FARGO — The commissioner and a handful of coaches with whom I talked put on an on-the-record brave face at the recent Summit League tournament in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, when I asked an obvious question. Is the conference, I queried, simply going to be a farm system for the big boys? That is, will Summit League men's
basketball teams recruit diamonds-in-the-rough who were under-recruited by teams from the major conferences, spend time and treasure developing them, and then see them bolt via the transfer portal as a junior or senior as the kids chase fame (playing under the bright lights) and fortune (name, image and likeness money)? Or as Omaha coach Chris Crutchfield said as I was slinging the bull with him during a Mavericks' workout: "You're gonna have a kid for two or three years and then, poof, he's gonna be gone." Surely it was coincidence that Crutchfield's star player, Frankie Fidler, was standing 15 feet away at the time. Because as of Monday, poof, Fidler's gone from Omaha. The 6-foot-7 junior scoring machine entered the transfer portal, confirming rumors that were swirling around Sioux Falls for the five days of the league tournament. As I wrote in a McFeely's Tip Sheet column after returning from South Dakota, the five potential transfer names that were heard most at the Denny Sanford Premier Center were Filder, B.J. Omot of North Dakota, Zeke Mayo of South Dakota State, William Kyle III of SDSU and Andrew Morgan of North Dakota State. Made sense. Those are the five most coveted non-graduating players in the Summit and four of the five were first-team all-conference. Morgan was a second-team selection. As of this moment, Fidler (Creighton is the obvious landing place) and Omot (Georgetown is the rumor) are in the portal and there is an extremely high possibility of Mayo and Kyle taking the leap once SDSU's season ends in the upcoming NCAA tournament. The chatter about Mayo leaving Brookings has been loud since midseason. There's been no sign Morgan will leave Fargo, but one thing we can say about this transfer-heavy era: Always expect to be surprised. The Summit League — as was obvious the past couple of years with the portal departures of Baylor Scheierman (SDSU to Creighton), Grant Nelson (NDSU to Alabama), Max Abmas (Oral Roberts to Texas) and Andrew Rohde (St. Thomas to Virginia) — is becoming a feeder system for the power leagues. I asked Summit League commissioner Josh Fenton if this was a concern. B.J. Omot (20) of the North Dakota Fighting Hawks bolts to the basket around Kareem Thompson (2) of the Oral Roberts Golden Eagles at the Summit League men's basketball tournament Saturday, March 4, 2023, at the Denny Sanford Premier Center in Sioux Falls, S.D. Richard Carlson/Inertia "Some of those players you mentioned, would we have liked to have showcased them in our tournament? Of course," Fenton said, before spinning. "But it gives opportunities for other players to be showcased that are pretty good players. And two, the transfer portal is a two-way street. I think our coaches have done a good
Job adapting and understanding that. Maybe two or three years ago when this was starting to come, we could be upset or concerned about it. I think it is the world and it is not going to change. "We either need to embrace it and find ways to recruit strategically using the transfer portal and realize that a player on your roster today might not be a player on your roster tomorrow. Your strategy around recruiting high school players and transfer portal players has to change and I think our coaches understand that." Well, yeah. But like FCS
Football, the drop-downs you're getting aren't as good as the major-conference players you're losing. That's the worst part. The talent in the league will never be as strong. There'll be no program-building any longer. Everything will be year-to-year. Gone are the days of Summit League coaches building teams over multiple recruiting classes, leading to a crescendo in the fourth or fifth year ... and then trying to maintain it. Remember the 2013-14 NDSU team that beat Oklahoma in the first round of the NCAA Division I tournament? Its key players — Lawrence Alexander, Marshall Bjorklund, Taylor Braun, TrayVonn Wright — were all juniors and seniors who had been in the program for years. South Dakota State guard Zeke Mayo, left, drives past Oral Roberts guard Kareem Thompson on Saturday, March 9, 2024, during the men's quarterfinals at the Summit League basketball tournament at the Denny Sanford Premier Center in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Richard Carlson/Inertia And that Bison team was good . It ranked 31st in the final NET rankings. It received a 12 seed in the NCAA tournament. It was a legit mid-major hoops team. Those days are likely gone forever. The talent in this year's Summit League was down. It will be down further next season with so many top-level players transferring out. And if a coach does stumble upon a prospect who slipped under the radar of the Big Ten, Big 12 or Big East — like a Nelson or a Fidler — guess what? A team's gonna have him for two or three years and poof. Gone. No brave faces can stop that. Comments Share Share this article Opinion Opinion Advocates for ideas and draws conclusions based on the interpretation of facts and data. The Trust Project What is this? Tags Tags BISON MEDIA ZONE THE MCFEELY MESS SUBSCRIBERS ONLY By Mike McFeely Mike McFeely is a columnist for The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead. He began working for The Forum in the 1980s while he was a student studying journalism at Minnesota State University Moorhead. He's been with The Forum full time since 1990, minus a six-year hiatus when he hosted a local radio talk-show.
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