At the time of this publication, 4,360 men's basketball student-athletes have transferred to or from a D-I basketball program over the past six seasons, according to Verbal Commits. College basketball’s transfer rate is the second-highest in the NCAA among male sports, where approximately 33% of players transfer at some point in their collegiate career. In short, transfers have become a vitally important aspect of college basketball. Adding players from the transfer market to fill out rosters can sometimes mean the difference between winning a national championship and suffering an early tournament defeat. Losing players via transfer also carries a similar importance.

In order to get a better understanding of how transfers affect college basketball teams, we decided to take a deep dive into the data. Using Verbal Commits’ transfer database (which dates back to 2012), we were able to compile a big picture overview of: players’ transfer destinations, how conferences are impacted as a whole, the average recruiting rankings of the players that transfer, and whether players are transferring to teams that are better or worse than their previous teams.

In terms of departures by conference, Conference USA has had 216 players leave the league since 2012. The Ohio Valley is a distant second with 187 players, then comes the laundry list of power conferences. Just 39 players have transferred from the Ivy League, and 34 players have transferred from non-D-I programs to D-I programs.