How Matthew Winick created the best transfer portal analysis of the 2024 offseason
In the Canadian abyss, one man stands alone
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I’ve been referencing some frustrations on X, fka Twitter, a lot lately. They are not meant to promote me as some sort of brilliant soothsayer. More so it’s an annoyance with how the transfer portal in college basketball is covered. There are no bad takes; there are no bad gets. Everyone who comes onto the roster is given their standard PPG/RPG/APG stats, with zero reference of efficiency unless it helps build the case that they’re actually good.
Now, obviously, there’s practical reasons to be rosy about every single transfer up or down in the portal. For one, it’s a way to flex that you are aware of this person. More likely, it’s a way to avoid burning industry sources and/or coaches that you’d like to have on your side to further your media career. I myself will admit to doing this in the past, to the point that I once praised a Rick Stansbury-coached Western Kentucky team online.
I’ve noticed I might not be alone here. Friend of the Substack Jon Fendler, he of sharper criticism in general, has put out his thoughts:
Even Jim Root of Three Man Weave, who I would argue straddles the line quite well between traditional and non-traditional media, seems to indicate some annoyance with how this has been covered lately. (I’d like to point out that 3MW did a show grading coaching hires, but force-fitting them to a curve that represents the general standard of a five-year grading exercise. AKA: an equal number of As and Bs to Cs-Fs. Check it out.) (ALSO: Jim has an excellent roster sheet that I’d recommend as a companion piece to what I’m linking later on. It’s $10.)
A lot of people, many of whom I respect immensely, seem to be pretty over how the portal’s covered. The thing most of these people have in common is their ability to be statistically savvy. Fendler, Root, and many more frequently reference all of CBB Analytics, Synergy, EvanMiya, and more in their analysis. It’s a deeper analysis I’d argue is largely missing from more traditional coverage of the sport.
Of course, it’s one thing to be like us and be annoyed that no one is covering the portal the way we want it covered. Well, no one has, except for one man in Toronto. Meet Matthew Winick, the basketball editor at The Score in Canada. He’s the creator of the single best read of the offseason to date, a gigantic Google Sheet that provides grades and analysis on every single player and move in the portal to date. It’s the only document I have read this year that covers the portal moves the way I would personally like them to be covered: the actual talent of the player AND their fit in a coach’s system. Perhaps most stunning is that it costs $0.00 to read, linked here.
I’ve followed Winick for a year or two now and have long been impressed with his work, including a daily sheet in which he analyzed every game in the 2023-24 season and a preseason sheet that did similar work for team rosters, including coach ratings. The point to me is less about whether Winick nails every bit of analysis in the sheet. No one’s going to bat 1.000; you’re probably lucky to bat .500 on transfers. The point is more that, as far as I am aware, this is the only living document out there that actually grades every transfer’s fit within a team, not just their talent level.
I chatted with Winick over DM during the Memorial Day holiday weekend to see why he was inspired to do this, along with picking his brain on some of the more intriguing grades I spotted throughout the sheet.
WW: Your spreadsheet is, as far as I can find, the first and only document by a college basketball media member that both grades every single move *and* grades the fit of the move itself. What inspired you to do this in the first place? Why make it public?
MW: Truthfully, I miss college basketball so much every mid-April that it’s kind of like withdrawal, and I need to do something to prepare for the next season. Last year, I tried doing a transfer rankings sheet as well, but I was grading players as soon as they entered the portal. And quite frankly, I think it sucked. Ranking players before knowing where they went just seemed useless. Like, Dalton Knecht would have been ranked so much higher if I knew he was going to a situation where he could ball out offensively beside four defenders at Tennessee. Or Payton Sparks would have been far lower if he didn’t transfer to Indiana behind Kel’el Ware and Malik Reneau.
So this year, I decided to just make judgements on players once they chose their new school. That’s really all that matters, right? Everything happens so fast that they spend far more of their offseason at their new schools than their old ones. Systems, schemes, and player fits trumping talent is part of what makes college basketball so fun, and ignoring that part of things is probably a fool’s errand. As for making it public, I am fortunate enough to be working full-time in basketball media as it is, but this is a little side project for me. I feel no reason to hide it from others, especially if there are people that find use or entertainment from it!
WW: I get the sense that you, like me, are a bit frustrated at the media coverage of the portal in general. There's a lot of analysis of *players*, but not of how players fit on *teams* (or within systems). How important is it for the average fan to understand the fit of a certain player? Why do you, as a relative outsider (being in Canada versus being in the States), feel that we've seen US-based media struggle to analyze the fit side of it?
MW: At its core, I think the biggest issue at hand in what you’re discussing, which is true, is basketball media and basketball fans’ inability to adapt. I’ve been a diehard basketball fan for like, 15 years now, and to cover/analyze/watch the game from the same perspective as 2009 is malpractice. Versatility is key, and counting stats are nearly useless. Honestly, I do not think I looked at a single counting stat the entire time I’ve put my transfer rankings together. I genuinely couldn’t care less about a player’s points or rebounds per game.
