THE TRUTH ABOUT DUKE TRANSFERS
I did some research on Duke and ACC transfers because unfortunately I have read people on these very boards repeating the tired old inaccurate Duke hating meme that “Duke has a lot of transfers” or “Duke has more transfers than usual” etc.
Do we? I don’t think so, but what do the actual figures show?
For the TL;DR crowd. Bottom line Duke by no means has an inordinate amount of transfers and in fact as less than most of the other ACC teams in the four seasons spread over 2012-2015.
Discussion. Turns out this is hard information to find. There is no searchable by school database for transfers. It’s as if they are considered shameful for some reason and not to be discussed. Which is funny as you can see from this NCAA handout a few years ago https://www.ncaa.org/sites/default/f...Itransfers.pdf transfers are very common in college basketball.
The closest thing to a complete database is Jeff Goodman’s list, now on ESPN. Unfortunately earlier lists were not as complete ( For 2011 on Yardbarker he lists about 250 transfers and last year on ESPN almost 800. This doesn’t mean transfers increased 4-fold in 4 years-just that he’s tracking more carefully.) However, one would suspect that the ACC would be a fairly well-covered league and most, if not all of the transfers would get some media attention and be counted. His data seemed complete enough for the ACC to use from 2011-2012 season forward through 2014-1015.
Methodology. I scrolled through the lists below and counted the number of transfers for all current ACC members. Some teams may not have been in the ACC for a year or so, but this is a list of programs transfers out, not which tournament they played in.
Goodman does not identify why the player transferred-by choice, academic issues, dismissed from the program etc. For example, he lists Rasheed Suliamon as a Duke transfer, which I consider as not a transfer as he was off the team before he decided to transfer to Maryland. I’m open to the other interpretation. So if I did not count RS, maybe I shouldn’t of counted some of these others.
Scrolling through his lists, I was struck by a couple of things. One, players transfer from EVERYWHERE. They transfer from big name programs like Kansas, Kentucky and Oregon (a lot from there) and tiny little barrel scrapers alike. Two, contrary to what is commonly thought, players don’t really transfer “down” that much, or up. Instead they tend to transfer most often to a school that is similar in stature to the one they just left.
I probably got eye fatigue and missed some. I list the ones I found by name below if anyone wants to add to it/correct it.
The data:
Transfers by school 2011-12—2014-15 (4 seasons)
UNC 0
Syracuse 2
Duke 3 (4 if you count RS)
Notre Dame 3
Miami 3
FSU 3
BC 4
UVA 4
NCS 5
WFU 6
Clemson 6
GT 7
Pitt 7
Louisville 8
VT 12
So to recap. Duke does not have an inordinate or exceptional number of transfers when compared to, uh, comparable schools.
Sep 2015 list Jeff Goodman ESPN 2014-15 season
ACC 17 transfers out
Louisville Shaqquan Aaron, Trent Gilbert, Anton Gill
GT Chris Bolden
Miami Deandre Burnett
WFU Daniel Green
Pitt Tyrone Haughton, Joe Uchebo
Syracuse B J Johnson, Ron Patterson
Notre Dame Eric Katenda
VT Malik Muller, Adam Smith, Joey van Zegeren
Clemson Patrick Rooks
VA B J Stith
NCS Patrick Wallace
8/1/15 2013-14 Season (20 transfers out)
BC Ryan Anderson, Joe Rahon
GT Robert Carter, Solomon Poole
WFU Tyler Cavanaugh
Clemson Ibrahim Djambo, Adonis Filer, Devin Coleman
VT Ben Emelogu, Maurice Kirby, Trevor Thompson, Marshall Wood, Marquis Rankin
UVA Teven Jones
Miami James Kelly
NCS Tyler Lewis
Duke Semi Ojeleye, Alex Murphy
Louisville Kevin Ware
Notre Dame Cameron Biedscheid

8/28/13 2012-13 season (16 transfers out)
UVA Taylor Barnette, Paul Jesperson
VT Robert Brown
WFU Chase Fischer
Pitt J J Moore, Trey Ziegler, John Johnson, Malcolm Gilbert
Louisville Angel Nunez, Zach Price
Clemson Bernard Sullivan, T J Sapp
GT Brandon Reed, Julian Royal
Miami Bishop Daniels
FSU Terry Whisnant, Terrance Shannon
2011-2012 4/10/12 on CBSSPORTS (19 transfers out)
VT Allen Chaney, Dorian Finney-Smith, J T Thompson
WFU Tony Chennault, Carson Desrosiers, Anthony Fields
Notre Dame Alex Dragicevich
Pitt Isaiah Epps
Louisville Elisha Justice, Jared Swopshire
NCS Deshawn Painter, Tyler Harris, Jaqawn Raymond
GT Glenn Rice Jr, Nate Hicks
FSU Antwan Space
Duke Michael Gbinijie
BC Gabe Moten, Matt Humphrey