| Shortly after Kye Robinson and Mary Washington got past the rest of the NCAA Tournament field, the Eagles’ sophomore All-America pick announced he was entering the transfer portal, and he’s not the only D3hoops.com All-America pick to do so. Photo by Ryan Coleman, d3photography.com |
By Patrick Coleman
D3sports.com
INDIANAPOLIS — There was time in college basketball when we would talk about a team full of underclassmen who got further than expected in the NCAA Tournament and describe them as a team that “got there a year early.”
Similarly, we would look at a team full of seniors and talk about their window of opportunity closing.
These two descriptions at one point could have referenced the University of Mary Washington and Emory University, respectively. But these days, there is no early, and there is very little waiting for senior seasons in order to achieve and succeed in the NCAA Tournament.
Your window of opportunity is when you make it these days in college sports, because there’s no guarantee you’ll get all of your returning student-athletes to actually return.
This is not new, of course: There’s never been a guarantee. But with the transfer portal offering so much upward mobility to Division III student-athletes, you may not get your star sophomore back, or your star freshman.
Case in point: Things could be looking way up for Illinois Wesleyan for next season. The Titans have the last two D3hoops.com national Rookies of the Year on their roster, with guard Josh Fridman expected to come back from injury to play next fall, plus big man Noah Cleveland, the 2026 D3hoops.com Rookie of the Year. Mason Funk, a 6-5 swing, had an All-American season this year as a junior. Instead, Cleveland announced he was entering the transfer portal and perhaps the window for Illinois Wesleyan in 2026-27 is not quite as wide open.
As this piece was being written, less than 24 hours after Mary Washington won the national title, sophomore All-America guard Kye Robinson announced he was entering the portal as well. This was not a shock, to be sure, but underscores how important it was for the Eagles to get that national title in 2026.
“In today’s day and age, you never know,” Mary Washington men’s basketball coach Marcus Kahn said on Sunday evening, after his Eagles defeated Emory 75-73 to win the NCAA Tournament. “I really, really don’t like that part about college athletics anymore, and it’s ruining it. But, we’re in our window. This is a good, young team. I’m going to wake up tomorrow assuming we’ll have everybody back until I hear differently. But yeah, you never know. It’s good we took full advantage of this opportunity.”
“I’m still working on getting comfortable with the current landscape of college basketball,” says Ron Rose, Illinois Wesleyan’s head coach. “The transfer portal hasn’t affected Illinois Wesleyan enough to know exactly how to handle these types of situations.”
The Titans men’s basketball program has had two underclassmen put their names in the portal in recent years. One returned to the program. Cleveland, as of this publication date, has not yet committed to a new team.
“Thankfully, we’re not a program that loses half its roster each spring,” Rose said. “I don’t know how some of these programs that lose the majority of their roster deal with it.”
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| Noah Cleveland was a strong candidate for D3hoops.com Player of the Year as a freshman, but entered the portal after Illinois Wesleyan’s season ended in the Elite Eight. Photo by Ryan Coleman, d3photography.com |
Cleveland, the Bloomington, Illinois-area native who chose not to play college basketball immediately coming out of high school, and whom Rose essentially recruited out of the tennis class he teaches each spring, was a strong candidate for not only D3hoops.com Rookie of the Year, but Player of the Year.
“Noah had an incredible year. I loved coaching him. I love having him part of the program. We would not have been in the position we were without him, but you know, you’re either getting a player for one, two, three years at most, four, and they move on.”
D3hoops.com Rookies of the Year are often a little more mobile than most. Even in the pre-portal days, Williams freshman Duncan Robinson, who was similarly selected the D3hoops.com Rookie of the Year and to the All-America team as a freshman in 2014, took the old-style route to Division I, sitting out a year before emerging to play for the University of Michigan. He’s now averaging 12 points per game for the Detroit Pistons. Later, 2018 Rookie of the Year Spencer Levi left the University of Dallas to play at Division II UNC-Pembroke. Christian Green, the 2024 Rookie of the Year at Trinity (Texas), left after his sophomore year to go to Division I Stephen F. Austin, where he averaged just under seven minutes per game this year.
