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NORTH AUGUSTA, SC — It’s never been easier for college basketball coaches to rebuild to win now thanks to immediate eligibility in the transfer portal.
Louisville and Kentucky basketball fans had front-row seats to how Pat Kelsey and Mark Pope respectively flipped entire rosters and had breakthrough debuts. But recruiting high school players has never lasted so long. Coaches aren’t just trying to establish a rapport out of high school; they’re trying to keep it going in case of transfer.
It’s been said since name, image and likeness became legal that relationships no longer matter, or at least don’t factor into the decision to commit as heavily as they once did.
Money matters, and the highest amounts packaged together from NIL and the revenue-sharing created by the House v. NCAA settlement can be life-changing for some recruits and their families. The financial package is generally going to sway where a recruit goes. Coaches know and accept that part.
The challenge has come not only identifying which of the few players will get offers from power conference schools but also in trying to anticipate two and three moves down the line.
Coaches are not only recruiting for now, they are setting up for the future. The relationship that didn’t matter when another school bid higher? Well, they matter as soon as that same player finished their season and entered the transfer portal.
Travis Perry initially chose to stay in-state and play for the Wildcats. He stayed true to that commitment even when John Calipari left to take the Arkansas job and Pope was hired.
But guess where Perry took an official visit the month before he committed to UK? Ole Miss and coach Chris Beard welcomed Perry to Oxford and was one of several other schools he considered.
So it was no surprise when Perry announced he was entering the transfer portal in April that he ended up committing to Ole Miss.Â
Coaches are careful to leave a good impression on guys they miss out on and those that they pursued — but didn’t make a strong offer.
Scanning through the crowd of coaches at Nike’s Elite Youth Basketball League Peach Jam seemed more like watching a networking event than watching coaches scout their next prospects.
Players have become hip to the process as well. That’s why virtually the entire top 100 in the Class of 2026 has yet to make a commitment.
They’re playing the long game, too.
It used to be only the elite recruits would wait for the spring to announce. Currently, only three of the top 25 in the 247Sports Top 150 have committed and a combined 11 of the top 100.Â
Some recruits are no longer trying to hold out for a Power Five offer. They’re deferring attending their dream school for now so that maybe they can get an offer a year or two later.
The plan is to get experience on a lower level and in the best-case scenario create some bargaining leverage when they hit the transfer portal.Â
It may seem unfair to smaller schools to be used effectively as a minor-league franchise. But those same lower-tier schools are now having a chance to recruit players who might not have gone there in years past, and it’s really no different than the way up-and-coming coaches have used Murray State or Western Kentucky to establish and advance their careers by going to a bigger school.
It worked out for Reece Potter, who didn’t get much of a sniff from UK when he graduated from Lexington Catholic in 2023. But the 7-foot-2 center found himself on the opposite end of a Pope recruiting pitch when he entered the transfer portal after two seasons at Miami (Ohio) to come back home in the spring.Â
Connections have always mattered in recruiting, it’s just now, it makes more sense to connect the dots for the second and third recruitment that comes with the transfer portal.
Reach sports columnist C.L. Brown at clbrown1@gannett.com, follow him on X at @CLBrownHoops and subscribe to his newsletter at profile.courier-journal.com/newsletters/cl-browns-latest to make sure you never miss one of his columns.
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