DENVER (news agencies) — They are playing for more than trips to the Final Four and a chance to cut down the nets at March Madness. It is also a chance to see and be seen by other teams.
The transfer portal opened Monday, giving basketball players a 30-day window to switch schools. It means some of the 1,000 or so players on the 68 teams that qualified for the NCAA Tournament – including some of the 250 who are still alive in the Sweet 16 — are playing to win, but also for more money, more playing time, a chance to be seen and potentially set things up for next year.
In some ways, the NCAA Tournament now doubles as the most important three-week scouting combine on the college hoops calendar.
“Anytime you can show up on a big stage and realize there are certain guys who are wired different, to take a hold of big moments, that’s almost a personality trait,” said Doug Stewart, the chief of staff for coach Kevin Young at BYU. “It’s the data that doesn’t come up in analytics and film.”
That’s not to say there’s not data.
For Stewart and others with jobs like his, scouting and trying to find perfect fits is a year-round project. Marc VandeWettering, the chief of staff for basketball operations at Wisconsin, said “you know who people are before they become available.”
“If you wait to do your research until a name pops up in the portal, you’re going to be behind and not be able to move quickly enough,” VandeWettering said.
Wisconsin’s 91-89 loss to BYU on Saturday also brought more urgency to part of the job VandeWettering and the staff were hoping to put off a few more weeks – roster retention, i.e., trying to keep players on their own team who might be looking elsewhere.
“We’ve been proactive with the guys who are eligible for retention,” he said. “We’ve had some good conversations with those guys, but it takes some time to get things finalized.”
In 2021, under legal pressure, the NCAA relaxed (and eventually eliminated) the rule that forced players to sit out a year before transferring. Also that year, name, image and likeness deals were permitted, allowing players to make money playing college sports.
It rewrote the book on program building, while also framing the futures of the players in a much different light. Now, there’s another option besides staying put or going pro — finding another team to play for.
“March Madness is a great opportunity to see great players, and for athletic departments to go back and check their budgets and see if they can afford these players,” said Len Elmore, who played at Maryland in the early ’70s, then the NBA for 10 years, then spent decades calling games on TV. “When you think about institutions that hire general managers for athletic departments, the line of demarcation between pros and colleges has been blurred, if not obliterated.”
Shortly after the best single moment of the tournament so far — Derik Queen’s buzzer-beating bank shot that sent Maryland to the Sweet 16 — Queen was asked what his coach, Kevin Willard, means to him and his teammates.
“First, he did pay us the money, so we’ve got to listen to him,” Queen said
He drew laughs, but it spoke to the realities of what college sports is today. And yet, underneath the millions being made thanks to NIL are a host of concerns that generate fewer headlines.
United Arab Emirates Dirham Exchange Rate
