A Quick, Horizon League Themed Splash into the Transfer Portal Waters

The buzz lately has been all about the portal. NKU lost some bodies, but how does that compare across the league?

There has been a lot of talk about the transfer portal, the amount of players NKU is losing and what it all means for the outlook of league play next year. The easier answer is, and always has been: It depends on the transfer portal. And that goes for every team in the league.

Article by Kyle Craven

Data compilation by Kyle Craven

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But if you know us, we aren’t really interested in the “easy answer”. People have been asking about the portal, what it all means, so here you have it. For anyone interested, here is a list of the returning¹ Horizon League players who:

1. Played at least half of the minutes in…

2. .…At least half of their team's games²

(incoming transfers excluded):

Milwaukee: 5, Cleveland State: 4, Wright State: 4, NKU: 3, Oakland: 3, Robert Morris: 3, IUPUI: 3, Youngstown: 1, Green Bay: 1, Purdue-FW: 0, Detroit Mercy: 0

But this really only tells us so much, doesn’t it? Well maybe it does tell us a little bit, but I think the really interesting thing to look at here is — how good are those returning players? Of the teams returning players, only 7 return 3 or more players. The second image represents how those 7 teams rank in PER (player efficiency rating)³ for their top 3 players (AKA, their “Big 3”).

So what does this all mean? Well. It means that NKU’s “Big 3” core of Trey, Sam and Ques are already in the VERY EARLY top 3 in the league. We already knew that these three are very good players, potentially one of the best “Big 3”s in the league already, but the numbers back it up. Which counts for something. Maybe very little… but something. We will have to see how the rest of the transfer portal shakes out.

The data for this report was pulled on Saturday, April 8th so it may have changed slightly since then. Also excluded from the dataset were all Horizon League SENIORS as it is still unclear the totality of who is grad transferring, who is for sure staying for their COVID year and who is walking away completely.

Hey, while you’re at it — check out our scholarship board for next year (so far). We’re working on getting information added for our 2023 commits and others who have been offered or shown interest:

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1. REFERENCE: HORIZON LEAGUE TRANSFER INFO

https://horizoneroundtable.com/2023/03/21/hlmbb-transfer-tracker-2023/

2. REFERENCE: Horizon League Advanced Stats

3. Read More about how Player efficiency rating came to be and how it is calculated.