“He’s like a Ferrari sitting in the garage that I can’t drive,” UConn coach Kevin Ollie said.
Ollie isn’t the only coach watching their rosters fill up with players who have already made at least one stop at another college.
A recent surge in transfers has turned the once-sleepy late signing period, which this year started April 16 and runs through May 21, into a monthlong frenzy that has changed college basketball. According to STATS, the number of players who have appeared in a game for more than one Division I school has nearly tripled over the past decade, from 122 in 2004-05 to 325—or one for nearly every school in the country—in 2013-14.
“It used to be that there was a stigma of some type attached to schools that recruited outside of the high school ranks,” San Diego State coach Steve Fisher said. “You were not considered able to compete with the blue bloods. Well, now the blue bloods recruit transfers. They take one-and-dones. They take guys who have graduated and have one year left.”
The result is that the college hoops transfer market has exploded. For recent grads looking for one last shot at the Final Four, disgruntled players looking for more minutes and junior college stars hoping to land a high-major scholarship, the late signing period offers hope—for players and their new schools.
Research by the NCAA shows that the number of transfers from two-year/junior college schools into Division I has remained steady over the last 10 years or so, hovering between roughly 15 percent and 17 percent of all Division I players.
