Best college basketball transfer portal fits: Who makes the top 5?
College basketball players have until Tuesday to enter the transfer portal, and there undoubtedly will be more entrants leading up to that deadline.
But by and large? The hay’s already in the barn.
With the portal having been open a month, it shouldn’t be surprising that most of the best available players are already accounted for. Fifteen of The Athletic’s top 20 transfers have found new homes. Texas Tech wing Darrion Williams, Florida State wing Jamir Watkins, St. John’s wing RJ Luis, Washington State wing Cedric Coward and North Carolina guard Ian Jackson are the five still available — and only 11 of our top 50 remain free agents.
So enough dust has settled to start homing in on some of this cycle’s most important moves.
Behold, five of my favorite transfer portal fits (in alphabetical order). Emphasis on , because these are not the five most-talented players who changed teams. Rather, these are five situations I think will be most beneficial both for the player and his new team. Only one player picked is in the top 10, per CJ Moore and Sam Vecenie’s rankings — but that doesn’t mean all five won’t pay major dividends next season.
Silas Demary Jr., UConn
2024-25 stats (at Georgia): 13.5 points, 3.9 rebounds, 3.1 assists and 1.7 steals per game, while shooting 37.4 percent from 3 and 80.4 percent from the free-throw line.
Transfer portal rank: No. 11
UConn’s biggest shortcoming this season, without question, was its season-long defensive issues. But not far behind was the Huskies’ inconsistency at point guard, where career reserve Hassan Diarra and Saint Mary’s transfer Aidan Mahaney struggled to fill the void left by Final Four Most Outstanding Player Tristen Newton. Enter Demary, who is cut from the same do-everything cloth as Newton and should help Dan Hurley’s offense get back to its pristine 2023 and 2024 form.
Aday Mara, Michigan
2024-25 stats (at UCLA): 6.4 points, 4 rebounds, 1.6 blocks and 1 assist per game.
Transfer portal rank: No. 38
If anyone is going to fully unlock the 7-foot-3 Mara’s passing skills, it’ll be Dusty May. If May can think outside the box on how to best use the rising Spanish junior, the juice should be worth the squeeze; there’s a reason Mara arrived in college as a five-star recruit with first-round buzz, before two underwhelming seasons at UCLA.
KeShawn Murphy, Auburn
2024-25 stats (at Mississippi State): 11.7 points, 7.4 rebounds, 1.6 assists and 1.1 blocks per game.
Transfer portal rank: No. 78
Most of Auburn’s Final Four roster, including All-American center Johni Broome, is gone, meaning it’s time for Bruce Pearl to restock. That’s where Murphy comes in, as a plug-and-play frontcourt piece with proven success in the SEC. He was Mississippi State’s leading rebounder and second-leading scorer this season. If the 6-foot-10 Murphy continues the ascent he showed this season, there’s no reason he can’t be the top interior option for an Auburn team that should contend in the SEC.
Henri Veesaar, North Carolina
2024-25 stats (at Arizona): 9.4 points, 5 rebounds, 1.3 assists and 1.1 blocks per game.
Transfer portal rank: No. 5
UNC was one of the shortest high-major teams this season, and Hubert Davis was not going to tolerate another undermanned frontcourt. The best way to remedy that? Adding arguably the best center in the portal, Veesaar, who is the Tar Heels’ first 7-footer since Tyler Zeller in 2012. Veesaar was originally slated to be part of Arizona’s massive three-man center rotation alongside Tobe Awaka and Motiejus Krivas, but when Krivas suffered a season-ending foot injury, it shifted Veesaar into a more prominent role — and he quickly proved that he could more than handle it.
Adrian Wooley, Louisville
2024-25 stats (at Kennesaw State): 18.8 points, 5.2 rebounds, 3.6 assists and 1.4 steals per game while shooting 42.2 percent from 3 and 76.9 percent from the free-throw line.
Transfer portal rank: No. 23
Louisville has added a bevy of high-profile guards this offseason — Ryan Conwell (Xavier) and Isaac McKneely (Virginia) from the transfer portal, plus top-10 high school recruit Mikel Brown Jr. — but Wooley’s game is as tailor-made for Kelsey’s system as any of them.