ATHENS – The University of Miami is a likely destination for Georgia basketball star Toumani Camara.
Though he is from Brussels, Belgium, Camara attended Chaminade-Madonna College Prep School in Hollywood, Fla., just north of Miami, for his last two years of high school. His girlfriend and his U.S. guardian still live there. That’s home for him.
The Hurricanes surely would take him. Coach Jim Larrañaga’s team has had four players enter the transfer portal since the season ended, including leading scorer Chris Lykes. There are reports that discussions between Camara and Miami already are taking place.
Four is, of course, the same number of players who are in the portal from Tom Crean’s Georgia team, Camara being the latest. He, too, is a huge loss. An every-game starter, the 6-foot-8, 220-pound sophomore averaged 12.8 points, 7.7 rebounds and 1.1 blocks per game for the Bulldogs this season.
Camara was the second starter to leave UGA since the Bulldogs played their final game of the season. Guard Tye Fagan (9.2 ppg, 4.3 rpg) also chose to leave last week. He followed backups Christian Brown and Mikal Starks.
That brings to 12 the number of players who have left the program since Crean became Georgia’s coach three years ago. That’s a disturbing number, but not any more than anywhere else, really.
The number of Division I transfers currently in the portal stood at 1,172 as of 10:51 a.m. Friday, according to verbalcommits.com. Five players are transferring from Florida, which played two rounds in the NCAA Tournament, and they’re losing another in leading scorer Tre Mann, a sophomore who has decided to enter the NBA draft.
Missouri has lost five players from this season’s team. Memphis had three starters leave two days after winning the NIT. According to a recent story in the Miami Herald, 74 Division I programs currently have had five or more players transfer in 2021.
Welcome to modern college basketball in the age of the transfer portal.
So, while nobody can blame the players for exercising their personal rights playing a sport where their coaches can leave on a whim, there are going to be repercussions and they’re developing fast.
The biggest might be from the fan base. Never mind the pandemic, attendance was sagging even before the pandemic. And while TV viewing numbers for this year’s NCAA Tournament have been good, fans are increasingly checking out on their teams.
A 9-year-old fan of the Tennessee Volunteers recently decided he was tired of all the messiness continually associated with his team. So he sent out letters to several SEC football coaches asking if they wanted to adopt a “a 5-star fan.”
Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin was the first recipient to respond and third-grader Landon Israel is now yelling “Hotty Toddy.”
Some of these players might scoff at the importance of a school’s fans. They might think the ones at the next place will adopt love them and love them just as much.
Perhaps, perhaps not. They forget that their playing days don’t last forever. Fewer than 1% of basketball players get drafted by an NBA team and less than that actually secure a second contract.
The point is, they’re going to need a real job someday.
If a player shows loyalty to a program and becomes a familiar name to the alumni base, jobs can be easy to come by. But if they remember as that guy that showed up for a year or two but bolted for another school, they might be inclined to think you’d do the same thing with their company.
No wonder Roy Williams called it quits.
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