“Sometimes you just don’t have the entire group together as long, but that doesn’t mean you can’t stay competitive and still have continuity.”— Ron Rose, Illinois Wesleyan men’s basketball coach |
Similarly, Brayden Fabgemi, who was our Region 5 Rookie of the Year at Johns Hopkins in 2024 moved to Division I Central Arkansas, where he put up numbers quite similar to his D-III numbers. This past year, he moved up the D-I ladder a rung or two to UC Davis, where he averaged 7.0 points and 4.3 assists.
“We have a guy in there now who is a big part of who we were the last couple of years, and we just look at it as an opportunity for one of our younger players now to get some extended minutes and to be, it’s their turn now, you know?” said Mount Union men’s basketball coach Mike Fuline. Chance Casenhiser, who averaged 17.1 points and 3.4 rebounds per year this season as a sophomore, announced he was entering the portal. So is Caleb Laurich, who started all 28 games for the Purple Raiders this season and averaged 6.0 points and 5.8 rebounds.
“I think at our level, we just like to have a great amount of depth,” Fuline said. “You just kind of have to turn the page and then if you have to go add somebody, one or two guys from the portal to kind of help, until that development happens, then that’s something that you have to do.”
“That’s the challenge of coaching in this new era,” Rose said, “is sometimes you just don’t have the entire group together as long, but that doesn’t mean you can’t stay competitive and still have continuity. The reality is, if Noah chooses to leave, we will still have the majority of our team returning, and I’m very excited about the returning guys.”
“That means we did our job recruiting the right kids, developing the right kids,” said UW-La Crosse coach JT Gritzmacher. His Eagles could be considered to have just missed a window. This particular set of Eagles lost at Mary Washington by five points in the round of 16 behind three senior starters. But, with second team D3hoops.com All-America selection Sam Grieger returning, the outlook would look completely different than it does now, with Grieger finishing up his bachelor’s degree, going in the portal and likely to receive Division I offers for his final season of basketball.
“He wants to go somewhere where he knows he has the opportunity to win basketball games, because that’s just who he is,” Gritzmacher said. “And then obviously have an opportunity to contribute to a team.”
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| Sam Grieger will be finishing his bachelor’s degree at UW-La Crosse this spring, and entered the portal to find a new home for his final year of eligibility. Photo by Mike Atherton, d3photography.com |
Gritzmacher sees the benefit of it for Division III, which is getting some kids straight out of high school who never would have gone Division III in the past. Programs at the scholarship level are recruiting fewer kids directly out of high school, meaning quality guys end up going to Division III.
Even if it’s just for a year or two.
“Now you have all these kids that, five years ago, they’re Division II players. Now we can get them at our level.
“This class we’ve got about seven freshmen coming in and, and we’ll probably add two to three kids from the portal,” Gritzenmacher said. “And our roster will be around 18 players. That’s kind of where we’re at, and I think that’s kind of probably where we’re going to be at going forward. I just think that you can’t have enough talented players. That’s a good problem to have and then you can figure it out from there.”
It may be a good problem, but good problems are still problems. Division III fans, and Division III coaches, generally don’t want to see the division be a minor league development system for the folks who have scholarships to hand out. But it’s true that the level of play in Division III is higher than it’s ever been, and it is due in some part to the portal pushing more talented freshmen and sophomores into D-III schools before they move on elsewhere.
“We just got done watching some great basketball in the Final Four, in Division III,” Fuline says. “But what people are starting to realize, which I realized a long time ago, is those are all scholarship types of players. We have scholarship level guys here. If they were to choose to do that, I’m sure they can go find somebody to pay for their education.”
“The window is every year now,” said Emory coach Jason Zimmerman, whose program might normally have been considered to have seen its window close with its championship loss and graduation of All-America guards Ben Pearce and Jair Knight. “I’ve been blessed to be at a place like Emory for 19 years, and to be able to keep kids.
“But I still think you can do it at the highest level. I still think you can have relationships, and it is just quicker.
“It’s like speed dating.”