Charlotte 49ers basketball coach Ron Sanchez not sure why he has 4 players transferring

Charlotte 49ers basketball coach Ron Sanchez says he has been surprised as the number of players transferring out of his program grew to four this week.

“I wish I knew exactly what it was,” Sanchez told the Observer. “But it’s a trend. You know it’s happening everywhere.”

Sanchez, who in his second year at Charlotte took the 49ers to their first winning season since 2013-14, has four players from that team entering the NCAA’s transfer portal: sophomore guards Brandon Younger, Malik Martin and Cooper Robb and redshirt freshman guard Tyler Bertram.

“Obviously, some of the things we’ve been doing were good, things that hadn’t been there before as a program,” Sanchez said. “If that’s not enough, if guys can’t get excited about taking that next step with us, then I don’t know what to tell them.”

The number of Division I players transferring each year is high, but has remained relatively steady recently (689 in 2017, 704 in 2018 and 694 in 2019), according to the NCAA.

The creation of the transfer portal in 2018 — a method in which players wishing to transfer can make themselves available to other schools and still have the option to ask to return — has streamlined the process. Sanchez said Monday that there were 425 players currently in the portal.

The 49ers are not alone, although having four leaving is among the highest number of any program nationally. A quick look at a list compiled by Stadium’s Jeff Goodman reveals Wichita State, Idaho State and Presbyterian all having six players in the portal. Iowa State and Holy Cross have five. Texas-El Paso, a fellow Conference USA member, also has four.

Much of the element of surprise for Sanchez came from the manner in which the season ended. The 49ers found out their season had been canceled due to concerns of the coronavirus while they were preparing for the Conference USA tournament in Frisco, Texas, on March 12.

“Usually after the season ends, everybody comes back to campus and you have end-of-season meetings, dialogues, an opportunity to air things,” Sanchez said. “We didn’t have that. That’s been removed from college basketball this season.”

Instead, Sanchez had no input in the final decisions made by Robb, Martin and Bertram (Younger left the program in January).

“It just produced another layer of a lack of communication from a generation that doesn’t communicate well enough with coaches in the first place,” Sanchez said. “They go home where their support is, where they have people saying they understand. Then they make their decisions.”

Younger and Robb were signed by former 49ers coach Mark Price, who was fired early in the 2017-18 season.

It is not uncommon for players to transfer rather than play for a coach who didn’t recruit them. Relationships are built during the recruiting process and, if that coach leaves, there are no guarantees the player will be satisfied playing for someone else.

Robb hinted that might have been a factor in his decision, saying in a tweet announcing his decision: “I would like to thank Coach Sanchez and the rest of the staff for taking me in as family when they first got the job. They did not recruit me but made me feel as if I was one of theirs.”

Said Sanchez: “I’ll tell you this: Regardless of whether we recruited Coop or not, he had a great opportunity here. He was not ever treated as he wasn’t a recruited guy (by us). Young people today have a lot of noise in their ears.”

Younger and Bertram (who spent much of his career at Charlotte injured) weren’t key players for the 49ers. Younger had seen his playing time drop dramatically this season before he announced he was entering the portal in January.

But based on their two seasons at Charlotte, there was no reason to think Martin and Robb were anything but ideal fits for Sanchez’s defense-first system.

Martin made Conference USA’s all-defense team last season. Robb, a backup guard, was a gritty defender who was second on the team in steals (to Martin) and averaged 2.5 defensive rebounds a game. They appeared to be strong blocks in the foundation Sanchez is building for the program.

“The biggest question for me is, do you feel like you were treated well?” Sanchez said. “Was it a meaningful experience? If the answer is yes, then I can’t do anything more. I can’t promise you more shots or more playing time. The experience is the most important thing to me. I’m hoping that’s what those guys can say that they were treated well, that we pushed them out of their comfort zone and made them better players.”

Charlotte has lost players after coaching changes before, stretching back to 2010, the year after Bobby Lutz was fired. For example: Torin Dorn and Keyshawn Woods left after Lutz’s successor, Alan Major, was fired in 2015 (two other players from the 2014-15 team — Mike Thorne and Willie Clayton — had already decided to transfer).

Ryan Murphy, who had a promising freshman season under Price and interim coach Houston Fancher in 2017-18, left the program after Sanchez was hired. He played last season at Pittsburgh and is now looking for a new team to play for as a graduate transfer.

Sanchez is left to scramble to recruit at least three more players than he had anticipated as little as a week ago. Charlotte, which will now have two returning starters in guards Jordan Shepherd and C-USA freshman of the year Jahmir Young, also loses grad transfers Drew Edwards and Amidou Bamba, in addition to Martin.

The 49ers have signed three-star recruits Jackson Threadgill (a guard from Davidson Day) and Jared Garcia (a forward from Katy, Texas), and will add redshirt freshman Caleb Stone-Carrawell, a guard who missed last season with a back injury.

Sanchez will no doubt have to go the grad-transfer route again, and perhaps pick up some high school seniors who have slipped through the recruiting cracks. He’ll also do some window-shopping in the transfer portal himself, although any player he would sign from there would have to wait a year to become eligible (except for grad transfers).

“For me, it’s an exciting time,” Sanchez said. “We get to recruit a few guys with a little juice under our hats. We can say we went from eight wins to 16. We can say how nice it will be to play with the freshman of the year (Young). They can take us to another level. It’s part of the building process.”

But he’ll still not fully understand why all these players have left.

David Scott: @davidscott14