Portal Poachers: Ivy League
Which young players from the Ivy could make their way to high-major conferences in the next year or so?
Recruiting isn’t just for high schoolers anymore.
The transfer portal and the handout of extra years of eligibility combine to make college basketball recruitment a different animal. No longer are teams just looking to get a young wave of talent — they want to win now with older guys. As such, the transfer route has been explored by many, now becoming a way of life in college basketball.
From a scouting perspective, high-major college programs will spend their time looking to the lower ranks to find their up-and-coming stars or role players. Others are highly touted recruits who don’t pan out at the major conferences slide down to the other ranks. Both types of players are of intrigue to front offices and draft heads looking to get a complete feel of the college landscape.
With that in mind, we’re beginning a series to look at some of the best young players in some of the mid-major or lower conferences in the NCAA. The focus isn’t on guys who are seniors, simply because it’s impossible to know if they will take their extra year or will no longer play college basketball. Our focus will be on the guys who could transfer up and be appealing due to the nature of having multiple years at their next stop.
The first look we give will be the Ivy League, one of the best (if not clearly the best) academic leagues in America. The Ivy has taken huge strides over the last decade in terms of quality of play. Institutions have prioritized being good at basketball, the coaches they hire have strong pedigrees, and the gap has thus narrowed between them and other mid-majors. The appeal of the degree and the name on the diploma carries a lot of weight for recruits, and the league has figured out how to utilize that to their advantage.
This year could be different, though. The Ivy League isn’t filled with a ton of experienced returners and from a team perspective could be ripe for a new group to rise.
What’s the reason the Ivy is so wide open? Almost every star player in the league has graduated or transferred up a level. The list of solid performers to move to higher leagues is pretty staggering just from this offseason:
Jaelin Llewellyn, Princeton (Michigan)
Jalen Gabbidon, Yale (Colorado)
Taurus Samuels, Dartmouth (Minnesota)
Kale Catchings, Harvard (Duke)
Jaylan Gainey, Brown (Florida State)
Ethan Wright, Princeton (Colorado)
Drew Friberg, Princeton (Belmont)
Dean Noll, Cornell (Stony Brook)
Jelani Williams, Penn (Howard)
Kobe Dixon, Cornell (Howard)
Sarju Patel, Cornell (Albany)
Bryce Washington, Penn (Hofstra)
Mason Forbes, Harvard (Saint Mary’s)
Other successful transfers out of the league in the last few years have been able to make an impact at their new stops.
Paul Atkinson, Yale (Notre Dame)
Jordan Bruner, Yale (Alabama)
Ryan Schweiger, Princeton (Loyola-Chicago)
Mid-major and high-major coaches alike can poach from a competitive Ivy League and get immediate contributors within the right roles. While there has been a good deal of turnover on rosters over the last few years in the conference, there is still talent here to bring forward. We had a chat with one Ivy League assistant who believes the makeup and methodology of the league is “changing a lot soon” to keep up with transfer trends. While the institutions themselves are of the highest academic caliber and make recruitment of transfers a little more difficult and selective, the growth of the basketball level of the last decade is threatened if they are losing upperclassmen and are unable to replace them. It’s a fascinating time for these programs.
Regardless, our focus today is on the players in the conference with potential to become transfer targets at the conclusion of the 2022-23 season. If we were tracking the transfer portal frequently, these are the guys we would be adding to a preseason watch list.