USC PG Ethan Anderson has transferred to Wyoming.

Interesting article by midmajormadness about the extremely high number of players who have entered the portal. Most are from mid-major and not high major programs and most are lower level players who are looking for a better opportunity to play more minutes.

https://www.midmajormadness.com/2022/4/9/23018043/breaking-down-the-cbb-transfer-portal

We had an offer out to PG Jeremy Dent Smith from Junipero Serra HS in Gardena, CA, but he just committed to Cal State Dominguez Hills. We also have an offer to Jonathan Effertz a 6'1" PG out of Cleveland, Ohio.

https://www.verbalcommits.com/schools/uc-davis

I remember Les once saying that he learned from Kansas coach, Bill Self, to never let your team have a shortage of guards. I expect he's intently shopping for at least one more talented PG and perhaps a strong SG also.

The number of players in the MBB portal keeps growing...now up to 1217.

https://www.verbalcommits.com/transfers/2022?division=D1

:up:

The portal for the men and the women has become a game jumping in the ocean and then see who survives the feeding frenzy in shark filled waters with the biggest programs being the Great Whites...

There's also Patrick Lambley that VerbalCommits has listed as a walk-on. I wonder if he has or will be offered a scholarship?

That makes 5 Aggies in the portal now.

Anybody have any idea how many scholarships may be available now?

Wow...what an articulate and damning statement from Coach Katz about how unprofessional he feels that the AD and the CSUS President were in letting Brandon Laird go. There's so much wisdom in his statement about personal authenticity:

...the current Athletic Director and President love to use such phrases as :
1. "We always need to do the right thing"
2. "We will always be transparent"
3. "We are all about Hornet Family"

In my experience people who truly live those phrases do not feel a need to repeat such rhetoric over and over and over. Why should they? They know that their actions will speak for themselves, not their words. It is like the phrase I heard long ago, "your actions are so loud, I cannot hear what you are saying."

...The handling of Brandon Laird and his staff does not remotely begin to rise to the minimum level of human decency.

I wish i had that level of direction at such a young age. — agalum

For sure!

My only goal when I graduated from high school was to get a fast car and find a pretty girlfriend and that's what I did! I started working at the Chrysler Transmission Plant in Kokomo, Indiana, on my 18th birthday and bought a 1964 Corvette shortly after that. But then, Uncle Sam spoiled all the fun with the Vietnam War and off I went to the service for 4 years. The good part about being in the service was that it made me realize just how badly I wanted to get out and go to college! So after I got out I was able to use the GI Bill and I graduated from Davis in 1975.

Time to start taking him to Aggie games and sell him on being an Aggie when he goes to college!

Verbal Commits shows that there are currently 1091 players in the portal and very few of those have found a new school so far. You can track the entire list of players here:

https://www.verbalcommits.com/transfers/2022

It could be worse. Every player from last year's LSU team has entered the portal.

It’s certainly going to be a new-look LSU men’s basketball team next season. Following the firing of former head coach Will Wade and the hiring of new head coach Matt McMahon, 11 different Tigers players have now entered their names into the NCAA Transfer Portal – with forward Mwani Wilkinson being the latest, per On3’s Matt Zenitz.

Wilkinson, who averaged 4.0 points and 3.0 rebounds per game as a sophomore for LSU in 2021-22, has made the decision to join 10 of his former teammates in the portal – which means there are now no remaining players from last season’s team on McMahon’s current roster.

https://www.on3.com/college/lsu-tigers/news/lsu-tigers-basketball-loses-mwani-wilkinson-to-ncaa-transfer-portal-making-it-11-total-transfers/

Yep...we've had a lot of defections recently. Les is a good evaluator of talent though and I just hope he can bring in some players who can step right in and play this fall.

Wow...what the heck is going on...that's the 4th Aggie in the portal:
Caleb Fuller, Cameron Niles, Ezra Manjon and Caleb McGill. Who's next?

Locally, USF has 7. With their coach leaving, it will be interesting who stays/goes! — DrMike

It's not uncommon that coaches take a lot of their players with them when they change schools and, you know for a fact, that the players who leave most certainly had some kind of conversation with their coach before they decided go with him/her.

As with so many things, the rich get richer. The big money programs will find a way to "exploit" anything that will benefit them.

Even though coaches are not allowed to contact players prior to them entering the portal, I don't think we should be so naive as to think that there aren't many players who get messages "filtered down" to them through the grapevine from coaches, donors and potential NIL sponsors before they make the decision to enter the portal.

It's happening to varying degrees in all college sports from what I've read. Basketball and football have, of course, the highest numbers of players entering the portal each year football getting the most pressure because it's the biggest money sport for the power conference schools.

I'm in total agreement with Dick Vitale.

I just read a bunch of articles about the pros and cons of the the transfer portal for college athletes and, as you would expect, it's controversial. In many ways it allows athletes to have more choices about their athletic careers but the downside, of course, is that some coaches and programs push the limits and find ways to abuse the portal to their advantage. Adding to the controversy is how players can now get paid for the the use of their NIL (names, images and likeness) which opens the doors for further abuse by 3rd parties and deep pocketed donors getting into the ears of players with promises of more money and stardom from their NIL if they transfer to their school.

The bottom line to me as an Aggie fan is, as Vitale has noted, that the mid-major programs are getting hurt the most and Manjon entering the portal is a perfect example. He was found, recruited, and developed by Les and his staff and he has excelled as a result of his time playing for the Aggies. Now he can enter the portal without having to consult his coaches prior to entering it or having sit out a year after transferring and the Ags are left with a big hole in their roster.

Players were much less likely to jump into the portal so quickly when they had to sit out one year after transferring. Now there is little incentive to think more carefully about making the decision to transfer. Loyalty and commitment to their current coaches and teammates has largely become a thing of the past.

As SI reported in June, roughly 40% of men’s basketball players who join Division I programs out of high school have left their initial team by the end of their sophomore year.

https://www.si.com/college/2021/11/05/ncaa-basketball-season-transfers-bluebloods-recruiting

Just as John Calipari built his Kentucky teams around his controversial style of "one-and-done" rosters, we now have coaches who are building their teams around finding talented players in the portal from "lower level" programs rather than putting their time and effort into recruiting and developing players out of high school. They're happy to let the smaller programs find the diamonds-in-the-rough, invest in them and develop them and then snatch them up when they enter the portal.