Trading transfers
Recruiting in college basketball is usually a well-known, understood process. The coaches go out and scout high school talent, make scholarship offers to players they want to have on their team and the team comes together for the next season.
In more recent years, Division I men’s college basketball has been changing the process. While the coaches still do the traditional high school recruiting, a new way of getting players has quickly risen to popularity.
This year, the Quinnipiac men’s basketball team brought in four junior college transfers as opposed to just two freshmen. The Bobcats also lost one player, Giovanni McLean, due to transfer, as McLean signed a national letter of intent at Texas Tech for a graduate season in June. This came one year after now-seniors Daniel Harris and Donovan Smith came from the junior college ranks.
“Since we’ve joined the MAAC, I think we’ve been focusing more on the junior college players recently,” Quinnipiac head coach Tom Moore said. “In years when we feel like we need to get older and quicker and have an infusion of talent and experience at a key position, we might look more towards the junior college ranks because in general you are getting a guy who has played at a really high level and is closer to 20 years old than to 17 years old.”