“I had an opportunity to sit down with him,” Cooper said. “I think at the end of the day, he just didn’t feel like it was a great fit from a university standpoint or in basketball. And he just decided he wasn’t happy, he wasn’t himself. He wanted to look elsewhere.”
Sullivan, who has transferred to Davidson, is hardly alone among college basketball players looking for a new start. The number of transfers in Division I went from 305 in 2006-07 to 367 in ’09-10, more than one per school.
By April of this year, an all-time high of 445 players had decided to switch schools, and that figure is expected to approach 500 by the end of the summer.
“Kids that are transferring now, they’re averaging 14-15 points. It’s just a different time,” Cooper said. “You didn’t see that years ago. In many ways, it’s got to be a gamble.”
“You’re gambling you can recreate something that’s been working for you. And it doesn’t always work out for the best.”
Forty percent of D-I players transfer before their junior seasons, and Wright State has been hit particularly hard this year. Four underclassmen — Alex Pritchett, Vance Hall, Jason Cuffee and John Balwigaire have all left the program — and Julius Mays, an All-Horizon League pick, graduated with one year of eligibility left and will play for Kentucky this season.
WSU coach Billy Donlon believes the spike in transfers around the nation is due mainly to younger players lacking the perseverance needed to succeed at the college level.
“I call this generation the microwave generation,” Donlon said. “They want results in 30 seconds or less. In college athletics, especially men’s basketball, you don’t become a very good Division I player in 30 seconds or less. It takes time.”
The AAU summer basketball circuit, which was nonexistent just a couple of decades ago, certainly isn’t grooming players for the rigors of college hoops. Losses seem inconsequential because they play so many games, and the travel schedule would make some college programs envious.
“In their AAU life, they go to Las Vegas, Orlando, Chicago, Los Angeles — all these great places to play — and they stay at unbelievable resorts. They think that’s the life in college, and it’s not,” Donlon said. “I think for many kids, they have no idea what they’re getting themselves into at the Division I level.
“You’re almost coming from a country club lifestyle in AAU. You play a game, then you don’t have a game for a few hours, so you go back to your pool, and then you play another game. That isn’t how college life is. We’re not preparing kids for the culture of Division I basketball when they’re younger, in a lot of instances. When they get here, it’s major, major culture shock.”
When players become unhappy in AAU, they can simply jump to another team. Loyalty to high schools has waned, too. Open enrollment and private schools give athletes options when they become disenchanted, and they’ve carried that mentality into college careers.
“In 1997 when I left high school, very, very few players ever changed high school. It was almost unheard of,” Dayton coach Archie Miller said. “Now, you see guys every spring moving to a new high school. I just think it’s become a culture of constant movement and instant gratification.”
The rash of college transfers also can be traced to the recruiting model in basketball. Coaches have been given fewer windows over the years to evaluate players. And until the approval this month of unlimited calls and text-messages to high school juniors and seniors, they had little time to get to know the players they ultimately were signing.
“You’ve got guys offer (scholarships to) kids without seeing them. You’ve got kids going to higher levels of schools who shouldn’t be there. A lot of mistakes are being made,” Miller said.
“When you combine how the recruiting landscape has changed with the culture of what our game has become in the last five to seven years, it’s clearly a recipe of, ‘Hey, if it’s not right on day one, I’ll just go somewhere else.’ ”
The NCAA gave coaches two additional weekends to evaluate recruits in April this year, but shortened the number of days on the road in July.
Donlon called the model “flawed,” and said coaches need the freedom to see prospects more often. He’s also against the rule that allows players to avoid having to sit out a year when they graduate from college with eligibility left and suit up at another school while pursuing a master’s degree.
Mays, the Horizon League newcomer of the year last season, has put the Raiders in a bind by leaving for UK.
“We all agree that 90-95 percent of master’s programs take two years. In the Julius Mays example, they have one year of eligibility. How many of those are going to stay for that extra year to get their master’s? I would contend none of them,” Donlon said.
“If they want to leave under that rule, they can sit out a year and play the following year. ... If we’re truly having that rule so a young man can go find a master’s degree he really wants to pursue, OK, let’s make sure he gets it.”
Of course, Division I basketball wouldn’t have so many transfer players if there weren’t schools willing to take them.
Miller, who was hired in April of 2011, had to scramble to restock the UD roster when two freshmen left the program and a pair of recruits pulled out of their letters-of-intent after the coaching change. His strategy in the last two recruiting cycles was to bring in transfers to make sure the Flyers would always have a veteran presence.
The risk in taking a transfer is that it might mean inheriting another team’s problem, but Miller said he only accepts players referred to him by people he trusts or those he knows himself. UD will have Vee Sanford (Georgetown) and Matt Derenbecker (LSU) beginning this season and Jordan Sibert (Ohio State) joining them in 2013-14.
“So many of these guys want an opportunity, want a bigger role. They want to go to a place where they can play more,” Miller said. “In our situation, when you have to rebuild a program and you have to replace 12 players in 14 months, you don’t want 12 freshmen and sophomores.
“For us to have the ability to take a transfer or two, to stay a little bit older — those guys (eventually) will be fourth-year juniors and fifth-year seniors — it’s a way to balance the early transition.”
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