Men’s Basketball Transfers

Chapman and Ogbe did pretty well after leaving.

It’s a bunch of hand wringing over nothing. The only players who have transferred out under Larry K that actually could have helped us win games are Daniels (documented problem child), Brekott Chapman (also problem child), Mawien (never played a minute for the Utes), and Vante Hendrix, who left due to personal reasons (someone more in the know than I can expound). Maybe add Jojo Zamora and Ken Ogbe in there too, although Zamora was mostly underwhelming on the court during his time at Utah and Ogbe couldn’t stay healthy. Looking back I wish Larry could have found a way to keep Mawien and Hendrix in the program.
All the angst is people reading about the total number of tranfers and thinking the sky is falling, when in reality it’s much ado about nothing.
Now, if any of Tillman, Gach, Allen, or Battin leaves after the season I’m going to be seriously bothered. If those four stay through graduation and we get solid play out of some combination of Thioune, Gaskin, RJones, Van Kommen, Brenchley, Carlson, and Jantunen there is potential for a really nice run.

The problem isn’t whether or not they were contributors here or after they left. The problem is the lack of continuity and player development over the long haul.

Every team loses a handful of players every year to graduation. Then, you throw in the occasional early entry to the NBA draft (Wright, Poetl, Kuzma) and most teams are going to struggle the following year. But when you have a handful of transfers on top of that every single year, that is half of your roster turning over every year. This leaves your program in a constant state of rebuilding.

Larry’s transfers are very similar to Kyle’s OC carousel: Explain away the circumstances surrounding each transfer/hire all you want, but when they happen with the consistency we’ve seen with both programs, it is going to hinder year to year success.

I was pretty bummed about Chapman leaving. I have no insight to what he was like as a teammate or player for LK, but I saw him as a key piece to future success in his last two years. I was surprised to hear that he wanted out.

The Mawien case is an interesting one. Again, I don’t have insight to the program, but the “not ready” narrative seems like the public one in his case. If he was not ready, even after a RS year, it makes me wonder how that wasn’t seen in the recruiting process. How does that not get vetted out? Something does’t pass muster there.

As for all of the others, I really don’t lose sleep over them. Daniels would have been nice. I’d have loved another year of Kuzma, and thought he was crazy to leave early, but he got the last laugh on that one. Zamora, Seely, and many others were not likely the “difference that makes the difference.”

Don’t get me wrong, generally speaking stability is better than instability. And at a certain point you wonder why some of these problems or holes in one’s game aren’t seen earlier. But I’m actually confident in the direction of the program going forward.

This young team seems to be catching up to D1 speed. An NCAA berth is unlikely unless they win the conf tourney, but I think they’re building for a fun run the next few years.

…But let’s see who’s still here by next November.