Until someone wins a championship with mostly portal guys, the path to take is still bringing in young studs and getting them into your system. If we recruit guys with the right mindset like Karaban and Clingan the playing time works itself out. Yes we had a couple key portal pieces this past year, but the core of our team was home grown. Having a team full of 4th/5th year experienced transfers sounds nice, but you don’t have much time to build a culture and get a team to gel. Also, most of the kids in the portal are in the portal to benefit themselves, not take the unselfish team first approach.
Our staff has used the portal to our advantage both in filling in gaps and giving guys without enough talent the ability to move on. One positive is you don’t get “stuck” with a guy for 4 years who doesn’t have enough talent to get on the court. We’re always gonna have 2-3 guys on scholarship that can’t get court time. Someday one of those guys will be a late bloomer and breakout into a bigger roll. Most times they’ll stay 1-2 years and hit the portal. Richie Springs was kind of the exception to this, but the guy just loved UConn and wanted to contribute even if it was only during practice.
To make a long story short, you still need to grab your stars straight out of high school and get guys with the right attitude. If I’m Hurley with some of these top guys I tell them “If you want to go play 30 minutes a game and lose in the first round of the tournament, go play for Duke, UNC or Kentucky. If you want to play 10-15 minutes a game and earn a role on a championship team and improve your NBA stock, come to UConn”