Big Ten coaches have mixed feelings on transfer portal, NIL

Apr. 15—CHAMPAIGN — Fred Hoiberg won 115 games and reached four NCAA tournaments in five seasons coaching the Iowa State men's basketball team.

That was long enough ago that Hoiberg's program was dubbed "Transfer U."

Because a decade ago? How Hoiberg built his rosters was outside the norm. He did land integral players like Melvin Ejim, Georges Niang and Monte Morris through traditional recruiting, but he leaned in to transfers.

The old transfer rules were still in effect. Underclassmen that didn't get a waiver like Chris Allen and Korie Lucious (Michigan State) or Abdel Nader (Northern Illinois) had to sit out a season before suiting up for Hoiberg's Cyclones. Graduates like DeAndre Kane (Marshall) and Bryce Dejean-Jones (UNLV) were eligible immediately.

Hoiberg's roster-building approach in the early 2010s wouldn't be out of place now. Near constant roster reconstruction — aided by the one-time transfer rule and now name, image and likeness — happens almost everywhere. Including at Nebraska, where Hoiberg is trying to breathe life into what's been a mostly middling program.

"You're still trying to build with talent and build with kids who fit your system the best," Hoiberg said. "Back in the old days, 10 years ago, it was competing against maybe three or four other schools.

"Now, those same type of players, you're competing against 100 schools. It's still all about selling your program and hopefully getting in with the guys and talking about connections and what you can do for the kids long-term. It's hard. One day you think you've got three guys signed, and the next day you don't think you're going to get any of them."

The Big Ten coaches that made the trip to Gordyville USA earlier this week for Illinois' Kickin' Cancer event in Gifford didn't have much positive to say about the transfer portal. Other than it was now a fact of life in college basketball that's only been complicated by NIL.

"Name, image and likeness should have happened a long time ago," Iowa coach Fran McCaffery said. "Our student-athletes should have been able to make money off their name, image and likeness, but they shouldn't be able to be free agents at any point in time and go shopping. That's not what this is supposed to be, but that's where we are and we're dealing with it."

Michigan State coach Tom Izzo didn't mince his words about the portal. The Spartans didn't add any transfers ahead of the 2022-23 season, with Izzo leaving three scholarships open instead.

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"I'm a bad guy to talk to about the portal because I think it's ridiculous," the Hall of Fame coach said. "Just my opinion."

Izzo and Purdue coach Matt Painter are on the board of directors for the National Association of Basketball Coaches. Both were involved in the discussions about the one-time transfer rule and the transfer portal. Neither supported those changes.

"I'd like to see it go away," Painter said. "Name, image and likeness was going to happen — we had to do a better job with its guardrails — but this didn't need to happen. A lot of it is the fear of litigation. The NCAA is spending just oodles of money — millions of dollars — trying to keep things out of the courtroom and then battle in the courtroom. ... The one-time transfer and the portal did not need to happen."

Izzo had two former transfers on his roster in the 2022-23 season. Joey Hauser transferred from Marquette before the rule change and sat out the 2019-20 season. Tyson Walker was immediately eligible after leaving Northeastern for Michigan State ahead of the 2021-22 season.

So Izzo will go to the portal if necessary, and he did need a guard the season the Spartans landed Walker. He was questioned last offseason about not adding a frontcourt player in the portal with several scholarships available, but he chose to stick with freshmen bigs Jaxon Kohler and Carson Cooper that he recruited.

"I think (Michigan State has) been a relationship program, and now everything's turned into a transaction program," Izzo said. "Maybe I'm going to have to adjust to it. Maybe I'll do like some and say sayonara, but nobody will get me to agree that it's best for the student-athletes. I think what seems like it on the front end is really poor on the back end when you see graduation rates and all the other problems that this created. ... I'm happy the way I've had it, but I don't begrudge anybody and understand it. I'm sure some day I'll have to go the route we have to go. I'll just fight like hell to make sure I don't any earlier than I have to."

That reluctant acceptance of the potential to have to rebuild a team every offseason is happening nationwide. Some programs like Michigan State and Purdue have mostly been able to avoid it. Others haven't.

"The way it works you may have some arguments with, but it is what it is," Hoiberg said. "It's the landscape of college athletics right now. If you don't figure it out, you're going to be on the outside looking in. It's just something that's become a really big part of what we do."

The common thread of building through high school recruiting or the portal is still finding the right players. Hoiberg emphasized that getting the right group that can build chemistry and compete was still of the utmost importance.

"The important thing is you can't lose sight of what I was hired to do, and that was to build a program," McCaffery said. "It wasn't to put a team together. AAU coaches put teams together every year. We're building a program. You bring guys in and develop them. You may have a guy or two go into the portal, but that happened before. Guys want to get more playing time, and they transfer. We've been fortunate we haven't had a massive turnovers — you lose five and have to go sign six out of the portal in a span of three weeks. That's really hard to do. I don't plan on doing that."