Brian Reddy – Beyond the Box Score: The Portal – Views from Friartown and Beyond

I planned to write an article on the Friars’ efforts in the transfer portal in late May or early June, after the Friars gained and lost players, giving us better insight into the 2024-25 roster. Lo and behold, Coach English and his staff have basically completed their efforts in rapid fashion, so here we are with 4 days still left in April. My focus will be on a general overview of the portal followed by my thoughts on the Friars’ roster additions.

As soon as the portal opened and players began to enter, all of the college sports recruiting and basketball sites started listing their rankings for players and teams. Once players committed to schools, “experts” quickly discussed how highly rated each class was. My simplest advice is to enjoy reading whichever articles you want, but don’t take them very seriously. We can go all the way back to last year to see how inaccurate these experts were. Last April, 247 Sports provided their rankings of the top team portal rankings.

For those who don’t want to read the entire list, some of the highlights are West Virginia second, Villanova fourth, Arkansas seventh, Penn State sixteenth, and Georgetown twenty-seventh. Of the top thirty teams in the portal transfer rankings, 18 did not make the NCAA tournament, and six of them finished well under .500.

One of the flaws of how teams are ranked is that teams tend to get credit for volume (i.e. number of commitments) more than for quality. That does not totally explain the rankings since the individual rankings were similarly flawed. Here are the top 75 transfer portal recruits as list by 247 Sports.

The top two selections of Hunter Dickinson and Kel’el Ware had strong seasons. One time Friar portal target and number three portal entrant Taran Armstrong chose to play professionally in Australia. After that, however, came many players who may have had solid years, such JJ Starling, Jameer Nelson, Jr., Max Abmas, and many others, but would not receive similar rankings after the season. There are also many players who were highly rated here that would not be close to top 75 level after the season. Included in this group is Brandon Murray (8), Kadin Shedrick (14), Micah Handlogten (17), Amaree Abram (20), Nicolas Timberlake (21), Jordan Minor (24), and many, many others.

The other side of these rankings focuses on the players they missed. I thought Cam Spencer was going to be a great pickup for UConn this year, and he exceeded my expectations. Looking back on the season, it is my contention that he was the best portal acquisition in the country. Looking at the 247 portal rankings, I see that Spencer came in at number…actually, he did not make the top 75 list at all. The Friars were similarly lucky to get Josh Oduro from George Mason, who turned in an All-Big East season, despite not being listed in the top 75. The same thing applies to Quincy Olivari of Xavier, the number two scorer in the league. Butler’s quartet of Posh Alexander, Jahmyl Telfort, DJ Davis, and Pierre Brooks, Dayvion McKnight of Xavier, Steven Ashworth of Creighton, among others, were all better than at least half of the players on the list despite not making it themselves. It is not easy to project how certain players adapt to new situations, conferences, and levels of play. Having coaches with a good eye for underappreciated talent and developmental skills have become more important than ever in the age of portals and NIL.

Using the above as a segue to the second part of this article, I could not be more excited about the Friars’ haul in the portal this year. In his post-game press conference, Coach English discussed the types of players he was looking for in the portal: tough, humble, great work ethic, dawgs, selfless, want to guard, can shoot it, winners, people that want to be Friars. He also said he wanted a full roster of thirteen players ready to go. It is my sincere belief that the staff accomplished their mission, and in near-record time. They identified their needs, and each commitment appears to tie to the others to the overall plan. Too many schools seem to accumulate talent without a plan or fit, and then struggle. Arkansas, Villanova, and LSU are among the teams that fell into this situation last year, while Butler had a well-executed plan for roster development. In addition to Providence, I believe DePaul will overachieve next year based on a roster that appears to complement each other.

