PortalSZN Begins

The NCAA Transfer Portal is now officially open and hope springs eternal again. After a rough 12-20 season for Providence fans it’s time to flush that season and say “so what, now what” as attention can be turned to building the 2025-26 roster. Kim English will lack nothing in terms of budget this PortalSZN, multiple sources have told pcbb1917.com. But before everyone starts to overreact to names coming and going I wanted to paint a picture and lay some perspective on the table. Providence had their worst season since the final year of the second era of Joe Mullaney in 1984-85 when that team went 11-20 and failed to have a single player average double figures in scoring. While English isn’t going anywhere there will be several players heading for the exit, so let’s start there. It’s expected that Providence will lose at least 8 players from the 2024-25 roster (not including walk-ons Luke Fonts and Kieran O’Haire) between graduation and portal. That number is unlikely to go lower but could go higher. What that means in reality is that there will be A LOT of roster spots to fill. Right now there are two incoming freshmen in Jamier Jones and Jaylen Harrell, so the it stands to reason that the roster will be mainly replenished from the portal with a chance for another non-portal addition not out of the question.

This is where the perspective comes in.

Not every player that Providence will add is going to be a First Team All-Big East player. They will have to fill gaps and roles and are likely looking for additions with multiple years for some spots to do this thing called player development that some older fans may recall. That doesn’t mean fans should expect to see no high level and/or single year portal additions, but the point is don’t overreact or be alarmed if the first player or two you hear Providence connected to or adding isn’t Cooper Flagg. The 2025-26 Friar roster need role players, too. With the announced returns of Corey Floyd, Jr. and the two impact freshmen Oswin Erhunmwunse and Ryan Mela there is a solid core to build around.

That core needs two high level transfer additions that ideally play guard and wing/4 positions and a bunch of other role and developmental players. They might not come in the order fans want, but English and his staff have hit the ground running and I expect the pace of additions to be somewhat similar to last year when the Friars were done with their portal work earlier than most. Complicating matters could be the misaligned timelines of the NBA Draft process as some of the best portal prospects often declare for the NBA Draft and have until 5pm ET on June 15th to withdraw with the Combine taking place May 11-18 this year.

If you are very interested in recruiting and the portal I would recommend you come join the pcbb1917 Discord where we are constantly talking about potential portal additions and I’ve created some tools to quickly look up and reference player stats and compare two players to help add context to the conversation. Here is one example of the pcbb Portal Committee Bot in action: