Wake Forest started the trend. Now, other ACC teams are all-in on the transfer portal
It may have been unexpected, but everyone could see what transfers Alondes Williams and Jake LaRavia (among others) did for Wake Forest a year ago, injecting not only skill but wisdom into an otherwise disjointed roster.
So when N.C. State and Pittsburgh followed the same path this offseason, jumping deep into the transfer portal to add multiple veteran players — every ACC team added at least one transfer, some more than others — Demon Deacons coach Steve Forbes wasn’t exactly surprised to see them follow his lead.
“Good for those guys if they can improve the roster,” Forbes said. “Because improving the roster improves the league.”
There have always been schools that bounced in and out of the transfer portal like Doctor Who in the Tardis. Fred Hoiberg was a magician at Iowa State (he’s had less luck at Nebraska, but he’s also not an outlier anymore). Others relied heavily on junior-college transfers, as Forbes did at East Tennessee State. The traditional ACC powerhouses have always looked down on those methods. They built their rosters with blue-chip freshmen. Their academic standards didn’t allow any old transfer to wander onto campus.
But college basketball is a copycat sport, just like the NBA or NFL, and not only was Forbes able to conjure an NCAA tournament-worthy team and ACC player of the year out of thin air, he did it at one of the oldest-school ACC schools.
It’s probably a stretch to say Wake Forest’s success made what N.C. State and Pittsburgh did this offseason possible, but it’s also not totally unrelated.
You can, in 2022, rebuild your roster overnight through what’s essentially free agency. Some are dipping into the well, like Miami’s NIL-cash fueled addition of Nijel Pack, or trying to catch lightning in a bottle again — is North Carolina’s Pete Nance the next Brady Manek? — but N.C. State and Pittsburgh in particular went the hardest, each bringing in at least three veteran rotation players, plug-and-play starters expected to contribute from Day 1 with lots of miles on the odometer.
“That’s something we didn’t have last year,” N.C. State coach Kevin Keatts said.
Like Jeff Capel at Pitt, Keatts has tried to build with freshmen at N.C. State, the traditional way, with a few impact transfers — like Devon Daniels — mixed in. But for whatever reason, whether it was the threat of NCAA sanctions hanging overhead or brain drain on his staff, it didn’t work. Now he’s not only upgraded his staff on the fly, but surrounded the incandescent but still raw talent of Terquavion Smith with veterans from across the country.
Keatts wanted more depth, so he could go back to pressing and running and going nine or 10 deep the way he did his first few years at N.C. State. But more than turning the clock back, he wanted to spin it forward, to get not just better, but older.
From Mississippi, Jarkel Joiner. From La Salle, Jack Clark. From Winthrop, D.J. Burns. From Utah, Dusan Mahorcic.
Smith’s still going to be asked to carry the scoring load, but he’ll have an entirely new surrounding cast. And instead of having another inexperienced player next to him in the departed Dereon Seabron, it’ll be the SEC-hardened Joiner, who as Keatts says, “will let Terquavion be Terquavion.”
“In this league, you know that when you start freshmen and sophomores in the backcourt, it’s hard to win,” Keatts said. “We’ve got an older guy who’s been through it. Played in the SEC. Tough. Really good defender. He’s a voice in the locker room. He’s our hardest-working guy.”
The wholesale renovations to the Wolfpack’s roster stand out, but everyone’s relying on transfers to some degree. North Carolina struck gold with Manek and struck out with Dawson Garcia last year. The Tar Heels will try again this season — in that same spot, the modern so-called stretch-4 that second-year UNC coach Hubert Davis has embraced — with Northwestern transfer Nance, who Davis swears should be playing in the NBA instead of Chapel Hill.
“On tape you can only do so much. I knew he was exactly what we needed,” Davis said. “And then you combine spending time with him and the relationships, and how he interacts with the other players, just the way he knows how to play the game. I’m shocked he’s not in the NBA. When you talk about the prototypical big guy now, a big that can shoot, pass, dribble, defend 1 through 5 and can move, I can’t believe he’s with us.”
And Duke added well-traveled swingman Jacob Grandison and a Northwestern transfer of its own in depth forward Ryan Young to its usual roster of one guy who’s back (Jeremy Roach) and a bunch of incoming freshmen, most of whom are knocking on the NBA’s door (Dereck Lively II, Dariq Whitehead and a cast of thousands).
The head coach may have changed, but that part of the strategy has not. Which means Grandison — Holy Cross, Illinois — is not only 6 years older than his newest teammates, but has spent more time in college than they might combined.
“I’ve got a lot to offer,” Grandison said. “I’ve been around the block. Experience is key. I’m a veteran basketball player in college. I’ve been in some very tough games. Been on huge stages. Played in front of 20,000 people. Played at the mid-major level. Played against one of our other grad transfers.”
Forbes, meanwhile, is back in the same place he was last November: Wondering just how good a rebuilt roster can be. This one’s younger, which he hopes means it will stay together, so he’s not back in this same place next November.
“I think it’s hard for the fans,” Forbes said. “Fans have the mentality, they want to see these guys for four years. I do too! But it ain’t the world we live in, bub.”
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This story was originally published November 5, 2022 at 7:30 AM with the headline "Wake Forest started the trend. Now, other ACC teams are all-in on the transfer portal."