The first player to commit to the Friars from the portal was Bensley Joseph, a point/combo guard from Miami, who has developed and improved in each of his three years in Coral Gables. He is a good shooter who brings a little bit of everything to the table. He can help Jayden Pierre handle the point, is a plus defender, and a veteran presence who’s played in nine NCAA tournament games. From there, the Friars received more good news with a commitment from 7’ Christ Essandoko, who had previously committed to the Friars before enrolling at St. Joe’s. I’ll admit to being a fan of his since watching videos of him in prep school and watched a number of his games this past year. From a skill set perspective, there is a lot to like. He shot 37% from three on limited attempts and showed solid passing and rebounding skills for a first-year player. More importantly to me, he seems to have a good awareness of his abilities, where he fits in, and what he needs to do to improve. Upon committing to Providence this time, he discussed the growth of Josh Oduro under this staff and the similarities in their games. He also discussed the need to improve his conditioning, which was hindered by a pre-season injury. Additionally, 7’, 250+ lbs. players with game skills are always prized by teams.

While Friartown was celebrating this, they received another commitment seemingly out of the blue when Jabri Abdur-Rahim committed to the Friars. This commitment is similar to Bensley Joseph, as the Friars are getting a plus defender and quality shooter who has used his experience to improve his game, especially over the past three years at Georgia. Another skill of Abdur-Rahim that will be appreciated in Friartown is that he is an 84% career shooter from the free throw line, including an incredible 89% last year (118-133). For comparison, Friar closer Al Durham shot 83% from the stripe during the 2021-22 Sweet 16 season for the Friars (166-199). A week later, during Abdur-Rahim’s official visit, he was joined by recent portal entrant from Chicago State, Wes Cardet. Word spread quickly that Cardet was here last Saturday, and he committed to join the Friars the following day as he returned home.

Because I have an irrational love of college basketball and have a streaming TV service that allows me to record virtually every college basketball game, I actually watched the Chicago State games against DePaul and Northwestern and was able to re-watch them Sunday as I waited for his official commitment announcement. My initial comparable to Cardet was Tyon Grant-Foster, and that was reinforced after watching him again Sunday. People who know me well recognize that I would never compare anyone to Grant-Foster unless I was very impressed with him. Grant-Foster is the wing for Grand Canyon who averaged 20 points per game this year after missing the previous two seasons with a life-threatening heart condition. He would be among the top ten portal transfer players over the past season. Cardet has a similar ability to drive to the basket, being too strong for smaller guards and too quick for bigger forwards. Also, like Grant-Foster, he has great body control and athleticism to adjust on the fly and get shots off in traffic. He’s a solid three-point shooter with the ability to keep defenses honest and unable to drop off of him, with plus passing, rebounding, and defensive skills. He has an NBA-ready body and uses his size and wingspan very well.

The other thing that was so impressive for me as a lifelong Friar fan is how quickly the staff identified and got commitments from a full complement of players. Joseph committed to the staff within a couple of days of his unofficial visit, Essandoko and Abdur-Rahim committed before visiting, and Cardet presumably told the staff of his intentions before leaving. These are the types of things that are prescient of long-term planning and success. The youthfulness of Coach English is often mentioned, but this handling of his first true portal season in Friartown was an example of planning and decisiveness.

One last point I would like to mention on the portal and recruiting situations is the amount of misunderstanding and misinformation regarding Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) among these schools. It is my clear belief that fans of schools that brag about the value of their NIL do not have a grasp on the whole system. The most important point is that all schools do not operate in the same manner. Many, but not all schools have an NIL collective. Some schools have multiple collectives. Other schools have supporters who provide direct NIL agreements to the student-athletes. Most major conference schools have some combination of the above. It is definitely not a one-size-fits-all program throughout college basketball for NIL. Coach English was a guest on the Field of 68 during the Final Four and discussed NIL for the Friars. His comments were that Providence has the resources to get any player they want, but players who are only interested in money probably will not fit what he and the staff are building. Other schools (OK, Georgetown for example) had their fans saying that they had $2 million in NIL, then $3 million, then $4 million, and now over $5 million. They even had someone discuss the players they were going to get with their millions. I have no idea how much money they or most other schools have, but I am pretty sure they do not understand how this works. People have speculated that players are using Georgetown as leverage to get more money from the schools where they really want to go, which may or may not be true. One point that I think is being shown is that even in the age of the portal and NIL is that these players want to win. A colleague of mine who is a Georgetown alumnus said that NIL from there is like Peruvian money: you basically need a 3:1 ratio to make things equal. That’s why I think the solid first year Providence had under Coach English along with the promise of next year bodes well for the long-term success of the Friars under this staff.