If you ever had doubts about the importance of the men's college basketball transfer portal, this past season should have put them to rest. After years of being a moderate player at best on the transfer stage, Michigan and then-coach Dusty May made a huge splash during the 2025 offseason, adding four of the top 51 players in Jeff Borzello's ESPN transfer rankings, including No. 3 Yaxel Lendeborg and No. 23 Morez Johnson Jr. Thirty-seven wins later, that quartet led scoring for one of history's most dominant national champions.
Not every recent champion has been built with quite as much focus on portal talent. But four of the past five national champs have added at least one player ranked among the top 20 transfers from the previous offseason. Clearly, the portal is no longer an optional feature of championship roster-building. Teams best positioned to compete for titles are those that can identify and acquire the best talent while minimizing losses to other programs.
ESPN introduced a method last year to track each team's portal "balance sheet" between incoming and outgoing transfers. Players are assigned points based on ESPN's 2026-27 transfer rankings, from 5 points for the top 10 down to 1 point for Nos. 71-100. Teams can earn bonus points for honorable mentions, and the incoming and outgoing totals are netted to produce each team's transfer score.
Tennessee leads the nation in net transfer points, with a +14 score. The Volunteers added three of the top 30 transfers, including No. 5 Juke Harris, and two more from the top 60. Coach Rick Barnes' squad is leaning heavily into the portal, a shift that could help the team improve on its 31st-ranked Ken Pom offense from a year ago.
Source: ESPN General · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing