College Basketball Transfer Portal: Hunter Dickinson, latest … – 247Sports

If the Transfer Portal was a movie character it would be Russell Crowe in the role of Maximus standing in the arena screaming to the crowd “Are you not entertained?” Because, well, the portal has been providing all kinds of entertainment over the past few days.
Since we dropped our last notebook on the biggest storylines, commitments and buzz in the transfer portal on Friday, we’ve seen arguably the most accomplished player to hit the portal – Hunter Dickinson – enter, the portal saw three mid major conference players of the year enter within hours of each other as well as multiple former McDonald’s All-Americans.
The total number of players in the Transfer Portal has now swelled to over 1,300 entrants and while the news keeps coming at a furious pace we take a deep dive into some of the biggest storylines, scuttle, commitments and all other things related to the Transfer Portal.
One of the biggest bombshells of the Transfer Portal era to date was star Michigan big man Hunter Dickinson hitting the portal late Friday. It would be tough to find a more accomplished player to have hit the portal thus far and his decision to leave is a potentially crippling one for the Wolverines.
His body of work speaks for itself. He’s a two-time First Team All-Big Ten guy, an All-American and former conference Freshman of the Year. After averaging 18.5 points, 9.0 rebounds and 1.8 blocks per game as a junior, he’s on track to score over 2,000 points, grab 800 rebounds and block 200 shots before he finishes up as a senior.
A guy with that type of production hitting the portal has certainly set off a frenzy. Maryland – who just hired his former high school coach Mike Jones away from Virginia Tech – and Georgetown were immediately considered potential destinations for the seven-footer who played high school ball in the DMV. He’s done a zoom with Arkansas, he’s doing one with Kentucky; Syracuse has ties to his summer program and Villanova and Kansas have also been mentioned.
We’ll see how much traction Kentucky or Arkansas can gain, but based off the early intel 247Sports has gotten, Kansas, Georgetown, Maryland and Villanova appear to be in the best shape early in his process.
Since about January, there has been pretty rampant speculation that former five-star and McDonald’s All-American Harrison Ingram would ultimately leave Stanford via the portal. After averaging 10.5 points, 5.8 rebounds and 3.7 assists per game as a sophomore, Ingram finally made it official that he’ll transfer on Tuesday afternoon.
A 6-foot-7, 230-pounder from the Dallas area, Ingram didn’t have quite the season he was hoping for in 2022-23 after being named Pac-12 Freshman of the Year and exploring his NBA options last spring. Most notably, he’s not improved his jump shooting as much as hoped. That being said, he could still be extremely helpful for a team and has a ton of value.
What Ingram does provide is a strong kid who can play small ball four or as a big wing. You can run offense through him because of his well above average passing instincts, he’ll rebound, has some post-up game and is high character guy with an off-the-charts work ethic.
There will be some big-name programs looking to get involved with Ingram but as he begins the transfer process, we like the position that North Carolina is in. We aren’t ready to flat out predict he’ll end up Chapel Hill, but we do like Hubert Davis and the Heels chances.
Just like with Ingram, there have long been rumors that standout Baylor guard LJ Cryer was eventually going to be portaling himself and now that he’s entered, a feeding frenzy will ensue.
After averaging 15 points, 2.1 rebounds and 2.0 assists per game as a junior and making an impressive 42.5% of his three-point attempts through three years in Waco, Cryer would first like to get some feedback from NBA teams. More than likely, though, he’ll be on a college campus next season and he told 247Sports Brandon Jenkins that he’s already heard from the likes of Arkansas, Central Florida, Gonzaga, Houston, Illinois, Kansas, Kansas State, LSU, Oklahoma State and Texas A&M.
While his list is long, let us go ahead and shorten it down to a pair of programs that we would bet the field is chasing. Houston and Kansas State. Cryer is from the Houston area and their offense is certainly one he could fit into playing a Marcus Sasser or Quentin Grimes like role. As for the Wildcats, Jerome Tang was heavily involved with recruiting Cryer to Baylor to begin with and the type of freedom he gives his guards was on full display during K-State’s March run to the Elite Eight.
Sticking with the theme of Texas raised players, it was somewhat of a surprise to see Tramon Mark hit the portal and announce that he’s leaving Houston. After playing 29.4 minutes per outing and scoring 10.1 points while grabbing 4.9 rebounds per game, Mark’s role figured to grow exponentially for Kelvin Sampson and the Cougars next season.
