Eric Musselman provides strong statement when addressing his use of transfer portal

Few coaches were earlier pioneers of the transfer portal than Eric Musselman. The Arkansas coach made his name at the college level by splashing onto the national spotlight in the NCAA Tournament with Nevada teams led exclusively by transfers. Such as Caleb and Cody Martin, who he took from NC State and molded into NBA players who both just signed second contracts this summer.

Since taking the Razorbacks job, that aspect of his coaching profile hasn’t changed a bit. Musselman loves loading up through the Transfer Portal — especially now that players aren’t required to sit out a year. However, now at an SEC program, Muss finds himself gravitating towards top-ranked freshmen just as much as transfers.

At a recent press conference, he explained this shift in philosophy:

“We have six freshman here this year. And I think that the way you build your team is…how do you accumulate as many pieces that fit that are high-level talent — whether they’re freshmen or transfers?

“You know, we do so many statistical things. Like, Todd Lee’s broken down every game last year — in every possession for the last four minutes. And he and I have gone through those and the rhyme or reason for why we did something, why we didn’t. Calling a timeout here, not calling a timeout there. We do the same thing with roster management. So, one year we had one freshman. One year we had four freshmen. Now we have six.”

But why is Eric Musselman taking more and more freshmen? Well, perhaps because they are the most talented players available.

“I have no idea what the roster will look like. What I do know, from doing statistical analysis and a deep dive — there’s not a lot of lottery picks that are transfers. I can tell you that right now. Because I’ve studied this thing. And there’s not a whole of transfers in the first round. And the only way you can win in the SEC — it makes it a lot easier if you have lottery picks. If you don’t have lottery picks, you got to have draft picks. That’s stone cold fact. So you got to have some freshman too I think.”

He’s not wrong. Even since the new transfer rules allowed everybody to switch schools without punishment — and now, nearly 1,000 guys change teams each offseason — the NBA Draft still favors the freshmen. In the two NBA Drafts since the rules took effect, one-and-done’s still dominated the first round. 27 freshman were picked in the first round over the last two years, including seven top-five picks. Meanwhile, just four transfers total were picked in the first round, with the highest being ninth.

Stone cold fact: five-stars are still the most talented commodities available.