A narrative was brewing that you couldn't build a championship-level team with a roster chock full of transfers. "There are no pros in the portal," Houston coach Kelvin Sampson said at the 2024 Big 12 Media Days. "If they were pros, they wouldn't be in the portal.
They're all college guys looking to improve." Michigan changed the math, laying out a blueprint of what's possible when you hit four grand slams in the portal. Dusty May started four transfers (Yaxel Lendeborg, Morez Johnson, Aday Mara and Elliot Cadeau) on the way to Michigan's National Championship last year. Lendeborg, Johnson and Mara became lottery picks.
Michigan may be a special outlier, but that didn't stop teams from dropping big bags in free agency to acquire top-shelf transfer talent with the hope that if it all clicks, they could be playing on the first Monday in April, too. Exhibition play provided some hints about where some high-priced portal coups sit in the hierarchy of their new teams. Transfer portal rankings are irrelevant now.
The stone-cold truth is that a few big-name transfers are going to flop this year. Change is hard, plus some situations have changed dramatically since the spring, due to the last-second influx of 5-in-5 seniors who have successfully sued their way back into the college game. Before we get into the nitty-gritty of which transfers are primed to be the most successful, here are some ground rules: Bidunga was the top-rated player in the 2026 transfer portal cycle because he can be such an impactful player even on the nights when he scores six points.
Bidunga will be the fire-douser for Louisville this year. We already saw it in Louisville's exhibition win at Kansas when Bidunga switched onto KU five-star wing Tyran Stokes and gave him the business. The 6-9 forward has a massive 7-3 wingspan and can guard anybody and everybody.
He's one of the best four defenders in all of college basketball, next to Arizona's Mo Krivas, Houston's JoJo Tugler and Florida's Rueben Chinyelu. Bidunga's already a useful offensive player because you can throw a lob near the square and he'll throw it down, but continuing to refine his handle will be a major X factor. If Louisville can play Bidunga at the 4 and 7-2 freshman center Obinna Ekezie Jr. at the 5, Bidunga needs to be able to deck it and slash to the tin.
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