BYU small forward Marcus Adams Jr. enters NCAA Transfer Portal
Shortly after BYU’s national championship aspirations came to a halt in the first round of the NCAA tournament, the Cougars find themselves losing one of their highly touted freshmen from last season. On3 has learned that freshman small forward Marcus Adams, who was on the radar of a number of big-time blue-blood schools, has decided to enter into the NCAA Transfer Portal.
Adams was originally a member of the 2024 recruiting class but elected to reclassify to 2023 and commit to the Kansas Jayhawks last March. He chose to join Bill Self and the Jayhawks over the likes of other powers such as Syracuse and arguably California’s top college basketball institution, UCLA.
Adams played high school basketball at Nathaniel Narbonne High in Harbor City, CA, where he was a four-star prospect and the No. 66 overall recruit in the 2023 cycle. According to the On3 Industry Ranking, a weighted average that utilizes all four major recruiting media companies, Adams was also the No. 14 small forward prospect and the No. 11 player in the state of California.
BYU had an impressive first year in the Big 12 this season, finishing the year 6th in the conference with a 23-11 overall record and tied with perennial power the Kansas Jayhawks with a 10-8 season in the conference. That was good enough to earn the Cougars a No. 6 seed in this year’s Men’s March Madness tournament. But that is where things unraveled for the Cougars of Brigham Young.
In the first round of the men’s NCAA tournament, BYU would face off against No. 11 seed Duquesne. The Dukes would then proceed to shock the college basketball world by upsetting BYU in the opening round with a 71-67 victory. The Dukes were able to subdue the Cougars thanks to their impressive defense. BYU was only able to connect on 33% of their three-point attempts, going 8-24 in the game. On top of that, the Cougars were held to 8 fewer attempts than their average as they came into the game, putting up 32 three-point attempts per contest.
For this contest, Adams did not get to see the floor and watched the Cougars’ season end from the sideline, with very little input on the results