"The Portal" is a term more commonly used to describe the massive list of college football players looking to transfer to another program, a hot topic this time of the year before spring practice.
In college basketball, though, transfer portals have made an even bigger impact on the sport's landscape because all it takes is one or two hits to make a team's season outlook brighter.
Looking back on the rosters from all six major conferences entering the 2018-19 season, there were 54 of 75 teams adding transfers. By conference, here's the number of teams that brought in transfers: ACC (13), Big Ten (10), Big East and SEC (nine), Big 12 (eight) and Pac 12 (five). Notice that the Pac 12 had the fewest number of programs that brought in transfers this season. Is it a coincidence that the conference is also the worst it has been in years? Maybe, maybe not.
What transfers can do is bring instant experience to teams getting too young after losing players to graduation or attrition.
Typically, a player who has already competed in college is more ready to contribute than your average incoming freshmen. Top high school prospects excluded, of course.
Duke didn't necessarily need transfers after landing its best recruiting class ever, but blue-blood programs such as Kansas, Kentucky, North Carolina and Villanova and No. 1-ranked Gonzaga, benefited from Division I transfers this season.
Forward Dedric Lawson left Memphis for Kansas. Former DeLaSalle star forward Reid Travis arrived at Kentucky via Stanford. Gonzaga forward Brandon Clarke started at San Jose State. They all joined programs hoping to pursue a national championship in Minneapolis next month.
There are other cases such as guard Marial Shayok, who left a national title contender to pursue more playing time when he transferred from Virginia to Iowa State. The move paid off: Shayok is a candidate with Lawson for Big 12 player of the year — and Shayok could still make a deep run in the NCAA tournament with the Cyclones.
