There will be tons of moaning and groaning about the portal this offseason and people saying it will ruin the sport, but I think in a couple years it will settle down. It is going to be and has been totally wild this offseason and maybe will be next year, but as coaches and players get used to it I don't think we will see 1000+ players in the portal every year. We will probably always see players from small schools move up and players not performing at larger schools move down, which I think will ultimately be a good thing.
The timing of the great portal reckoning just hasn't been good for us in particular. If this was 2016 and we just used two transfers to get to the Sweet 16, we probably look pretty damn good to some transfers, like Arkansas does right now. Instead our program fell off, we changed coaches and we find ourselves trying to sell "come here and build something" to transfers rather than "come here and play in the Sweet 16," which is a much more difficult sell to a guy with two years to play two than it is to a high school senior.