When former MTSU basketball coach Kermit Davis departed Murfreesboro for Ole Miss following the 2017-2018 season, he left as the winningest coach in program history.
In 16 seasons, he won 332 games, captured seven conference championships and reached three NCAA Tournaments, including one of the biggest March Madness upsets ever over No. 2 seed Michigan State in the 2016 NCAA Tournament first round.
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Davis, who was inducted into the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame’s Class of 2026 in Nashville on July 11, reflected on Middle Tennessee’s historic 2016 season and said the current transfer portal and recruiting landscape would have made it harder to keep that group together.
“How many of those guys (Giddy Potts, Reggie Upshaw) could we have kept to come back the next year?” Davis said. “We were keeping these really good players for three and four years at a time, and then getting older, and that’s why we could win at UCLA, at Tennessee, Vandy, Michigan State.”
“That’s getting harder and harder to do these days.”
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The NCAA shifted the transfer portal landscape in 2021 when it adopted the one-time transfer rule, allowing athletes to switch schools without sitting out a season. The rule, combined with the growth of the transfer portal, made it easier for players at mid-major programs to leave for power conferences.
Potts was a sophomore during the Blue Raiders’ 2016 NCAA Tournament run, but Upshaw, Perrin Buford, Darnell Harris and Jayqwan Raymond, who were seniors, gave Davis the veteran foundation that prioritized player development and roster continuity.
In his five-year tenure at Ole Miss from 2018-2023, he only had one player, guard Luis Rodriguez, stay for four years.
Transfer portal changes have shifted how head coaches build competitive programs, but Davis still believes successful programs need a foundation of high school players.
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“To jump right in the portal for everything, I think it’s a mistake,” he said. “You still need a base of three to five good high school players and try to grow them.”
This article originally appeared on Murfreesboro Daily News Journal: Former MTSU basketball coach Kermit Davis on effects of transfer portal