I also work in traditional media that has significant reach in the US, so I feel like I have a unique perspective on this. It’s a tough conundrum. The media needs to cater to the average fan, and the average fan follows basketball by looking at points and rebounds per game. But the fan doesn’t know any better because that’s what the media gives the fan. That’s how the cycle continues. It would be unprecedented for me to write a recap from an NBA playoff game and cite Tyrese Haliburton’s assist rate or Boston’s offensive rebounding rate, or how the T-Wolves’ big-to-big pick-and-roll to pull out both frontcourt defenders around three off-ball shooting threats is an impossible set to guard. Many wouldn’t know what it meant, and we don’t have the time to explain it.
I think you and I, and many of the smart people that read your work, need to always understand that as in any form of media, there’s a different level of analysis for everything. There are people that are truly better off reading a transfer ranking that is based around points and rebounds, they can spend their hard earned money to go to games and watch the players that make the highlight reels and score lots of points. There are others that like to think critically about hoops and dive deep. Those people deserve to have options to satisfy their craving for consuming hoops that way. As someone who’s always looking to find things in that realm, I hope my sheet was able to get into the hands of people like me.
WW: What stats do you feel are most useful in helping you evaluate a transfer in general? Beyond that, what stats help you evaluate the transfer's fit within a given system?
MW: First things first is establishing what type of player the transfer is. Reading a KenPom season stat line will typically give it away. What’s his calling card? What does he do especially well, or especially poorly? From there, I kind of see the college game as having three positions - guard, wing, and big. I try to categorize them in one of those three.
I truly do not care about a guard’s rebounding numbers. It means nothing to me. An on-ball guard needs a positive AST/TO ratio. An off-ball guard needs solid shooting efficiency. For wings, are you a high volume scorer, a low usage energy piece, or a 3-and-D guy? Is a big a rim-runner, burly rebounder, or pick-and-pop guy?Those are all things KenPom can tell me. I like to use EvanMiya’s DBPR for defensive stats and Synergy for shooting numbers, which helps with determining rim efficiency and whether volume shooters are taking/making catch-and-shoot jumpers or dribble jumpers.
In terms of player fits in a system, I’m very rarely going to severely dock a transfer based on other guys on the roster (except for two specific examples that you have outlined below). Simply put, you can’t really have too many ball handlers, shooters, or defender on a team. But once you start doubling or tripling up on guys with similar skillsets, or more importantly, guys that have overlapping flaws, then you’re putting yourself at a severe disadvantage. Imagine how good 2023-24 Texas A&M could have been if they plucked one elite shooter, or 2023-24 Florida if they had a guard defender on the roster.
WW: One team question: as far as I'm aware, you're the only writer I've seen laud as much praise as you have on McNeese State's portal haul. They've got the second-highest grade of any team in America, trailing only Louisville. What makes you feel as high as you do on McNeese, and what could this represent for their 2024-25 outlook?
MW: A big part of my attempt at analysis at “niche” college basketball content is to try to cover all D-I teams with a similar focus, at least to some extent. I felt like it was important to rank all transfers based on the school/conference they went to, not just their overall level. Random example, but Scottie Ebube was an A- at Green Bay, and then when he flipped to Wyoming, he fell to a B given the jump in level.
For McNeese, they simply have a quartet of transfers that do not go to the Southland. They had that with Shahada Wells last season, who was by far their biggest reason for a masterful season and a No. 12 seed in the NCAA Tourney. Now they’ve done the same thing that worked with Wells, but multiplied it by four. By no means am I trying to say that McNeese’s transfer class could beat Kentucky’s if they just played 5-on-5, but relative to the program’s level, it’s hard to top what McNeese has done. I honestly can’t tell you exactly what their season looks like. They’ll probably be 8-10 point favorites in every Southland game, and they should go undefeated in conference play. They probably don’t win a Tourney game once again, and then Wade bounces to Florida State, or something like that.
WW: Rapid-fire player question: by EvanMiya, Kadary Richmond and Oumar Ballo are the top two transfers who've committed elsewhere in the portal. Most any media member would agree, and Ballo's actually On3's top transfer in the entire class. Yet you've given them grades of B+ and B, respectively, criticizing the fit for each at their respective new schools. What about these moves causes you concern, and why can this be more insightful than simply saying "X team got the best player available?"
MW: Just full stop, if Richmond goes to UConn and Ballo goes to North Carolina, they’re probably both A’s, at least. Specifically, St. John’s bringing in two guys in Richmond and Deivon Smith who are electric downhill drivers who are coming off seasons where they had the ball in their hands a ton creates some difficulties. But the real issue is both share the exact same flaw - their lack of long range shooting. You can swing a 2-PG lineup, especially when you have one with Richmond’s size when one guy is off the ball and can keep the defense honest with the jumper. In this backcourt, I expect a bunch of “your turn, my turn” as they both drive into clogged paints with 3 shooter on the floor at most. For Ballo, you’re adding him next to Indiana’s best returner in Malik Reneau in the most anti-analytics frontcourt imaginable. Both attempted over 100 shots on post ups last year, neither can shoot threes, and neither is an elite rim protector on D. Add in that their new PG Myles Rice also shot sub-30% from deep, and that roster makes zero sense.
