Both Jorge Ochoa and Perry Smith Jr entered the transfer portal today. It is almost one year to the day from Ochoa's commitment to the Catamounts last March. Such is the state of things in the current college basketball landscape. Again I think the portal and ability to transfer without sitting out is ultimately good for college basketball, but it does make roster construction and year to year continuity a much more difficult thing to achieve. Both Ochoa and Smith Jr came in with high hopes as the top two rated recruits in Vermont history (of the era where those types of rankings have been a thing). As I mentioned when they committed, the hardest thing about coming to Vermont is to get up to speed on the defensive side of the ball and typically young big men have struggled to crack the rotation. That certainly played out during the season as both struggled with defensive miscues and never got enough court time to find a rhythm. So many factors go into transferring and I don't want to speculate about why they are choosing to transfer but it must have been a frustrating process for Ochoa and Smith Jr this season to try and learn the system. I wish them luck in the next part of their basketball journey and hope they find the right fit on and off the court.
The job of the coaching staff becomes that much more difficult as they are once again going to be turning over half of the roster this offseason. This is pretty commonplace now as a large portion of college basketball is retooling their rosters throughout March, April, and May each season. The portal ultimately has been a huge lift for Vermont during this recent run of success as Finn Sullivan, Kam Gibson, Matt Veretto, Ileri Ayo-Fayele, and Dylan Penn all came to Vermont through that process. Last year Vermont was able to blend getting additions from the portal and finding overlooked high school players who have lost out due to the scramble in the portal. Even though the impact from the younger players was less than they hoped, I expect that there will be a similar combination this offseason. One of the challenges with the unpredictable roster construction is it is very hard to talk to prospective players about playing time availability. Last season at this time it seemed like there were few barriers to playing time at the frontcourt positions at Vermont. Fast forward to adding Veretto and Ayo-Faleye and suddenly the position became more crowded. The coaching staff has quite a balancing act when sifting through the portal and hitting the road to find unsigned high school players. I continue to expect a flurry of moves over the next month or so.