Syracuse, N.Y. – Derek Howard considers the transfer portal a seismic shift in college basketball, particularly since 2021, when the NCAA permitted players to transfer once without sitting out a season.
A counselor for at-risk high school kids by trade, Howard crunches college basketball numbers as a hobby and rolls out his data on SBUnfurled.com, a tribute to his St. Bonaventure alma mater.
When the Bonnies lost four of five returning starters to the portal after the 2021-22 season (the other turned professional), Howard set out to learn how players perform once they leave their original college destinations and arrive at new schools. So he sifted through more than 7,000 names in the portal to analyze the trend.
His data suggested Syracuse has fared particularly well in the transfer market since 2016. That’s the year Howard set as his analysis starting point because Verbal Commits began providing detailed transfer information that season. (I asked him to provide analysis for a few other Syracuse and ex-Syracuse players.)
Howard’s analysis of Syracuse is intriguing because this year, the Orange will bring four new transfers into the program in JJ Starling, Chance Westry, Naheem McLeod and Kyle Cuffe, Jr.
And while Syracuse will have a new head coach in Adrian Autry, the rest of Orange staff is unchanged aside from the addition of assistant coach Brenden Straughn.
What Howard learned is that players transferring to Syracuse have generally played more minutes and have performed better in Orange uniforms.
Syracuse ranks 13th in transfer player improvement and 10th in providing transfers more minutes. Those rankings are interesting because the Top 20 list in both categories feature few Power 6 programs.
“What I’ve found is overwhelmingly, players who transfer from non-P6 schools into P6 schools play less,” Howard said. “And on average, their minute percentage went down 15-20% Their rating went down, too.”
Based on that analysis, Elijah Hughes is Syracuse’s shining transfer star.
Hughes transferred from East Carolina to Syracuse, played more minutes at SU and performed better on the basketball court. He also had to sit out a mandated NCAA season. Howard said his statistics show that transfers generally played better at their new schools when they had to wait a year and could use that season to get acclimated to their new programs.
Jimmy Boeheim (Cornell) and John Gillon (Colorado State), too, performed better at Syracuse than at their previous non-P6 schools; Gillon played fewer minutes but Boeheim played more minutes with the Orange.
Of the Power 6-to-Syracuse transfers, only Alan Griffin performed worse at SU, though that number is negligible, and he played 31% more minutes at SU than at Illinois.
College coaches whose teams have fared well in the transfer market have told Howard they plan to pitch his stats when they hit the portal.
“It’s a great thing to tell recruits,” he said.
On the flip side, players who leave the Orange have generally fared worse at their next destinations. Syracuse players that transfer to non-P6 schools are the exceptions (Jalen Carey, Ron Patterson, BJ Johnson, Robert Braswell).
Taurean Thompson and Quincy Guerrier, two players who dismayed SU fans when they left, played more and played better at Syracuse. Kadary Richmond, another defector who elicited Orange agony, played more minutes at Seton Hall but did not significantly improve from a stats perspective.
Here’s a chart that explains all of it. The URate is a player evaluation formula Howard developed and uses to rate college basketball players. He updates it daily during the college basketball season, but right now it is populated by players still in the transfer portal. Howard said a URate of 5 or higher is considered good.
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