You watch J.P. Prince slice through the lane, draw a foul, convert a layup and clap his hands, and it's suddenly easy to understand why Bruce Pearl welcomed the dynamic wing into the Tennessee program once he opted to transfer from Arizona. It seems like a no-brainer, to take a player with this kind of natural ability and developed skill. Which makes it wild that it wasn't that simple at all.
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| Tyler Smith is another positive addition, adding 12.9 points per game for the Vols. (US Presswire) |
An SEC showdown is set for Wednesday because No. 8 Tennessee is hosting No. 16 Mississippi. When the final buzzer sounds the Vols (12-1) will have solidified themselves as the class of the league or the Rebels (13-0) will have notched the type of road win that's impossible to ignore. But either way there's a decent chance the outcome will be determined by a transfer, considering both programs are relying heavily on at least one this season.
In fact, a lot of programs are relying on at least one this season.
Tennessee has Prince and Tyler Smith (from Iowa) while Ole Miss has David Huertas (from Florida). Then there's Washington State's Taylor Rochestie (Tulane), Memphis' Shawn Taggart (Iowa State), Butler's Mike Green (Towson), Marquette's Dan Fitzgerald (Tulane), Xavier's Drew Lavender (Oklahoma) and C.J. Anderson (Manhattan), just to name a few from probable NCAA Tournament teams. And so with all this good fortune you'd think that coaches from Albany to Arizona State would be lining up to take somebody else's defector if not for the fact that they mostly aren't.
Why? It's still not the preferred route of building a team, despite the possible payoff. Why? Even if the payoff comes it's delayed and capable of creating short-term problems, particularly in a Title IX world.
"Title IX -- which cut men's basketball scholarships from 15 to 13 -- has had a huge impact on transfers," said Ole Miss coach Andy Kennedy, himself a transfer having once played at North Carolina State before moving to UAB. "In order to take a transfer now and put him on scholarship you basically have to take away from your working rotation (because transfers -- with few exceptions -- must sit out a year per NCAA rules).
"So you start with 13 and then you're down to 12 (eligible players) and then you're just an injury or so from not being able to play five-on-five."
Still, Kennedy opted to take Huertas, who wanted to transfer after playing 9.2 minutes per game as a freshman on Florida's first national title team. But the former Bob Huggins assistant said he based his decision on special circumstances more than anything else.
"We knew we inherited a situation where we wanted to revamp our roster and we also knew it would be very important for us to bring in a kid who would be waiting in the wings, so to speak, at a position where we would have to fill a huge void because we were losing two seniors in Clarence Sanders and Bam Doyne," Kennedy explained. "So we thought it would be good to have Huertas so that (when we needed him to replace Sanders and Doyne) he'd already have spent a year in our program."
Huertas has reached double-figures in five consecutive games.
He got 17 points in last week's victory over Alabama A&M.
"He's starting to really get into his groove," Kennedy said. "I'm a big believer in that basketball is a game of timing and rhythm, and he's starting to get into a rhythm after in essence having not played in two years."
So the transfer thing is working for Kennedy.
And Pearl.
But it's worth pointing out neither is certain he would make the same decision if a similar opportunity presented itself this offseason. Simply put, the worth of transfers is evaluated on a case-by-case basis by figuring many things beyond just the talent level of the available prospect. If the possible reward doesn't clearly outweigh the risk, it seems most coaches are willing to pass.
"You don't take good transfers, only great transfers," Pearl said. "And you better know for sure what you're getting."
