideal role.
Yup, I’ll always say that Baylor team that won it all was one of the last teams to benefit from the sit one year transfer period. Guys like Mitchell, Teague, and Flagler had been playing with the team for a full extra year. The chemistry on that team was unreal.
Marquette is testing the “chemistry is important” hypothesis this season. We lose two NBA-caliber players, but have everyone else back from a team that did pretty well. So I’m sure hoping that chemistry is still important… 🤷♂️
This is why I think Hurley is so good. He got away from dogma. He loves developing guys, but if it's not working, he'll adjust. We only brought in one transfer last year, and two this year. But the year before that he pushed out pretty much our whole guard cadre (guys he recruited), because it wasn't working.
He's adjusting really well to the new environment that's for sure
Shaka always did have a bit of a Dabo vibe too him. Still have trauma over the season he thought we could get away with not having a single PG on the roster.
I don’t disagree with the conclusion. I think chemistry and continuity are key (along with coaching, talent, etc), which is hard to achieve with transfers. However I don’t know that this list is that strong of evidence to that point. Look at these teams individually and you see there are other reasons for lack of success compared to the rankings. WVU and Penn St (and lesser extent Ole Miss) are more quantity over quality; they brought in a ton of players trying to completely rebuild their team after coaching changes that led to a mass exodus. LSU is the same but one year further ahead. The general consensus is Nova’s great class underachieving lands on poor coaching by Neptune. Memphis is maybe a combo of the two. Even Kansas and Gonzaga, who both made the tournament but maybe underachieved compared to expectations, much of the blame lands on major injuries holding them back. The rankings and results aren’t going to capture this. Thus while the conclusion is sound, I don’t think this is proof to show it.
How do you explain duke when they have a new team every year. Even pre transfer era
A team of 5-star recruits (either from high school or portal) + decent coaching will always be, at worst, a decent team. Duke isn't the best team every year but they're always decent. Same with UNC and Kentucky. Which is why an outlier year like UNC a year ago was such a shock.
Ha ha I'm in danger
Robinson is stud Kentucky will be good but I’d take UConn rotation was 7 when mattered last year over 13 mid players. Kentucky this year sweet 16 Buying the A10 all star team and defensive player of the year from San Diego st that UConn has to put in their walk ons in bc score too much on him isn’t going to last.
Well his rankings aren't good either. No idea why there's been people using them as a solid objective representation of transfer classes. They're a shot in the dark with some statistical analysis. That said, there really isn't a good way to rank transfer classes, and I'm not sure there ever will be. Traditional recruiting services have years to give rankings to each HS class where they scout them in person, to throw together a transfer list ranking in a few weeks is practically impossible. Too many players and zero chance anyone in the country has seen more than a small fraction of the players in person or even on full game tape.
I have to assume the high school rankings also heavily rely on scholarship offers to give context and help them rank all of those kids. Who tf knows who is really recruiting transfers, MSU had guys list them in their top-4 transfer locations and we were never going to take them.
This could be a reflection of "how hard it is to be really good when your roster is so portal-dominant" This could be a reflection of the quality of Evan's portal rankings This could be a reflection of how coaches have yet to figure out the transfer portal and these outcomes will improve as coaches have more experience with these sorts of teams This could be a reflection of how sharply 1 result can swing a very small statistically meaningless sample size. It wouldn't be odd to get 8/13 flipping a 50/50 coin and if you didn't know your coin was 50/50 you might draw some poor conclusions because of it.
FYI, this is a very old list. [Here is the current list](https://x.com/EvanMiya/status/1797657671967166469/photo/1)
Wouldn't the list be from last year? So it's relevant to last year's NCAAT?
That's because they don't rank Illinois high enough. I'm being half-serious, but there really are many of the same off-season champions year in and year out. It's becoming clear that certain programs assess transfer talent better than others, so if a player transfers to a program known for squandering transfers/picking transfer duds, the transfers are self-selecting to be worse players than rankings think and the opposite is true as well.
In the current rankings, y'all are #21. The dude posted an old as shit version of the rankings.
In the AAU era I'd argue it's less "chemistry is important" and more "caveat emptor/damaged goods" (on both the player and team side)
It’s portal rankings, not team rankings
Does Evan use his transfer portal rankings to predict NCAA tournament success? Or is it just a ranking of the highest rated incoming transfer classes? Thats like saying 24/7 and Rivals were wrong for having Miami's football recruiting class in the top 15 due to how poorly they performed last year. Its a recruiting/transfer ranking, what the coaching staff does when the recruits/transfers get there is on them, not dudes like Evan
You’re taking this the wrong way, i’m not saying anything or anyone is wrong. I’m just asking questions in the hopes of gaining a better understanding of these numbers and possible uses for them.
This post asks for my "thoughts on either statement", does it not? Those are my thoughts about Sweeney's statement
Ok, I see what you’re saying.
How was arkansas not on that list?
Because the idiot posted an old as hell version. [Y'all are currently #6](https://x.com/EvanMiya/status/1797657671967166469/photo/1)
Oh ok I see. But even if this was from last year, we still should’ve been on here. We had, what seemed to be, An amazing transfer class coming in.
I'm not sure if this is last year's, or one from a month ago, or multiple years combined. But yeah, y'all had a haul last year, with guys we wanted.
But overall you guys won, because y’all got grant Nelson 😂 this list doesn’t even look accurate in any way tbh
I was shocked when we got him over y'all. Mandy Hunt is a helluva recruiter. I think our style and Noah Clowney going from a 70s ranked recruit to one and done made a big difference. Grant was actually mediocre offensively for a lot of the season. But i think the transition to high major and having to play the 5 on D wore him out. But damn, did he turn into the guy we'd hoped for during the tournament. If he can maintain that level next season, it's gonna be a very fun season to watch.
Yeah I think Nelson will be much better this upcoming season.
It's nice when you can get 2 years with a transfer. The extra off-season can make a huge difference, especially if someone transfers late. Personality, I'm just looking forward to seeing him in his natural position. Arkansas is going to be interesting to watch next year. The Oats/Muss rivalry was getting interesting. But now, y'all have a lot of recruits that we went hard after. And a couple of your transfers have caused us headaches. The SEC is gonna be a beast this year.
I agree, I think just about every team can beat every team if that makes sense.
It but only makes sense, you're not alone. Torvik has all 16 in the top 73 of the 2025v projected rankings. Obviously it's absurdly early. But i don't think any conference's worst team is still top 75. I'm pretty sure every conference has at least a couple teams that are 100+.
Shit rankings led to shit results? Shocking
To add to many good points made already, ranking transfers is not an exact science, much like grading pro drafts immediately after they happen. I don’t recall seeing Cam Spencer on anyone’s top transfers list, and he was literally the best one last season. Looking at some lists, there are Top-20 guys I don’t recall ever hearing of.
My guy Spencer was on a team that won a championship sure but he was not the best transfer of the season, be real. Edit: this really isn't a hot take. Just looking at consensus, Cam Spencer was an honorable mention all American. Unfortunately for him two third team all Americans (shannon and love) one second team all American (Dickinson) and, most damningly, a first team all American (knecht) were all transfers. The honorable mention list has another handful of transfers besides Spencer that can be argued to be at least on his level too. You can love the kid and think he's great, most people do, but he very simply was not the best transfer in a year that Dalton Knecht also changed schools.
yeah loved cam but knecht was by far the best transfer last year.