The college basketball transfer portal timeline does not do any favors to the teams that make it the furthest in the NCAA Tournament. When the Michigan Wolverines won the National Championship, minutes stood between the final buzzer and the official opening of the portal.
When Dusty May took the Michigan job two years ago, he filled his starting lineup with four portal players, getting the Wolverines to the Sweet 16 after winning just eight games the previous year. Last offseason, he obtained one of the top portal classes in the country and won it all 12 months later.
In both instances, May had a key factor to build his classes that he didn’t have this offseason — time.
May and his staff were balancing preparing for a championship while keeping one eye to the future. When the portal opened, May had to make scholarship offers to guys he rarely spoke to, and he brought none on campus for an official visit. Nonetheless, May secured three signees less than three weeks after winning it all, and he is still talking to a few more guys to round out his roster.
“Every big guy that went in the portal became our list,” May told the media recently. “Like, literally 100 percent of the big guys that were high major players became our list because we didn’t know what the other guys were going to do. You just have to put yourself in as many positions as you can to be successful. It happens so fast. There’s a title wave coming at you and you’re trying to find the best fit, and there were a couple times when we thought there were guys that were going to come and just for whatever reason didn’t want to risk waiting on an NBA process. Each case is just drastically different.”
It is a balancing act with recruiting transfers. Unlike high school prospects being recruited under a long-term plan, transfers are looking to maximize their opportunities within a few years. Players leave programs as well, and players can enter the NBA Draft process while maintaining eligibility, making it more complicated to construct next season’s roster.
With all this in mind, coaches need to gain advantages in the recruiting process, gathering information other programs don’t have and building relationships with players in a short period of time.
“You better be able to trust your relationships and your contacts,” May said. “Moustapha (Thiam), we talked to all the coaches at Cincinnati. My son played at UCF. We know the coaches there. We felt like we had great intel on him, and then he visited and you spend a couple days with him and realize, man, this is another great guy. J.P. (Estrella) is one that after he committed, we went out and visited with him, met his family, and same thing — you talk to their youth coaches, their agent, their high school coaches, the coaches of the program they’re leaving. You talk to anyone, just like the NBA does. … As soon as you feel like you’re close on a guy, you dive into the intel and try to see if it’s the right fit.”
Outside of conversations with the players May recruited, along with those closest to them, he had the luxury of seeing two of the three portal commits in-person this season. The Wolverines faced Cincinnati in an exhibition before the regular season, and the Bearcats beat the Wolverines, 100-98, behind 15 points from Thiam. Fast forward to the NCAA Tournament, May saw Estrella with the Volunteers, who scored seven points in 10 minutes of action.
Just like how May attributed his first fascination with Mara a year ago when Michigan played UCLA, he had a similar take on Thiam and Estrella, making the background research a bit easier.
“It helps, especially when you’ve scouted them and competed against them,” May said. “Estrella, obviously, we played against him. Thiam, we played against him. (LSU transfer) Jalen Reed had been familiar with coach Akeem Miskdeem, who recruited him at Georgia. We had talked about him, but didn’t really know his situation, and then we did a Zoom and there was more familiarity with Michigan than we thought and he wanted to come for all the right reasons, so we did a deep dive.”
Recruiting in the portal is similar to a job interview. It’s nowhere close to an NFL Draft process with hundreds of people doing background research, and nowhere close to high school recruiting where programs have months to evaluate a player. Portal recruiting is about fit, compensation and how a player comes across on a Zoom call. As May put it, there’s a “calculated risk” and you can only do so much in a short period of time to get to learn about each player.
College basketball programs are allotted 15 scholarships. Right now, May has 14 roster spots filled, leaving one remaining. That spot could go to another portal player, or it could be given to a returner who is in the NBA Draft process. With time back on his side, May is taking all the information into consideration when making the final call.
