MORAGA – A few days before its NCAA Tournament game last month, the Saint Mary’s College men’s basketball team touted its throwback culture, one that didn’t have a single player leave or enter the program via the transfer portal the previous offseason.
The Gaels were a relic to a time before Name, Image and Likeness endorsement deals and players hopping from team to team became a reality, a changing landscape their coach has had a hard time embracing.
“I’m worried,” coach Randy Bennett said at the time. “I don’t know what the long-term result is on this thing, but I don’t think it’s good.”
Since the end of the season, the challenges and tribulations of modern collegiate athletics have surfaced at Saint Mary’s.
The town’s favorite son, Aidan Mahaney, who graduated from nearby Campolindo High two years ago, entered the transfer portal last week and is being courted by defending champion UConn and Kentucky, among others.
Joshua Jefferson transferred on Tuesday to Iowa State, the same day that highly-touted three-star recruit Zion Sensley of Archbishop Riordan in San Francisco decommitted – moves that, like it not, brought Saint Mary’s into the firestorm of the modern era.
“You’re gonna have to adapt to it, and you can have a good attitude about it or a bad attitude about it, and I know which one will work better,” Bennett, 61, told the Bay Area News Group on Thursday.
Aidan Mahaney (20), shown here in a file photo, has entered the transfer portal. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group)
After losing three players in a week, Bennett has no choice but to adapt now.
ESPN’s Joe Lunardi of Bracketology fame is confident the Gaels will figure it out.
“Saint Mary’s has been the best true mid-major in America for a decade,” Lunardi said in an interview with the Bay Area News Group. “There’s never been a true mid-major to get back-to-back-to-back five seeds as an at-large in this era. We’re talking 1/100th of one percent.”
Even with the departures, the cupboard is not bare for the defending West Coast Conference champions.
Augustas Marciulionis was the WCC player of the year and Mitchell Saxen was the defensive player of the year this past season.
Both are homegrown and presumed to be returning, which has long been Saint Mary’s philosophy.
“That’s the best way to have a great culture and continue to be good year after year,” Bennett said. “And it’s not easy, especially at Saint Mary’s, but that’s the way we want to do it.”
Bennett believes his program can continue to flourish without going all-in on the changes that have dramatically impacted colleges from coast to coast.
“We tell recruits up front that this is how we’ve had success and how we want to have success,” said Bennett. “If this isn’t what you want to sign up for, then don’t sign up and it’ll save us both from having problems.”
Bennett added, “Would I rather do it with a guy we took from Day One and is homegrown? Yes, that’s the plan. But we’ll have to sprinkle in transfers, maybe three transfers this year because we’re filling holes for now and the future.”
Like Lunardi, the Sporting News’ Michael Decourcy, who has covered college basketball for decades, doesn’t believe Bennett will have any trouble filling holes given that there are about 2,000 players in the portal, according to ESPN.
“There could certainly be a player in, say, the Southland or Atlantic Sun or Big West conferences that could make Saint Mary’s better,” Decourcy told BANG.
Saint Mary’s head coach Randy Bennett will rely on Augustas Marciulionis, shown here in a file photo, to be a big part of the team again next season. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
Nobody is surprised Saint Mary’s is going through transfer portal woes.
Chris Dortch – the editor of Blue Ribbon’s College Basketball Yearbook, a 400-page annual preview of all Division I teams – noted that even the most high-profile programs are fighting to keep their best players for more than a year.
“I used to think some programs were immune until this year,” Dortch told the Bay Area News Group. “Some programs that had been bulletproof are really getting riddled.”
Count Saint Mary’s among the wounded.
Bennett said he was not surprised that Mahaney left Moraga, The coach mentioned that the two had a “good conversation” but declined to elaborate.
It’s not just the transfer portal that has reshaped college sports.
Bennett was candid about the importance of NIL collectives – independent boosters who pay athletes – and their role in a team’s success.
“At the level we’re at, you’re not doing that without some NIL,” Bennett said. “You have to figure out how you can get good players and keep good players, and you have to have some NIL to do it at the level we’re doing it.”
Finding good players has not been an issue for Saint Mary’s.
Under Bennett, the program has seemingly had a pipeline to talent from Australia, something Dortch said the program should continue.
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Matthew Dellavedova and Patty Mills, two of Bennett’s all-time greats, came to Moraga from down under and have gone on to capture NBA championships.
“Coaches need to be smart and find a niche where they can find talent, and Randy Bennett’s been able to do that,” Dortch said.
True to form, Bennett has Australian combo guard Joshua Dent ready to enroll in the current class.
None of the college experts interviewed this week by the Bay Area News Group have any doubt that Bennett will keep the Gaels competitive moving forward.
“He’ll be fine because he’s as good a coach as there is in this sport,” Decourcy said.
Saint Mary’s coach Randy Bennett, shown here in a file photo, is expected to adjust to the new reality of college athletics. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)