WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN: A team and season beyond our wildest dreams. Jason Preston and Mark Sears starting in the backcourt. Ben Vander Plas and Lunden McDay at the forward spots, Dwight Wilson at center. Jason Carter, Miles Brown, Tommy Schmock and Ben Roderick (factoring in his season-long flameout) playing quality minutes off the bench. I.J. Ezuma, Sam Townes and A.J. Clayton filling in a few minutes here and there, if needed. Who in the MAC was gonna beat that!

THE REALITY OF THE SITUATION: None of us had a crystal ball, and that includes coach Boals. As the coaching staff was getting early-signing commitments from seniors-to-be prior to the playing of last season, who could have predicted following that NCAA Big Dance season that Preston would go pro, Wilson would miss the following season and McDay would leave the team?

If the coaching staff had any idea these things would happen, it would have handled recruiting much differently. Most likely, it would have waited until after last season had ended and hit the transfer portal hard for experienced players ready to contribute serious minutes right away. I do believe Ezuma and Clayton will be players. But they weren’t ready to compete on the same level as players other MAC teams got out of the transfer portal.

THE REALITY OF THE SITUATION, PART 2: The damn transfer portal. I hate it!!! I’m old school. Build through the draft in professional sports, build primarily through high school players who want to attend your school in college sports.

Players changing schools like we change underwear create a hired gun mentally that a fan like me doesn’t find attractive. I want to get to know and watch the players grow and mature who represent my alumni. The way things are now, I don’t know if I even want to make the emotional investment anymore because guys can come and go on a whim. Who’s to say now that we go through growing pains with our freshmen only to watch them bolt to other schools as juniors or seniors?

Problem is, other MAC schools are loaded up on transfers from the portal and we saw the result the second half of the conference schedule. These experienced players left a lot of the wet-behind-the-ears freshmen in the dust as we came down the stretch.

WHAT’S TO BE: Who the heck knows? I was so elated with the freshman class coach Boals signed that I followed all of them throughout the season and their playoffs. I really thought they’d infuse talent, athleticism, length and other intangibles into our core of returning players. And I still do. But will that be enough to get us over the hump if other MAC teams hit the transfer portal hard again?

The only way we can get involved in doing that is if some players leave, which I do believe will happen. We may need a guy or two, like Carter and Schmock, because I’m no longer confident we can count on key contributions by as many as three or four freshmen to win a MAC title anymore.

I really was looking forward to next season. Now, I’m not sure what to expect.

Better a "hired gun mentality" than to have players trapped in a system that allows coaches to arbitrarily dictate where players can and cannot go and where players have to waste a year of their lives watching from the bench after transferring. The old system shouldn't be remembered longingly, as Margaret Mitchell romanticized the Antebellum South. Besides, under the old system there were no guarantees that someone wouldn't bolt to another school in their junior or senior year (or earlier). Jaaron Simmons, for example.

Not sure Boals goes out to get Schmock if Preston had stayed. The same might be true about Carter if Boals thought he had a healthy DWIII for all of 2021-22.