The transfer portal has hit South Dakota State basketball again.
The Jackrabbit men have seen four players hit the portal over the past week after losing two players to the portal last year. This year is a little different in that head coach Eric Henderson left to take the head coaching job at Drake.
Two of the four players, Owen Larson and Stoney Hadnot, left after Hendersons departure. They havent announced where they are going but it would not be shocking if they followed Henderson to Des Moines.
Star center Oscar Cluff entered the portal last week and committed to Purdue on Monday. Cluff spent one season in Brookings after one year at Washington State. He was a senior this past season and received extra eligibility due to the fact he played for a junior college in the first two years of his career, which is a rule that was passed in late December.
The final transfer was William Whorton, who hit the portal right away. He ended up committing to Indiana University Indianapolis. Whorton played 9.3 minutes per game and averaged 3.0 points per game. He did not play over two minutes in the final 13 games of the season.
None of these transfers are very surprising in this day and age of college basketball. Last year probably made SDSU fans more mad when Zeke Mayo went to Kansas and William Kyle III left for UCLA.
When that happened a lot of people thought it would be tough for the Jacks to reload. However, they picked up Cluff from Washington State and he averaged 17.6 points per game and was second in the country in rebounding, averaging 12.3 per game.
New head coach Bryan Petersen will have his work cut out to fill his first roster as the highlight of SDSUs recruiting class, Griffin Goodbary from Sioux Falls, took back his National Letter of Intent. Cluff, Larson and Hadnot also made up 45.1% of the Jacks scoring this past season.
As of now, Petersen does have two of the top three scorers in Kalen Garry and Joe Sayler returning. He also has Matthew Mors returning, who had a career year in his junior season. So, the cupboard isnt completely bare, but he will need to go out and find three or four transfers to fill the roster and for SDSUs sake, hopefully two of them are impact players.
So, why not find another Cluff this offseason?
Petersen is a former head coach of Kirkwood Community College in Iowa and he brought two players from Kirkwood to SDSU when he came to Brookings in Douglas Wilson and Luke Appel. Wilson was the Summit League Player of the Year in his first season in Brookings in 2020 and Appel was the Sixth Man of the Year in 2022.
Kirkwood won the NJCAA Division II National Championship this season, so maybe Petersen goes back to the well and takes some JUCO players again. Just like Cluff, these players would have extra eligibility as well and there are plenty of success stories around the country with these kinds of players.
Theres also plenty of players from Power Five conferences that are looking for bigger roles. They didnt find playing time at the original school they went to and have to drop down to the mid-majors to fully untap their potential.
Whichever route Petersen chooses, there should be plenty of players that want to come play for a program that has been to the NCAA Tournament seven times in the past 15 seasons.
The SDSU women had a star player enter the portal for the first time in its existence as Haleigh Timmer entered last week. Timmer has one year of eligibility left. She averaged 10.9 points per game in her three seasons as a Jackrabbit, but showed flashes of being able to score at a higher clip. She committed to Oklahoma State on Wednesday night, who the Jackrabbits beat in the first round of the NCAA Tournament this past season.
Timmer was SDSUs second-leading scorer this past season and the Jacks already lost their third-leading scorer in Paige Meyer to graduation.
With the loss of Timmer, SDSU will now have an open spot on its roster and it will be interesting if the Jacks look to the portal to replace that production or if head coach Aaron Johnston expects other players to step up in those roles next season.
Johnston has used transfers when needed over the past eight years with the likes of Tagyn Larson, Rylie Cascio-Jensen, Haley Greer and Dru Gylten. All made an impact in some sort of form, but Larson and Gylten helped out the most and were both from South Dakota.
The women are in a similar spot as the men, if not a better situation, where players should want to come to SDSU. The Jackrabbit women made the NCAA Tournament for the 17th time in March and won their sixth tournament game. They then got to play UConn on ESPN in the second round and although they lost by 44 points, it was great exposure for the program.
Its a good pitch to have if youre talking to transfers. Come to SDSU and youll be able to play on the biggest stage in womens college basketball.
Johnston and Petersen have a little under three weeks to decide what they want to do as the portal closes April 22. Its the wild west in college sports nowadays and SDSU is right in the middle of it.
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