Maybe he thinks Cryer eventually ends up in Houston or maybe he just wants a change of scenery. Either way, Mark is already down to a top four of Arkansas, Florida, Kansas State and Texas A&M.
Texas A&M is only about 120 miles or so away from his hometown of Dickinson, Texas while K-State has a staff with deep ties in Texas and Arkansas has been mastering the portal under Eric Musselman while Florida appears to be a little bit of an outlier. From sources who had looked to jump in on the Mark recruitment, showing that he can be a focal point of the offense is going to be vital in his recruitment and early intel suggests that perhaps the Razorbacks and Wildcats have the slightest of early edges.
In the span of just 24 hours, three mid major conference players of the year hit the portal to start the week. Two-time CAA Player of the Year Aaron Estrada of Hofstra, Conference USA Player of the Year Tylor Perry of North Texas and two-time Summit League Player of the Year Max Abmas all decided to go portaling.
They’ll each draw a big crowd and assuming they have them, their NIL agents will be jumping for joy over the interest level.
The biggest of the bunch at 6-foot-3 and 195 pounds, Estrada may also be the most well rounded. Not only does he score, he can really pass and is a strong rebounder for a guy his size. He told 247Sports’ Dushawn London that he’s already heard from the likes of Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Cincinnati, Florida State, Georgetown, Kansas State, North Carolina State, Ole Miss, Seton Hall, Temple, Tennessee, Texas Tech and Washington State to name a few.
With Perry, the initial assumption was that he would follow Grant McCasland from North Texas to Texas Tech. We aren’t saying that can’t happen, but It’s far from a sure thing and Perry is absolutely going to look around. He told our Brandon Jenkins that he’s already heard from Arkansas, California, Central Florida, Florida, Minnesota, Mississippi State, Missouri, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Tennessee, Texas Tech and Wake Forest and for good reason. A 17 point a night scorer and deadeye shooter, Perry isn’t the biggest or the quickest program, but when it comes to tough and clutch shot making, few are better.
The country fell in love with Abmas a few years ago when he helped lead Oral Roberts on a tournament run to the Sweet Sixteen. Having scored nearly 2,600 points and made 420 three-pointers during his career, he’s the most prolific scorer in the portal and will immediately rank as one of the top players in the portal.
His former coach at Oral Roberts, Paul Mills, just landed at Wichita State and the Shockers will likely take a run at him. However, there’s going to be some heavy hitters getting involved and as of publishing time, sources suggested that programs like Baylor (who has to replace portal guys Cryer and Dale Bonner) and Kansas State could be two to watch closely.
It hasn’t exactly been the best of times for the Pac-12 of late. The conference is struggling to find a new broadcasting rights deal, is having top programs like UCLA and USC raided in conference realignment and the overall level of play in the conference has been criticized pretty heavily the past few years. They’ve at least supplied the two biggest portal commitments of the last 36 hours with Washington guard Keyon Menifield headed to Arkansas and Arizona’s mercurial Kerr Kriisa headed to West Virginia.
Admittedly, we missed on our evaluation of Menifield out of high school when we rated him a three-star prospect outside of the national top 150 for the class of 2022. The Michigan native could certainly score and played with a lot of fire, but we weren’t sure about how his skinny frame would hold up in a high major conference. As it turns out, Menifield was one of the most entertaining freshmen in the country and while the 10 points, 2.9 rebounds and 3.1 assists he put up per game are impressive enough, if you stayed up late to watch Pac-12 ball this year, he really had some electric moments and scored 21 points or more five times. He still needs to get stronger, but he’s just the kind of small’ish, irrationally confident and tough dude who has experienced incredible success under Eric Musselman.
As for Kriisa, the combination of him and Bob Huggins is going to make for some must-see television moments. It’s hard to see a world where the talented, but sometimes totally out of control and emotional, Kriisa and Huggy Bear don’t get into some stare downs and shouting matches. We’re totally here for it too. Huggins found a way to reign in a similarly hot-tempered Erik Stevenson and get out of him what other coaches couldn’t and we would bet on him doing the same with Kriisa. A potentially dangerous three-point shooter who is also a creative passer with 6-foot-3 size, Kriisa can be a real weapon in Morgantown if he can learn to dial the emotions down just a little bit.
