Back in the day, March Madness meant focusing on games, enjoying Cinderella stories, tracking brackets, and dreaming that your team might be the one showered with confetti while “One Shining Moment” plays on the first Monday in April.
Even in this era of NIL portals, all this still applies. But March Madness has turned into a scouting mission as much as a bid for a national championship.
With mid- and lower-tier conference tournaments taking place across the country this week, the first NCAA Tournament bid was awarded to the winner of Saturday night’s Ohio Valley Conference title game. Power conference fans have been salivating over a potential Portal acquisition.
Meanwhile, the power conference coaching staff is expected to finalize additions to the 2026-27 roster. Yes, I’m finishing it.
The portal doesn’t officially open until April 7, but it would be naive to believe that a high-priced consulting firm hasn’t sent the big-time manager a target list of suitable prospects. The director instructed the general manager to negotiate with the agents to determine how much $$$ was needed to secure their valued client.
Yes, that’s modern college basketball.
But enough about how things have changed so dramatically over the past few years. What kind of marksman should everyone dream of being?
How about Bellarmine junior forward Jack Karasinski, who averages 21.3 points, shoots 42.6% from 3-point range and gets to the line more than six times per game? The only player in the country who is more efficient than Karasinski (according to KenPom) is Duke’s Cameron Boozer. He would go on to win both National Player of the Year awards.
Or UNLV’s Dra Gibbs-Lawhorn, a former Illinois guard who is averaging 29.7 points over his last nine games while hitting a ridiculous 45 of his 85 from 3-point range? Even though he is 6 feet 1 inch, he is also a sports fanatic.
Perhaps it’s Buffalo sophomore guard Daniel Freitag, a four-star prospect who played little as a freshman at Wisconsin but bounced back in his career by averaging 19.8 points, 4.3 rebounds and 3.8 assists for the Bulls.
They are one of many great ideas out there, but everyone needs to go into this process with their eyes wide open – coaches, fans, and the transfer itself.
A recent informal study of all players who averaged at least 17 points per game last season found that there are far more errors than hits during big mid-major runs.
(Yes, choosing 17 points per game while ignoring other key statistics is arbitrary, but coaches are always looking for scorers, so this decision was made.)
Anyway, back to this extremely scientific study. There were 118 Division I players who averaged 17 points or more last season. Fifty-five players were underqualified or turned pro early.
Fifteen players stayed there, including Texas Tech’s JT Toppin, Ohio State’s Bruce Thornton, Purdue’s Trey Kaufman-Renn and Mississippi State’s Josh Hubbard.
There were 48 people who changed schools. If you ignore the high major players who jumped to other majors, like PJ Haggerty (Memphis to Kansas State), Jason Edwards (Vandy to Providence), and Keyshawn Hall (UCF to Auburn), it becomes clear that there are few roses for players who moved up to a major or two.
For every Lamar Wilkerson, who went from averaging 20.5 points at Sam Houston State to 21.3 points at Indiana State to earn Big Ten honors, there are four players relegated to bench roles: Bucknell’s Noah Williamson (Alabama), Southern Illinois’ Ali Dibba (Texas A&M), Northeastern’s Rashad King (LSU) and Kansas City’s Jamar Brown (UCLA). At a new school.
It would be a shame if they believed they would have similar times and opportunities in their new location.
But as Mad Men’s Don Draper once screamed at Peggy Olson’s henchman, “That’s what money is for!”
