Last offseason, I wrote extensively about the transfer portal and its impacts on college basketball.
With many players who had second-round talent forgoing early entry into the NBA draft for NIL compensation that dwarfs two-way contracts, college basketball is older, deeper and more transient than ever before.
Good players don’t toil away on high-major benches, and mid-major stars can stretch boosters’ wallets at their original institution or jump to big-time programs.
Player can find their best fit, second-chance opportunities and, overall, generate more parity across the college basketball landscape.
The transfer portal for college basketball will reopen in exactly three weeks. Due to structural changes to the NCAA, strategic navigation of the portal will become even more crucial for building a tournament-worthy team in the 2025-26 campaign.
Starting next season, colleges will likely be constrained to a salary cap of $20.5 million for NIL revenue-sharing compensation to athletes across all sports. This will hover between a $3.5 million and $4 million budget for college basketball at the most prominent institutions looking to pay up to the cap.
NIL revenue-sharing figures will be lower for smaller schools, and similar to current NIL budget imbalances, this will force non-high-major programs to do more with less.
This system is not inherently rigged one way or another.
UC Irvine can’t compete in recruiting against UCLA. That statement is as true today as it has been every year since 1977 when UCI became a DI school.
Given their respective NIL situations, both programs are enjoying relative success this season. Ultimately, coaches who understand the new landscape can maximize their institutions’ potential in the same way that has always been available.
Last year, 1,962 Division I players entered the transfer portal.
Scouting, valuing and constructing a roster with this much player movement and such a big talent pool is no easy job.
In recent years, however, acquisitions from the portal have repeatedly shown to be the most substantial factor in determining a team’s success.
Programs that use the portal well can make tremendous leaps year over year. Coaches no longer have the grace period to “recruit their guys” into a system. Elite talent is available every year, and creating a top-notch program can be done in one or two highly deliberate offseason recruiting performances.
Rick Pitino, who I’ve continually lauded as the perfect embodiment of a coach for the NIL era of college sports, has found his groove this season, taking the St. John’s Red Storm to heights they haven’t seen in the 21st century, and depending on how postseason play shakes out, potentially since the Truman administration.
While I’ve written volumes on NIL and the Transfer Portal, Pitino summed it up with brevity that I cannot match: College basketball is much like EuroBasket hoops.
Players are temporary, and to win, you must make the most out of the guys in the year or two you have them. The relationships are transactional, and players and coaches must make the most of their time with each other.
Development is not a top priority for a program like Pitino’s.
The coach has already clarified that his recruiting efforts for next season will not include any high school athletes. Experience in a college basketball system is imperative for winning now, and learning how to play at the collegiate level should be done elsewhere and on someone else’s dime.
Make no mistake, Pitino and any other elite-level coach will get the most out of a player, but helping an 18-year-old acclimate to big-time hoops is not the focus of the program and not the way Pitino sees fit to win.
St. John’s stands tall above the rest of the robust Big East Conference.
Many will see Pitino and his vision and try to emulate it.
While they wouldn’t be wrong to consider this a good template for success, it is far from a foolproof method. Pitino’s success is predicated on much more than simply throwing money at transfer portal prospects.
While the media will focus on the rise of the Red Storm, they will also fail to acknowledge the pitfalls of teams who employed similar offseason strategies like Kansas State and Washington, who have found themselves on the wrong side of the tournament bubble after lavish spending in the offseason to poach transfer portal talent.
From a roster creation standpoint, KSU mirrors St. John’s – none of the players logging more than 25% of total on-court minutes started their collegiate careers in Manhattan. However, the Wildcats continue to regress in the NIL era despite continual spending in the transfer portal.
Most notably, the Wildcats publicly acquired Illinois transfer Coleman Hawkins for a whopping one-year, $2 million NIL deal. Hawkins has not performed to that valuation this season. While BPM is an imperfect stat, he has gone from 8.8 last season to 5.8 in this one, placing him at 39th in this statistic in the Big 12.
Hawkins is still a player anyone would love to have on their roster, however, is he worthy of the price tag?
Assuredly not.
Many players in the mid-major ranks have much more impactful seasons and generate heavier NBA interest with NIL compensation packages that are 1/10th of the price of Hawkins.
This isn’t a takedown piece on Hawkins; he is a talented player.
This is a takedown on how many programs have spent their NIL resources.
The University of Washington similarly paid the reigning Mountain West Player of the Year, Great Osobor, a $2 million NIL payout.
With a similar regression, he ranks 64th in the Big Ten conference for BPM.
Several mid-major schools with lower total NIL budgets than Coleman Hawkins or Great Osobor’s single season salary have outperformed KSU and Washington this year.
For many programs, NIL has been seen through a fundraising lens: the more money a school has, the more talent it can acquire.
Successful programs are less concerned with how much money they have, but ultimately how they spend it.
Neither KSU’s Jerome Tang nor Washington’s Danny Sprinkle has professional coaching experience. For those who have existed in the collegiate system their entire careers, valuation is a concept that has never been important until now.
Scouting was binary; coaches either liked a player and offered them a scholarship, or they didn’t.
In pro sports, placing a dollar figure on how much value that player brings a team on the court is an essential science to master.
On the other hand, Pitino has lived in environments where appropriate player payment was necessary. He has had separate stints coaching the New York Knicks (before and after the NBA implemented a salary cap) and most recently served as the head coach of Panathinaikos in the Greek Basket League.
Pitino is a unicorn with scouting chops, valuation chops and being a coaching legend.
But even behind Pitino is a general manager with pro front-office experience.
St. John’s Matt Abdelmassih previously worked in the Timberwolves organization, focusing on scouting and cap management. Abdelmassih has been paramount in every successful acquisition that has led the Red Storm to college basketball prominence.
Kansas State does not currently have a general manager on its coaching staff. Washington enlisted Gibson Arnold to fill the position, bringing him along from his previous coaching stint at Utah State. Arnold has experience as an NBA scout within the Celtics organization.
Not everyone can hire a Pitino, but every school can have a GM to bring these qualities to a coaching staff.
UC San Diego was a relative unknown before this season, but now their 26-4 record has them occupying the top spot in the Big West and evaluated as the 35th best team in the nation per Ken Pom, one place ahead of two-time reigning champs UConn.
What did UCSD do?
Knowing the changing dynamics of college basketball, they hired a general manager to focus on roster management, scouting and NIL compensation.
The other team dominating the Big West, UC Irvine, has a member of their coaching staff, Ali Ton, who has experience as a player and coach in the European system Pitino has drawn parallels to.
Forward-thinking schools building out pro-style front offices are already ahead of the curve. While schools like Kansas State and Washington have been playing moneybag, others making noise this season, like UCSD and UCI, have been playing Moneyball.
Next season, when programs are constrained by a salary cap, the efficiency of NIL compensation will only become more important. Schools that have already invested in staff members with professional scouting, valuation and cap management experience will separate themselves from the pack.
The programs that fail to adapt — clinging to old-school recruiting philosophies without proper valuation expertise — will fall behind in the new era of college basketball.
Everyone is paying players, but not everyone is paying the right players the right amount.
And that, more than money itself, will determine who wins in 2025 and beyond.
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