Wednesday afternoon, Matt McMahon and LSU got good news for the Tigers when Baton Rouge native Jordan Wright announced that he would be transferring back home from Vanderbilt. A solid all-around wing, Wright is coming off a season where he averaged 10.6 points and 5.1 rebounds per game.
He provides some added punch on the perimeter and we would expect that they add some more help, thanks to a familiar face, in the very near future.
Jalen Cook began his career at LSU before transferring to Tulane and coming off of a monster season where he averaged 19.9 points, 2.9 rebounds and 4.9 assists per game, Cook looks like he’ll be headed back to LSU. The Crystal Ball picks have started to be made in favor of LSU and we wouldn’t be surprised if Cook makes his return to Baton Rouge official within the next 24 hours or so.
Iowa State is about to be flush with visitors and they’ll get things started off with a pair of players from the Mountain West. The Cyclones are set to play host to Nevada forward Darrion Williams and UNLV guard Keshon Gilbert. The Mountain West’s freshman of the year, Williams is a tough, do-it-all forward that can play at the three or four who has the potential to add some toughness. Originally from St. Louis, Gilbert is a scoring point guard with some size, length and athleticism who took a huge leap during his second year at UNLV averaging 11.4 points, 3.8 rebounds and 3.2 assists per game.
We wrote last week about sharp shooting guard Nicolas Timberlake of Towson not being the done deal to North Carolina that many thought. We can’t write for sure that the UNC ship has sailed, but he’s hitting Lawrence, Kans. for a visit with Bill Self and the Kansas Jayhawks. Kansas has been pretty aggressive with Timberlake and it will be interesting to see if Timberlake makes it out of Lawrence without committing or at least going full into decision making mode.
Another interesting visitor this weekend is high scoring Western Kentucky transfer Dayvion McKnight who will visit Xavier. He’s got a long list of other programs involved and can be afford to be choosy. But Sean Miller and the Musketeers need a guard with experience who can score and McKnight could prove to be a good fit. At a minimum, Miller and company have the opportunity to set a high standard for any other program to meet.
USC sophomore transfer Reese Dixon-Waters is a really good player who has gone under the radar. But there is a potential destination that would seem to make sense If it can be pulled off. With Jaylen Clark declared for the NBA, there’s a good opportunity at UCLA for a big guard like Dixon-Waters who averaged 9.8 points and 3.2 rebounds to step right in and play major minutes. We are still gathering more information on potential suitors for Dixon-Waters, but the Bruins do appear to have a good shot.
The past few days have also seen some former McDonald’s All-Americans and a highly ranked freshman hit the portal as well. Alabama freshman Jaden Bradley went in on Tuesday, Gonzaga sophomore Hunter Sallis went in over the weekend and Kentucky freshman Ugonna Onyenso – who classed up to enroll early during the fall – hit the portal on Wednesday.
A big and physical guard, Bradley started 22 of 37 games for the Crimson Tide and averaged a very respectable 6.4 points, 2.6 rebounds and 3.1 assists per game throughout the season. However, as teams looked to prevent him from getting into the lane and he struggled with his shot — he had more games with no field goals (8) than he did multiple field goal games (5) over the last 15 games of the season – his playing time suffered. Just looking at his playing style, strengths and weaknesses, perhaps a team in either the Big East or Big Ten would be the best fit.
As for Sallis, he never looked comfortable in Spokane averaging just 4.4 points per game over two seasons and appearing to lack confidence in his ball handling. He is still a high-level athlete with big-time defensive potential, but he’ll need to be rebuilt on the offensive end. Not surprisingly Creighton and Nebraska have reached out to the Omaha native.
When it comes to Onyenso, he was highly regarded but it was thought when he enrolled at Kentucky that he knew he’d need a few years to develop and the 6.9 minutes he logged over 16 appearances is reflective of that. If he’s wanting to play a larger role next season, he may want to consider a move down a level where he can rely on his seven-foot size, length and athleticism to overcome the skill development that still needs to take place.
One other recent portal entrant that really stands out is Oklahoma forward Jalen Hill. A grad transfer, Hill has started every game for the Sooners over the last few years and is a solid, well-rounded dude who can play at the three or the four. He’s not a particularly dangerous jump shooter, but does some dirty work, is a good free-throw shooter and could be the type of veteran a team on the verge of competing needs to push them to another level.
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