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Message: [QUOTE="oldhusky, post: 5025883, member: 9844"] I think Seton Hall got one or two, but I may be confusing that with portal pickups. In general though I think there is a disturbing trend going on here. The NIL landscape has changed the relative strength of the conferences, making the Power 5 (now power 4) conferences even more dominant over the rest. The Big East might be the best of the rest, but that probably means less than it used to. Players used to make college decisions based on basketball factors. Now financial factors are very important too. If you are a pretty average Division 1 prospect it doesn't matter much, because you likely won't get much if any NIL money anyway. if you are a top player, however, playing in a power conference vs. the Big east could be a big monetary difference. Uconn can overcome that disadvantage, but many Big East schools cannot. In the portal the trend is clear, good talent is leaving the Big East. A coach might recruit a player that turns out to be better than their high school rating, then lose them to a power conference because they became good enough to make significant money elsewhere. I think this affects initial recruiting and the portal. The power conferences have always dominated the top of the recruiting rankings, but now I think it will be even more so. The gap between the top conferences and the Big East will grow, and it will become even harder to keep very good players in the conference even when you recruit or develop them. I also think the gap between Uconn and the rest of the conference will grow bigger with fewer challenged games within the conference. It is what it is, but NIL has and will continue to make the difference between the haves and the have nots even bigger, and it women's basketball the haves end with the top four conferences and a few exceptions like Uconn. [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach