By CHRIS DORTCH
NIL and unlimited transfers have amounted to unlimited headaches and long days for coaches. But two things are certain. These changes have been good for the game because, No. 1, they keep talented players in school longer because they can make more money than they could as a second-round NBA Draft pick, and No. 2, I wouldn’t be writing this column in early May, because most fans wouldn’t be concerned about college basketball, having shifted their attention to the NBA playoffs, Chicago combine and draft.
Let’s focus on Juke Harris as proof that the above paragraph is accurate. The former Wake Forest guard, who signed with Tennessee yesterday, was a fringe-level first round NBA Draft pick, and far more likely would have fallen into the second round. So on Monday, he made an intelligent decision to stay in college basketball. No one but Harris and Tennessee coach Rick Barnes will know what he was paid to come to Knoxville, but suffice it to say it was a ton, more than many folks will earn in their lifetimes.
But just as Harris benefitted, so did his sport. His recruitment was chronicled with a fervor that bordered on the absurd. Reporters covering the three teams he was considering — Michigan, North Carolina, and Tennessee — provided seemingly hour-by-hour updates. Everyone with a keyboard or a DIY YouTube channel repeated the same stories. Many were unreliable narrators who simply parroted rumors they hoped were true because the team they rooted for — uh, sorry, I meant covered — stood to benefit.
Ultimately, it wasn’t money that led Harris to Tennessee. It was a relationship, just like it’s been the last four years as Barnes and his experienced staff have mastered the art of the portal scrum, using a proprietary valuation system. As Barnes told me about a month ago, this system can be reduced to a three-word description:
Production over retention.
What that means in Tennessee’s case was that, instead of keeping a handful of players who didn’t have clear production or potential to produce, or had been injury prone in their careers, the Vol coaches let them go elsewhere and went out and found some players with a history of production and durability.
By most accounts, Louisville has racked up the most talent in the portal so far, but Tennessee is a close second. The truth is, the rankings of players in the portal or portal classes seem so arbitrary as to not be credible. One major recruiting website has developed a system that adds newcomers and subtracts players who left, leading to some bizarre rankings that defy conventional wisdom. Given the choice of some rando proprietary system or conventional wisdom, I’m taking the latter every time.
In my last column I broke down Tennessee’s springtime haul. Even before Harris signed it was an embarrassment of riches. Now Barnes has the most firepower he’s had at Tennessee — by far — and maybe the most he’s ever had in 39 seasons as a head coach. As Barnes, who has led the Vols to the NCAA Tournament’s Elite Eight for the last three years, acknowledged after Michigan ended the Vols’ season one game short of the Final Four, a team that wants to win it all has to have multiple dudes who can score. Barnes’ last three teams probably weren’t good enough to advance to the Elite Eight, but he pushed them there through the sheer force of his will. Even Barnes can’t make baskets go in, though, and each of those three teams were a couple of scorers shy of a load.
Suffice it to say scoring won’t be a problem for the Vols next season.
I have no proprietary system to rate SEC recruiting classes, but I know talent when I see it, and I know when teams filled some glaring needs. Besides Tennessee, here are three other SEC teams who have gotten better via the portal.
AUBURN
The Tigers were fortunate when starting guards Tahaad Pettiford and Kevin Overton decided to stay, even as six of their teammates hit the bricks. As Auburn coach Steven Pearl told me earlier this week, Pettiford and Overton were a strong lure for recruits. Pearl had three goals as the portal opened. He wanted to find more size. He wanted more experience. And he wanted to find some players who aren’t stars so much as blenders, or connectors.
So far, the Tigers have checked every box. Pearl and his staff didn’t wait until the NIT was over to start recruiting. Auburn reached all the way over to France to land 7-foot freshman Narcisse Ngoy. No one is saying Ngoy will be the next Rudy Gobert or Victor Wembanyama, but his name has been mentioned in the same sentence as those two NBA stars.
Since the portal opened a month ago, the Tigers have signed 7-1, 240 junior Bukky Oboye (Santa Clara), 6-10, 240-pound senior Owen Freeman (Creighton), 6-8, 225-pound senior Thomas Dowd (Troy), and 6-8 senior Adam Olsen (South Alabama). The first two will help Ngoy patrol the paint, while the latter two will be able to play a three/four spot and stretch the floor.
As for a blue-collar glue guy, Auburn signed George Kimble III, who spent last season at Vanderbilt but never played because of a knee injury he suffered the year before at Eastern Kentucky, where in 25 games he averaged 18 points, 3.7 rebounds and 3.2 assists. If his knee is sound, Kimble, who can play either guard spot, will be a valuable piece.
VANDERBILT
The Commodores also sought size, and they found it in 6-10, 244-pound Berke Buyuktuncel, formerly of UCLA and Nebraska, and Bangot Dak, who played last season for Colorado. Between the two of them, Buyuktuncel and Dak blocked 84 shots last season. Both can step out and make a 3, which make them a nice fit in coach Mark Byington’s system.
The Commodores were also quite willing to plunder their SEC brethren, taking 6-8, 230-pound Sebastian Williams-Adams off Auburn’s hands and T.O. Barrett, formerly of Missouri. SWA put together a solid freshman season, averaging 27.4 minutes, 7.0 points, 3.5 rebounds, 1.5 assists, 1.2 steals and 0.8 blocked shots. Add his 30 rejections to the 84 of Buyuktuncel and Dak, and Byington can feel good about his rim protection next season.
Barrett is a competitor who can facilitate (3.0 apg), defend, and make free throws (79.1%). Who wouldn’t want a dude like that?
TEXAS A&M
One of the surest bets in the portal was 6-3 guard PJ Haggerty, who seems to be trying to notch his name in the Guiness Book of World Records. Texas A&M will be his fifth school in as many years, after starting at TCU and transferring to Tulsa, Memphis and Kansas State. His address has changed, but one thing has remained a constant. The cat can score. In 2023-24 at Tulsa, he averaged 21.2 points. The next season playing for Memphis, he led the American Athletic Conference at 21.2 points a game. Last year, he went for 23.4 points a game on a bad Kansas State team, averaging nearly 18 shots.
Haggerty is a good 3-point shooter, but he gets to the free-throw line a ton. In 2023-24, he led the AAC with 237 makes and 309 attempts. That’s ridiculous. At Memphis a year later, he again paced the AAC with 224 makes and 274 attempts. Haggerty is no black hole, though. The last three seasons, he’s handed out 369 assists. He’ll fit right into coach Bucky McMillan’s “Bucky Ball” system.
The Aggies added five other transfers, also helping themselves to players who toiled in the SEC—6-9 Cade Phillips of Tennessee and 6-0 Jalen Reece of LSU. Phillips missed most of last season with a shoulder injury, one reason he’s not still with the Vols, who didn’t want to pay Phillips’ NIL request based on the uncertain nature of his health. That’s Bucky’s problem now.
Reece performed admirably for the doomed Tigers after starting point guard Dedan Thomas was lost for the season with a foot injury. Reece had to take over and doled out 116 assists (3.6 apg). He’ll help Haggerty keep up the pace in McMillan’s breakneck system.