Indiana Listed Among College Basketball's Transfer Portal Winners
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Roughly 300 players are still looking for new schools in the transfer portal, but some level of clarity has been restored in college basketball with most of the top talent committed.
It was an especially busy offseason for Indiana coach Mike Woodson, who replaced six outgoing players with five transfers and a freshman.
The Hoosiers lost starting center Kel'el Ware to the NBA, while Xavier Johnson and Anthony Walker exhausted their eligibility. Outgoing transfers include CJ Gunn (DePaul), Kaleb Banks (Tulane) and Payton Sparks), and Woodson replaced them with Myles Rice (Washington State), Oumar Ballo (Arizona), Kanaan Carlyle (Stanford), Luke Goode (Illinois), Langdon Hatton (Bellarmine) and five-star freshman Bryson Tucker.
In an article by The Athletic's CJ Moore, schools listed as "portal winners" include Kansas, Indiana, Michigan, Baylor, Louisville, Alabama, UConn, Iowa State, Houston, Purdue, Marquette, West Virginia, Saint Louis, St. John's and McNeese State. Two Big Ten teams, Wisconsin and Minnesota, were listed among programs the portal was unkind to.
"The way to boot a coach out of town these days is for donors to withhold NIL funds," Moore wrote. "The good news for Mike Woodson is the IU money folks obviously aren’t there yet, because Woodson retained four starters while landing what had to be one of the pricier portal hauls."
"Woodson obviously prefers a big frontline, and the Hoosiers stay huge with Ballo (7-0), Malik Reneau(6-9) and Mackenzie Mgbako (6-8). That should be one of the most talented frontcourt combos in the country. The key to it working is the added shooting and shot creation coming through. Woodson got a shooter in Goode and then shot creators in Rice and Carlyle, two young guards out of the Pac-12 with some upside. Both struggled shooting the 3, which is concerning, but there’s reason to hope that will improve with age."
"We’ll see how it all works, but Woodson has one of the deeper rosters in the country, and he’s at least addressed some deficiencies."
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JACK ANKONY
Jack Ankony is a Sports Illustrated/FanNation writer for HoosiersNow.com. He graduated from Indiana University's Media School with a degree in journalism. Follow on Twitter @ankony_jack.