The transfer portal has been a hot topic in collegiate sports in the past few years. There are so many nuances to consider, such as redshirting, your one-time transfer exception, your waiver being granted by the NCAA, and how the portal affects you as a graduate transfer. It's been such a polarizing issue that there has even been a lawsuit in West Virginia trying to fight the bureaucracy of the NCAA. I don't want to focus on politics, I want to focus on how it has affected the landscape of college basketball. Here are two different top 25 transfer teams who have the receiving end of the portal to thank for their success.
#3 North Carolina Tar Heels:
Hubert Davis struggled mightily in his second season with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Last year, Davis led a team that went 20-13 overall, and 11-9 in conference play. It is the conference record that alarmed fans nationwide, as the Heels went 15-5 in conference play the year before. They lost all of these games with the squad that was expected to end the year as #1 in the country, and they were led by standout Caleb Love. This past year; they lost Love to Arizona, Pete Nance to the pros, and Leaky Black to the NBA.
This left Chapel Hill in a mysterious shroud on how the season would go. How would they replace all that talent? In comes Cormac Ryan from Notre Dame and Harrison Ingram from Stanford. A tough 2-point overtime loss to a struggling Villanova in Atlantis proved to be alarming early for this year's squad, but they rallied for two straight wins over ranked Arkansas and Tennessee where Ingram scored a combined 33 and Ryan put 15 on the Volunteers. UNC then lost to two straight ranked opponents in Kentucky and UConn (now the #1 team in the nation) where Ryan put up a combined 26 and Ingram 30 in those losses. The third loss was a momentum shifter for Hubert Davis' squad, as the Heels are now on a ten-game winning streak which includes wins over ranked Clemson and Oklahoma. More importantly, the Heels are a perfect 9-0 in conference play and 2.5 games ahead of second-place Duke. In this ten-game winning streak, Ingram has scored double digits in seven of those games and is also contributing to the defensive side of the ball, as he has double-digit rebounds in 6 of those games (notably 19 against NC State on January 10th and 17 against FSU 2 days ago). The fortunes have been similar for Ryan, as he also scored double digits in seven of the past ten games and he has hit 14 threes over this span. These two have proven their ability to rally the rest of their squad for a run in late March.
#9 Arizona:
Just like Hubert Davis, third-year Head Coach Tommy Lloyd had many shoes to fill over at the University of Arizona. While the Heels just needed to replace the void of Caleb Love, the Wildcats needed to replace the talent of Azuolas Tubelis and Kerr Kriisa, who last season scored just south of 20 points per game and 10 points per game respectively. They also needed to fill the old point guard role of Courtney Ramey. Who better to fill that void than ex-Tar Heel Caleb Love himself? Love is having himself a season for the ages. He's averaging 19.3 points per game and shooting just under 35% from the 3-point arc. The Cats have lost a few conference games here and there as the Pac-12 has become competitive again, but in every game Love has seemingly put in a herculean effort. In their first loss to a top-ranked Purdue, he put up 29 points. He played all 40 mins in a 2OT loss to last year's Cinderella story FAU. In fact, Love has scored more than 20 points in every single game he has lost. The best news is that Caleb is getting more and more comfortable with his role as we get closer to March. In this past weekend's road win against Oregon, he scored 36 points with 5 threes and played all but one minute in a very hostile environment (Matthew Knight Arena). Playing like this, I see no issue in Love leading the Wildcats to a Pac-12 title and potentially being crowned Mr. March come the beginning of April.
Image Credit: University of Arizona Athletics/University of North Carolina Athletics
