Exploring Team-Building of Elite, Great and Good Teams

How many days did it take to build Rome?

The team-building landscape has greatly changed within the past handful of seasons. The introduction of the one-time transfer waiver, the publicization of NIL, and now a multi-time transfer waiver allow teams to be easily rebuilt over an offseason. Instead of waiting for a new coach to bring in recruits, transfers can make a team old quickly.

Coaching staffs vary in activity in any given offseason based on how well their team performed, the size of their NIL budget, and of course, their own system’s dogma. While some programs are less affected by the transfer portal than others, we see many high-major programs' rosters ravaged, whether due to underperformance, new leadership, or better opportunities ($) elsewhere.

Is there a way to build a roster that best guarantees success? Of course not, but are there trends that we can view which might reveal insights? Possibly.

The figure above is an overview of the number of commits of the top 25 in 247Sports’ Composite, separated based on the type of commit, whether high school recruit or transfer. While the standouts (like UConn from the past two years) are split based on the type and number of recruits, we can see that it is difficult and rare to build an elite team with the rotation built over an offseason, with an ADJE outside of 20 generally landing a team outside of the top 10.

Though it concerns just five data points, the figure above highlights an interesting trend: the sheer volume of commits on a year-to-year basis. As transferring (and re-transferring) becomes more accessible, records are expected to be broken on an annual basis regarding the number of students in the transfer portal. This, of course, goes both ways, with rosters needing to be remade over the offseason. Thus, this past offseason, five teams needed to add nine or more commits, while this number sat at zero in 22-23.

While it should not be a surprise that the biggest fish are in the best-performing conferences, the impact on their rosters, whether due to any of the three aforementioned reasons of roster desolation or something else, simply goes to show that there are very few teams who are not affected.

In digging a bit further into how roster disruption affects programs, we can see above the great variance in the number of commits for teams that didn’t make the tournament (top two graphs). The box plot reveals that great variance likely lessens the odds of making the tournament, namely among bigger fish, while the sweet spot seems to be four additions of either. Of course, Duke and Kentucky greatly alter the way in which they are viewed.

Not every commit is to be viewed equally, and adding 10 commits via the transfer portal for a Big Sky team differs from a Big East team. And while this can be accepted sans evidence, the extent to which this is true has greatly changed over the past few offseasons. While Kentucky was a good, not great team this past season with 10 recruits added in the past offseason, this roster-building strategy does not hold the potency of years past.

Regression of ADJE Based on Transfer’s Ranking

Regression of ADJE Based on Freshman’s Ranking

Regardless of this, the impact of a five-star freshman is shown to be more directly correlated to KenPom’s ADJE than a five-star rated transfer. Without context, this would state a five-star freshman has triple the impact of a five-star recruit. This, of course, is greatly skewed due to Eastern Michigan’s poor performance after adding transfer Emoni Bates, and UConn adding freshman Stephon Castle en route to a National Championship this past season.

To close, I took a manual look at the best teams over the past two seasons. Of the top five teams, there was only one five-star transfer, this being Texas’ addition of Tyreese Hunter. Though a five-star freshman isn’t a requirement (as seen with UConn in 2023), a single high-level player seems to be the ideal model. Depth via four-star additions is ideal in both retaining that talent over multiple years and relying more heavily on the base built on returning talent.

Of these 10 teams, only two stand out in basing their success more heavily on offseason additions than returning talent, those being Tennessee this past season and Alabama, a Final Four team in 22-23. Dalton Knecht and Brandon Miller were two of the best players in the country in their respective final seasons in college; it isn’t likely either of these players were expected to be as paramount for their team’s success as when they were added, especially with Knecht being a four-star rated transfer.

A good team may be built in an offseason, but it is unlikely next year’s national champion will have more than eight offseason additions.

-BM