(03-23-2022, 10:40 AM)crackpot Wrote: (03-23-2022, 08:26 AM)mbdude Wrote: Colorado has 4 players in transfer portal: seniors Finau, Tuitele; Balcksten 6-3 soph, Gerber 6 ft walk-on (on academic scholarship)
Is Payne beating them or something? Yikes.
If you start with the premise that all P5 scholarship hoops players were STUDS in high school, used to playing a LOT – a pretty safe assumption – and couple that with the reality that hoops is VERY IMPORTANT to these young women’s happiness (another safe assumption), then the portal activity is no surprise. And then when you layer on that coaches are human and have favorites and less-favorites, then the high portal activity becomes an expectation, really.
Very few schools have Stanford’s “staying power” forces to combat the overpowering desire for these players to go where they can PLAY the game they love. [The Creighton hero who just beat Iowa, her school last season, is the fairy tale story on that front]. Would a star be willing to play fewer minutes to be on a championship contender? Yeah, maybe. Would a star be willing to play fewer minutes to get a degree from an elite institution? Yeah, maybe. There are few schools that have these countervailing forces working to their advantage in women’s college hoops world: Stanford, Duke, ND, and some of the better public universities like Texas, UNC (am sure I’m missing others).
The bottom line is this: Stanford is in an exceptionally favorable position when compared to the ROW in college hoops to combat the siren song of the transfer portal. Tara benefits from coaching at Stanford, and so there is good fortune for her (and us) there. But Tara is the one who built Stanford into a perennial championship contender, which is the other “staying force” factor. And that is full credit to her, and good for us!
P.S. The men’s side had that alignment, briefly, when Shaw took over the Contending Program Harbaugh built. Men’s hoops had it in Monty heyday. It’s a shame that neither men’s side major program can battle the portal like women’s hoops team can. And I think we’ve seen that play out in the real world.
P.P.S. The explosion in portal activity is also explained by coaches openly acknowledging that it's a form of free agency that they regularly review and mine. I was taken aback a bit last year by the Louisville women's coach in the post-game presser after the L to Stanford in Elite 8. When asked about next season due to loss of seniors, he matter-of-factly said words to effect of "Well, we'll know what we have next year after we go through the transfer portal process, which is essentially free agency. We expect to add some good players that way." Just to be so forward about it kind of confirmed that my clinging to the "old school beliefs" of 4-year student athletes was indeed just that: anachronistic.
