There's also Patrick Lambley that VerbalCommits has listed as a walk-on. I wonder if he has or will be offered a scholarship?

That makes 5 Aggies in the portal now.

Anybody have any idea how many scholarships may be available now?

Wow...what an articulate and damning statement from Coach Katz about how unprofessional he feels that the AD and the CSUS President were in letting Brandon Laird go. There's so much wisdom in his statement about personal authenticity:

...the current Athletic Director and President love to use such phrases as :
1. "We always need to do the right thing"
2. "We will always be transparent"
3. "We are all about Hornet Family"

In my experience people who truly live those phrases do not feel a need to repeat such rhetoric over and over and over. Why should they? They know that their actions will speak for themselves, not their words. It is like the phrase I heard long ago, "your actions are so loud, I cannot hear what you are saying."

...The handling of Brandon Laird and his staff does not remotely begin to rise to the minimum level of human decency.

I wish i had that level of direction at such a young age. — agalum

For sure!

My only goal when I graduated from high school was to get a fast car and find a pretty girlfriend and that's what I did! I started working at the Chrysler Transmission Plant in Kokomo, Indiana, on my 18th birthday and bought a 1964 Corvette shortly after that. But then, Uncle Sam spoiled all the fun with the Vietnam War and off I went to the service for 4 years. The good part about being in the service was that it made me realize just how badly I wanted to get out and go to college! So after I got out I was able to use the GI Bill and I graduated from Davis in 1975.

Time to start taking him to Aggie games and sell him on being an Aggie when he goes to college!

Verbal Commits shows that there are currently 1091 players in the portal and very few of those have found a new school so far. You can track the entire list of players here:

https://www.verbalcommits.com/transfers/2022

It could be worse. Every player from last year's LSU team has entered the portal.

It’s certainly going to be a new-look LSU men’s basketball team next season. Following the firing of former head coach Will Wade and the hiring of new head coach Matt McMahon, 11 different Tigers players have now entered their names into the NCAA Transfer Portal – with forward Mwani Wilkinson being the latest, per On3’s Matt Zenitz.

Wilkinson, who averaged 4.0 points and 3.0 rebounds per game as a sophomore for LSU in 2021-22, has made the decision to join 10 of his former teammates in the portal – which means there are now no remaining players from last season’s team on McMahon’s current roster.

https://www.on3.com/college/lsu-tigers/news/lsu-tigers-basketball-loses-mwani-wilkinson-to-ncaa-transfer-portal-making-it-11-total-transfers/

Yep...we've had a lot of defections recently. Les is a good evaluator of talent though and I just hope he can bring in some players who can step right in and play this fall.

Wow...what the heck is going on...that's the 4th Aggie in the portal:
Caleb Fuller, Cameron Niles, Ezra Manjon and Caleb McGill. Who's next?

Locally, USF has 7. With their coach leaving, it will be interesting who stays/goes! — DrMike

It's not uncommon that coaches take a lot of their players with them when they change schools and, you know for a fact, that the players who leave most certainly had some kind of conversation with their coach before they decided go with him/her.

As with so many things, the rich get richer. The big money programs will find a way to "exploit" anything that will benefit them.

Even though coaches are not allowed to contact players prior to them entering the portal, I don't think we should be so naive as to think that there aren't many players who get messages "filtered down" to them through the grapevine from coaches, donors and potential NIL sponsors before they make the decision to enter the portal.

It's happening to varying degrees in all college sports from what I've read. Basketball and football have, of course, the highest numbers of players entering the portal each year football getting the most pressure because it's the biggest money sport for the power conference schools.

I'm in total agreement with Dick Vitale.

I just read a bunch of articles about the pros and cons of the the transfer portal for college athletes and, as you would expect, it's controversial. In many ways it allows athletes to have more choices about their athletic careers but the downside, of course, is that some coaches and programs push the limits and find ways to abuse the portal to their advantage. Adding to the controversy is how players can now get paid for the the use of their NIL (names, images and likeness) which opens the doors for further abuse by 3rd parties and deep pocketed donors getting into the ears of players with promises of more money and stardom from their NIL if they transfer to their school.