UConn and Purdue in the national championship showed the two ways to build a roster in modern hoops. Purdue identified a clear star in Zach Edey, and built its entire roster in the hopes of surrounding him with the perfect complimentary pieces. While UConn trotted out a starting five with five completely different types of players - Newton a pure point, Spencer a secondary ball-handler and floor spacer, Castle a combo forward and star defender, Karajan a stretch-4, and Clingan a pure rim protector. A great team almost always has one of those two roster styles. Any star transfer that doesn’t contribute to either is going to get docked serious marks in my eyes.
Thanks to Matthew Winick at The Score for providing our May deep dive here at the newsletter. You can follow his work on X/Twitter and at The Score, where he’s currently covering the NBA Playoffs. Once more, that spreadsheet is linked here.
This is the first and only post of May, which is unfortunate. I’d like to have a better excuse but to be honest, my day job was unusually busy this month and I was frankly burnt out from the five-month college season. There will be more analysis coming, promise! In the meantime, after all my whining, here’s some scattershot offseason analysis….
The best opening night roster, as it stands, is probably Houston. We’re five months from this mattering whatsoever, but off of a pretty packed roster that was one of the three best all of last season, they’ve managed to return 77% of their minutes. The one open starting spot available has been filled by Oklahoma transfer PG Milos Uzan, who’s obviously not as good as Jamal Shead but shot 41% from three his freshman year and improved massively as a passer. Anything less than a top-3 defense will be a disappointment, and the depth on the team is genuinely remarkable. As it stands, Mercy Miller - a borderline top-50 recruit - is unlikely to be a rotation member. Not because he’s bad, but because Houston is extraordinarily old. The projected rotation goes SR/5th/5th/5th/SR/SR/SO/5th/SR. Kelvin’s last dance? Plausibly.
The worst opening night roster among P5s is Boston College. The best player on it is either the third-best guy on a 20-13 St. Bonaventure team or the best player on 11-21, 274th-ranked UMBC. They do have a scholarship open, and obviously it’s remarkably hard to attract talent to BC in general, but this is abysmal even for their standards. On paper they might have two high-major starter-level talents, which is not ideal when you play in a high-major conference and basketball requires you to have five guys on the floor at once. I was impressed with what Earl Grant cobbled together from a horrid roster last year but it’s year four and they still haven’t touched .500 in the ACC. The last time Boston College did touch .500 Osama Bin Laden was still living.
The golden mean of fit and talent is Robbie Avila at Saint Louis. Extremely obvious to say this, by the way. Avila has done two years in the Josh Schertz system now and was one of the most thrilling players in America last year. What he does doesn’t really require an athleticism adjustment; frankly it’s not like the A-10 is better than the MVC anyway. The only other serious contender here was Tucker DeVries, who followed his dad from Drake to West Virginia, but going from the MVC to the Big 12 really is a different animal.
The ‘best’ hire (aka, my favorite) of the offseason is Ben McCollum to Drake. Longtime readers don’t need an explanation here. Less-longtimers may. McCollum coached at D2 Northwest Missouri State for 15 seasons, where he went 394-91, won four national championships, and won an astonishing 11 straight conference titles. Think of it this way: he turned Northwest Missouri State from a good-but-also-ran in D2 to basketball North Dakota State. It was frankly stunning that he made it to 2024 before finally taking a D1 job; he had been rumored to take one as early as 2019. Finally, we get to see what this will look like.
The ‘best’ assistant hire (aka, my favorite) of the offseason is Jeff Linder to Texas Tech. Grant McCasland continues to be alarmingly devoted to crafting a style of play and a coaching staff that is almost exactly what I would be looking for if I were in need of a program to follow. McCasland is now an astounding 8-for-8 in beating KenPom’s preseason projected rankings, which is a hit rate that I don’t think any other coach has touched unless I’m missing someone. (Future article there.) McCasland had me in the tank already at North Texas with his tremendous work there, but it’s what he’s done with his staff positions and Big 12 money that fascinates me. Dave Smart of Carleton (Canada) fame was an analyst last year. Luke Barnwell was maybe the hottest high school basketball coach available. Matt Braeuer was a staff member at Maryland, Sam Houston State, and Charleston (pre-Kelsey) during those schools’ best runs of a 15-year span. Now he has Linder, who ran the most aggressive anti-threes defensive scheme I have ever seen in college basketball while the HC at Northern Colorado. More, more, more. Also, if an enterprising reader is reading this, I do accept bribes to root for your team and my shirt size is medium, occasionally large.