Transfers Joining ACC Teams

It’s not quite a tsunami but it’s pretty intense.

An egalitarian way to regard today’s unruly college sports climate is to celebrate the changes, the loosened strictures that allow players, undergraduate and grad, to move freely from school to school with minimal constraints. Meanwhile coaches have more leeway to immediately get players they need.

The consequence of this freedom is demonstrated by a widening variety of transfer-infused teams — the Florida Atlantics of the world — popping up and winning games all the way from early season to the Final Four.

Some top-notch coaches, Roy Williams being a prominent example, used to pride themselves on the paucity of transfers from their program. Instead they relied on steady apprenticeship within a framework of their teachings. Players matured as a group, recruiting classes often advancing in approximate unison. This carefully crafted approach was admired and usually quite successful.

Now many teams transform overnight and still find success.

Face it: Waiting your turn to play in a program has become a bit anachronistic for unusually gifted players. (Unless, of course, a school becomes a home, they’re serious about getting a degree in four years, and/or money is funneled via NIL to ease a player’s loyalty.)

A veteran is often more valuable, and readier, than a youngster who must learn and master the intricacies of the game. So coaches scan the waiver wire — alias the transfer portal – in search of a transfer with suitably well-developed strengths and skills.

Finally, too, players can switch schools to follow the coach who recruited him or her to their previous team. That’s the case with Louisville’s Pat Kelsey. He moved from College of Charleston and four of his former players jumped to ACC schools, three to the Cardinals.

Steve Forbes and Kevin Keatts stand as the ACC pioneers in turning to transfers. In one year Forbes turned Wake’s sadsack Demon Deacons from 6-16 in 2021 to 25-10 in ’22. In year two he had eight freshmen and five transfers, including ACC Player of the Year Alondes Williams, late of Oklahoma.

Keatts took a bit longer to elevate NC State, liberally employing transfers to reach the 2024 Final Four.

Those are two of the four ACC programs with double-figure transfers on their 2024-25 rosters according to the league, along with newcomer Cal and rebuilding Louisville.

The tide of transfers keeps rising everywhere, as if some iceberg melted. A rough count in 2021 showed 31 transfers in the ACC. By 2023 there were 52 transfers, 60 percent more than two seasons earlier, including sixth-year grad students. This year there are 105 transfers at the same 15 schools that were ACC members in 2020-21.

Add Cal (11), SMU (9), and Stanford (5) to the mix, and that’s 25 additional ACC players that shifted schools during their careers — making an overall average of 7.2 per team. Certainly not approaching a majority of ACC newcomers, but then we don’t know how far the tide will ultimately rise.