What has the transfer portal really changed for Baylor basketball? Having those guys available immediately is a good thing, not a bad thing. All of the transfers we've added -- other than the DII/DIII guys -- would have played immediately if they had been available. And most had multiple years of eligibility, so it would have just accelerated those teams' progress.Crawfoso1973 said:In a perfect world pre-transfer portal, the "get old stay old" model won us a national title. But the transfer portal turned everything upside down because the quality transfers are going to want to play immediately instead of sit out a year. As per usual, Drew is ahead of the curve with getting one-and-dones the past 2 recruiting cycles and mixing them in with transfers and 4 year players. Gotta credit Drew for pivoting and embracing this new reality.DanaDane said:
Yeah, that is the key point that most of the media miss when they talk about our Natty team. Not only were they all older, but guys like Teague, Mitchell and Flag transferred during the old process whereby they had to sit out. So while a lot of people remembered Butler, Mitchell and Teague had played together on the COVID shortened year, they didn't remember the fact all of them had practiced together (along with Vital) even longer. As had JTT, who had practiced with the '20 COVID year team.
In football, where teams are losing starters every year, the portal represents a major sea change. I just don't see it in college basketball, at least where a program like Baylor that rarely loses transfers is concerned.
We're recruiting one-and-dones because we can and because we think it's our best path to a nationally competitive team. Time will tell how effective that strategy is, but outside of the AD team, it hasn't worked very well for Calipari at Kentucky, and didn't work very well when Coach K went that route at Duke.
