Everyone says we’re living in the era of the transfer — and everyone’s right.
Reigning NCAA champion Baylor started two transfers (Davion Mitchell and MaCio Teague) in the national title game in April and brought two more off the bench (Adam Flagler and Jonathan Tchamwa Tchatchoua).
Last April also was the moment when the NCAA instituted its one-time transfer rule, allowing athletes to switch schools once in their careers with immediate eligibility. The rule has encouraged players who otherwise might stay put to take the leap and enter the transfer portal.
The dawn of this new era seems like a good time to take stock of the best transfer success stories in college basketball history.
A fair portion of these successes date from the recent past because players simply transfer more often than they used to. Perhaps encouraged by the NCAA’s adoption of the graduate transfer rule a decade ago, players have become increasingly open to switching schools.
In order to rank the best transfers of all time, we first have to define the term “transfer.” Consider the example of Jared Butler, still another star from Baylor’s 2021 title team. Butler enrolled at Alabama before a scholarship opened up for him in Waco, Texas. He never played for the Crimson Tide, however, and thus Butler resides in the same pseudo-transfer category as another rather celebrated player named Larry Bird.
The legend from French Lick, Indiana, originally committed to play for Indiana. Bird was actually on campus in Bloomington for a few weeks before he changed his tune and enrolled a year later at Indiana State. But, like Butler, Bird never took the floor for his first school.
Before, during and for a time after Bird’s moment, there were also a number of junior college transfers who made big splashes in Division…
Source : espn
