What Offseason?

Last week, we detailed how the transfer trend isn’t exactly new — the total number of transfers has remained fairly steady within the past decade. But anecdotally, at least, it feels there is growth is at the highest level of college basketball. Last season, Villanova (the reigning national champs at the time) took Albany’s Joe Cremo, while Kentucky took Stanford’s Reid Travis. Arguably two of Texas Tech’s top three players — Tariq Owens (St. John’s) and Matt Mooney (South Dakota) — were also grad transfers, and North Carolina relied heavily on graduate transfer Cam Johnson in the past two seasons (Johnson was a special two-year case).

So today, let’s continue to dive in, this time looking at the correlation between transfers and program strength.

In other words, are college basketball’s perennial contenders affected by transfers at the same rate as low-major programs? And which successful programs make transfers a core part of building out their rosters?

As a reminder, this data is from Verbal Commits going back to 2012. Accurately tracking transfers is actually a pretty daunting task — Should you count a player who never actually plays a game for that school? Should you count walk-ons? — so no source will be perfect, but Verbal Commits has set the standard; the entire college basketball world is plugged into the site, and if you are a player looking to transfer, your name almost needs to come across VC to get the proper exposure. While the NCAA introduced its own “Transfer Portal” this year, Verbal Commits has effectively acted as the unofficial portal since 2012.
 

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Which programs have LOST the most transfers since 2012?

The x-axis on the graph above is simply a proxy for how strong the program is (using KenPom AdjEM). The y-axis is the number of transfers out.

You can see that Mississippi Valley State has seen 37 transfers exit their program since 2012. And if you have read this newsletter or listened to Solving Basketball, you won’t be too surprised to know that most of those 37 transferred out of Division I basketball entirely. Just six of the 37 transferred to five different D1 schools — NC Central, Delaware, Morehead State, SE Louisiana, and Arkansas Pine Bluff.

There are certainly exceptions, but more successful programs tend to see less players transfer out. North Carolina leads the way in player retention; Seventh Woods’ recent decision to leave is actually the only instance of a UNC player transferring in the VC database (the most recent before Woods was Larry Drew II in 2011). You’ll see other recent Final Four programs like Michigan State, Kentucky, Wisconsin, Duke, Villanova and Gonzaga all firmly in the bottom right quadrant of this graph, as well.

It’s important to remember that the decision to transfer is a two-way street. For every player that “up-transfers” to a better program thanks to his performance, there’s another player getting run-off the roster to free up a scholarship (also thanks to his performance). And the player-coach relationship is also a two-way street.

Logically, programs with multiple coaching changes stand out on this list.

Memphis, for example, with Josh Pastner -> Tubby Smith -> Penny Hardaway is one of two schools with over 30 transfers despite a program adjusted efficiency margin over 10, while Utah is the other school to qualify despite retaining Larry Krystkowiak throughout that time.

And if we drill down to a season-by-season level, we see that the program with the most departures is nearly always one with a coaching change:

If we surveyed 100 devoted college basketball fans and asked them which school do they consider to be “Transfer U”, I’d expect to get a lot of Iowa State, Nevada, and Gonzaga responses. So while unsurprising, it’s comforting to see each of those teams stand out on this graph.

And while Eric Musselman and Fred Hoiberg both had a lot of success taking a lot of transfers at ISU and Nevada, Texas Southern actually tops the list with 24 transfers.

Beginning with Mike Davis at the helm and now continuing with Johnny Jones, the Tigers have consistently brought in more talent that any other team in the SWAC by landing high-major transfers — and in turn, have led the SWAC with three NCAA Tournament appearances in that span. Players from programs including Auburn, LSU, Nebraska, Ole Miss, Purdue, TCU, and West Virginia have all made their way to Houston and set the program on a winning path in conference.

We hear about it all the time, but the university itself often determines the viability of taking transfers.

There are 20 schools who did not show up on the VC list at all since 2012, and a clear theme around that group emerges: academic rigor and high admissions standards. Among the 20 programs who did not take in a single transfer, the list is dominated by Ivy League schools (Brown, Cornell, Harvard, Princeton, Yale), service academies (Air Force, Army, Navy, VMI), and even a couple academically rigorous high-majors (UCLA and Stanford).

If we look at net gain/loss of transfers since 2012 according to Verbal Commits, we see that the programs losing the most players are disproportionately affected than those bringing in the most new faces:

NET TRANSFER GAIN SINCE 2012
1. Georgia State (+6)
2. IUPUI (+5)
T3. Colgate, North Carolina, San Diego State, Texas Southern (+4)

NET TRANSFER LOSS SINCE 2012
1. Mississippi Valley State (-34)
T2. Robert Morris, Alabama State (-28)
4. Morehead State (-27) 
5. Utah, Maine (-26)

I suspect that teams taking in a lot of transfers would be a positive predictor of conference-adjusted success. But there could be some selection bias going on here, where essentially schools that have the capacity (admission standards, administration buy-in, recruiting sell) to take transfers in the first place are almost inherently built to succeed. Expect some more on this as our transfer series continues.