Dalton Knecht leads my Tennessee basketball All-Transfer team as portal changes everything | Strange
Once upon a time not long ago, SEC basketball carried some familiarity from one season to the next.
Kentucky always had turnover, the one-and-dones moving on to the NBA. But when Tennessee played Florida or Arkansas, you had a feel for the roster the Vols were facing.
The transfer portal has changed all that. This winter, it’s almost like starting over.
The Ole Miss team that Tennessee beat to open league play had seven newcomers, fresh from the 2023 portal. So do LSU and Arkansas, whom the Vols face in February.
I counted 57 new transfers on the current SEC rosters. That doesn’t include junior-college signees or players who came through the portal in previous seasons.
That’s not to say there aren’t familiar faces. Allen Flanigan is at Ole Miss, following four years at Auburn. Myles Stute moved from Vandy to South Carolina. LSU’s haul includes Jordan Wright from Vandy and Daimion Collins from Kentucky. So it goes.
Three West Virginia teammates in 2022-23 popped into the portal and landed at different SEC destinations: Tre Mitchell at Kentucky, Jimmy Bell at Mississippi State and Mohamed Wague at Alabama.
Mitchell has portal Frequent Flyer points. UK is his fourth stop after West Virginia, Texas and UMass. So does 7-foot-5 Connor Vanover, formerly of California, Arkansas and Oral Roberts, now at Missouri.
Tennessee was a judicious portal player this time around. Dalton Knecht was a revelatory find from Northern Colorado. Jordan Gainey of South Carolina-Upstate gives Rick Barnes another shooter.
Which teams played the portal the best and worst? Too early to say. I’ll get back to that in March.
But for now, my Tennessee All-Transfer team.
There hasn’t been as much traffic over the years as I thought. UT’s media guide lists only 26 transfers from four-year institutions.
Here’s my top five.
Knecht: The Colorado native seems bigger than the 6-foot-6 listed and can get to the rim and finish with authority. He always seems ready to fire one off and has, at this writing, logged road outings of 37, 36 and 28 points, all against good opponents.
Tyler Smith: After playing one season at Iowa, the Tennessee native came home and was a stud for Bruce Pearl for 2½ seasons, 2007-2010. He was a key cog helping the Vols win the 2008 SEC title, their first in 41 years.
Smith played in 82 games, scoring 1,279 points, an average of 14.9. In a 2007 game, he became the first Vol to record a triple-double.
J.P. Prince: The transfer from Arizona joined fellow newcomer Smith in helping the Vols win the 2008 SEC title. A Swiss Army Knife of a player, he could fill a box score and defend almost anyone.
Prince played 95 games, starting 56, averaged 9.4 ppg and helped the Vols reach their only Elite Eight appearance in 2010.
Jeronne Maymon: A Marquette transfer, Maymon joined Jarnell Stokes to give coach Cuonzo Martin a Bruise Brothers combo that took them all the way to the Sweet 16 – and nearly the Elite Eight – in 2014.
Maymon averaged 9.7 points and 7.2 boards over 84 games and one day in Maui dumped 32 points and 20 rebounds on Memphis.
Scooter McFadgon: Like Knecht, McFadgon brought offense when he transferred from Memphis to play his final two years for Buzz Peterson, 2003-05.
Those two seasons didn’t amount to anything but McFadgon averaged 16.0 points in 54 games. He once scored 33 points against Kentucky. And he was money at the free-throw line, hitting a school-record 91.2 percent (134-of-147) in 2003-04.
Mike Strange is a former writer for the News Sentinel. He currently writes a weekly sports column for Shopper News.
This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Tennessee basketball Dalton Knecht leads my All-Transfer team | Strange