The bottom line to me as an Aggie fan is, as Vitale has noted, that the mid-major programs are getting hurt the most and Manjon entering the portal is a perfect example. He was found, recruited, and developed by Les and his staff and he has excelled as a result of his time playing for the Aggies. Now he can enter the portal without having to consult his coaches prior to entering it or having sit out a year after transferring and the Ags are left with a big hole in their roster.

Players were much less likely to jump into the portal so quickly when they had to sit out one year after transferring. Now there is little incentive to think more carefully about making the decision to transfer. Loyalty and commitment to their current coaches and teammates has largely become a thing of the past.

As SI reported in June, roughly 40% of men’s basketball players who join Division I programs out of high school have left their initial team by the end of their sophomore year.

https://www.si.com/college/2021/11/05/ncaa-basketball-season-transfers-bluebloods-recruiting

Just as John Calipari built his Kentucky teams around his controversial style of "one-and-done" rosters, we now have coaches who are building their teams around finding talented players in the portal from "lower level" programs rather than putting their time and effort into recruiting and developing players out of high school. They're happy to let the smaller programs find the diamonds-in-the-rough, invest in them and develop them and then snatch them up when they enter the portal.

Ezra, along with BJ Shorts, are the two of the best PG's we've had here. His natural, physical ability and quickness are off the charts and he's incredibly strong as well. He's a hard worker and he's come a long way in just 2 years here. I think he also has the potential to get much better as well.

One of the main reasons he's has developed into such a good PG here is because he's been coached so well by Les who, as a former, small, pro PG, knows as much about the PG position as any coach in the country. In addition, he has been able to play a ton of minutes in every game. He'll be lucky to find that kind of coaching and minutes at the "next level."

Manjon averaged 15.0 ppg just behind Pepper at 15.1 ppg. He also led the team in assists with 81 which is nearly twice as many as Caleb Fuller who was second insists with 46. So we will be losing our #2 and #3 scorers ( Manjon @ 15.0 and Fuller @ 12.1) for a combined 27.1 ppg plus our #1 and #2 assist leaders. Losing these two players is huge for the Aggies and it essentially puts us right back into a rebuilding season next year.

Now, feels like we’ll be right back in the middle of the pack. — Oldbanduhalum

That's my feeling as well. Les mostly recruits high school players that he feels have a high ceiling and that they can then be developed with time and effort. Many of the other BW teams are bringing in experienced players from the transfer portal some of whom have played at several different schools. That's often a crap shoot, in my opinion, since you never know what the chemistry may be like from one year to the next.

Les is committed to the "Aggie way" of putting character, education and the team as a family first and foremost. That's a slower process of building the team over time and, when you have a player like Manjon transfer out, it leaves a void that isn't easy to replace quickly.

Wow...this is a real shocker that I did not expect. Les essentially found Manjon and gave him a chance to play D1 ball. He had no other offers out of high school.

I thought he was more devoted to being an Aggie playing under Les and more connected to his teammates than he apparently was but this seems to be the nature of the way things are now with the transfer portal. It kinda makes you wonder who's next to go.

It may just be an education decision for Caleb. He is very, very close with Coach Les and his family. Since he's from England, he spent the Christmas Holidays with the Les family each year and they consider him "family."

Caleb retweeted this on his twitter page so it appears to be accurate. I'm curious to know why he apparently is not seeking to play as a grad at Davis if he has a year of eligibility left.

#11 Princeton had a good chance to beat #3 Indiana but they threw the ball away and lost 57-56 in the final seconds. Princeton reminded a lot of how the Aggies play.

In one of the biggest upsets in the tournament, #10 South Dakota soundly beat #2 Baylor in 61-47. So there are now two #10 seeds in the Sweet 16: SD and Creighton.