Transfers and the ACC – Trend or New Tradition?

The impact of men’s basketball transfers around the ACC — both leaving from and coming into programs around the league — is becoming more of a more of a significant topic of discussion.

Heading into the 2015-2016 season, well over half of the men’s basketball programs around the ACC have at least one player on its current roster who transferred in from another school. Numerous others have left the ACC in recent years to join mid-major or other Power 5 conference programs.

The league even recently had a player transfer from within, as former Virginia Tech guard Adam Smith elected to play his final season of collegiate eligibility at Georgia Tech.

Over 25 transfers — enough to fill two entire teams from a scholarships standpoint — are on current rosters around the ACC.

That figure includes over a half-dozen fifth-year graduate transfers who are all playing one season in the league. It doesn’t include an additional handful of players around the ACC who have transferred to their respective programs from Junior Colleges.

When talking to coaches around the ACC, it’s abundantly clear that they treat transfers as its own faction of recruiting that’s every bit, if not more, important that the efforts made to attract high school talent.[hr]