How NC State's Transfer Class Measures Up Against the Rest of the ACC
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RALEIGH — Transfer portal season is winding down around the country, with most of the top players available landing at new homes over the last four weeks. For NC State and first-year coach Justin Gainey, it was a complete roster overhaul because of a mass exodus of producers from the 2025-26 group, with several key seniors exhausting their eligibility and others searching for new homes.
The Wolfpack retained two players, Paul McNeil and Zymicah Wilkins, but still needed to add a significant portion of the roster through the portal after Gainey took over the program. As of Monday, NC State has brought in six transfers from other programs, most of them coming from the mid-major level. It's a solid class on paper, but the real question is whether it stands up to other ACC programs thus far. How does the 2026 transfer class rank for the Pack?
A good start for Gainey?
As things stand, NC State's work in the transfer portal is being viewed favorably by most of the rankings services in comparison to the rest of the ACC. It's not a perfect science, however, as some schools returned far more talent than the Wolfpack did and only needed a few players to supplement the current roster, Duke being a prime example.
According to On3, Gainey's first group of transfers ranks third in the conference, trailing Florida State (five additions) and Louisville (six additions). 247Sports views the Pack slightly less favorably than the other outlet, placing it as the fifth-best portal class at this point, behind Louisville, Miami, UNC and Duke. The two services use different techniques to discern the value of a portal class, but it's clear that Gainey has NC State in the top half of the league in this fight.
NC State has added exclusively four and three-star transfer talent according to both services, working in a different market than the top teams in the league are. It's unclear what Gainey's exact budget is, as estimates are all over the map, but from a production standpoint, the new Wolfpack staff is bringing in quality mid-major players with proven output on the statsheet at their previous stops. The program's new leader also convinced McNeil to stick around, a win in itself.
Making it click will be the challenge. Former coach Will Wade struggled with that part of the job before bolting to LSU after one season in Raleigh, as his transfer class made up the majority of the roster and held lofty expectations. The pieces of the puzzle never fit in the way he'd hoped they would, but he didn't do enough to adjust to that in the early part of the season.
The refreshing part of Gainey's approach is that there's a clear direction and intention with each new player. He filled his backcourt with proven scorers like Christian Hammond and Preston Edmead. He bolstered his positional size with bigger guards like Darius Adams and RJ Keene. The Pack even got its defensive anchor by adding the nation's leading shot blocker, Kyle Evans.
If the developmental side of the NC State program is upgraded and the offseason goes well, NC State has a shot to be right where it wants to be as an underdog capable of sneaking up on the best teams in the league.
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Tucker Sennett graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in Sports Journalism from the esteemed Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. A former basketball player, he has gained valuable experience working at Cronkite News and brings a deep passion for sports and reporting to his role as the NC State Wolfpack Beat Writer On SI.
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