The transfer portal is already making college basketball more exciting.

Granted most coaches don’t like the transfer portal – Roy Williams already called it the most significant piece of legislation in NCAA history – but it will turn out to be better for the players and a lot more for the fans to talk about.

With players being able to transfer within their own conferences and play without having to sit out a year, it will be like the wild west of recruiting. Speculation on steroids.

And while there may be weird moves by some athletes, most won’t try to embarrass anyone on the way out the door. As Mack Brown theorized last week, Sam Howell could get mad at him and say he is transferring to Virginia Tech, Carolina’s opening opponent this fall.

That, of course, would never happen and anything close to that will be unlikely at most schools.

But with Hubert Davis’ Tar Heels already picking up 6-8 forward Justin McKoy from Virginia, the Cary native who was originally recruited by the Tar Heels has a chance to immediately help his home state university fix the problem at stretch forward.

McKoy only played about 14 minutes last season but shot respectable percentages from the floor, 3-point arc and foul line. It was a definite hole to fill for Davis, whose only possibility to go small and stretch the court Luke Maye style was Puff Johnson, who missed the last half of his freshman year with an injury.

During this off-season at coaches’ meetings, there will be plenty of talk and some finger-pointing about possible portal recruiting that went on while games were still being played, and the NCAA will have to figure out how to police that. That’s a bad part of the portal.

But with growing talk of more pay-for-play, revised transfer rules will give players a new option to improve their potential to make the NBA. It won’t result in more legal money while in college, but maybe they will feel like they have more control over their futures.

Coaches will adjust how to keep their players happy. Or if they learn early a kid would be better off elsewhere, they can start those discussions. Some players might even transfer at mid-semester or drop off the team to start in-season visits, like being back in high school.


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