In an era where college basketball rosters are being dismantled and rebuilt with the speed of a software update, Evan Miyakawa delivers a counterintuitive truth: the path to a championship isn't found in the transfer portal, but in the players you already have. While the industry obsesses over the sheer volume of movement—more than 2,300 student-athletes entered the portal in less than a month this offseason—Miyakawa's data suggests that the most successful teams are actually resisting the urge to start from scratch.
The Myth of the Clean Slate
The central thesis of this analysis challenges the prevailing wisdom that high-major programs can simply buy their way to success by overhauling their entire squad every summer. Miyakawa points out a startling historical anomaly: for the first time ever, more than half of the Division I minutes in the 2024-25 season were played by players who were not on the team the previous year. Yet, when he isolates the teams that actually won, the pattern flips. "Three of this year's Final Four teams, all 1-seeds, were comprised mostly of players returning to their team from the previous year," he notes, highlighting Houston, Florida, and Auburn as the architects of this stability.
The data reveals a stark divide between the teams that made the NCAA tournament and those that didn't. Top-10 teams averaged 60% of their minutes played by returning players, whereas teams that missed the tournament hovered around 48%. Miyakawa argues that this isn't just a correlation but a causal relationship rooted in chemistry and continuity. "If you compare two rosters that are of similar talent in the preseason, the team that is structured around returning players typically performs better than the team that is structured around mostly new transfers and freshmen," he writes. This is a crucial distinction for coaches managing massive budgets; it suggests that pouring money into new faces yields diminishing returns if it comes at the cost of the core group.
Critics might argue that this data is skewed by the fact that the most talented players are often the ones who stay, rather than the staying making them talented. However, Miyakawa controls for this by grouping teams with similar preseason talent scores, showing that within those talent brackets, the teams with higher retention rates consistently finished higher in the final rankings.
Sometimes the best gets are the ones you already have.
The 50% Threshold and the Transfer Trap
Miyakawa doesn't just offer vague advice; he provides a specific, data-driven benchmark for success. His study identifies a clear inflection point: teams where returning players account for at least 50% of the playing time are significantly more likely to succeed. The evidence is compelling. Among teams with top-35 preseason talent, those that met this threshold finished, on average, eight spots higher in the country than those that didn't. Conversely, the strategy of "starting from scratch" has proven disastrous for high-major programs. Miyakawa notes that among teams where returning players saw less than 16% of the minutes, only 30% made the tournament, and half finished outside the top 100.
The allure of the transfer portal is understandable. "Teams with huge NIL budgets can overhaul any roster with new players through the transfer portal if they are willing to invest enough money," Miyakawa observes. But the article warns that this approach often leads to a revolving door where coaches are constantly filling voids rather than building a system. He suggests that the real value of a player often materializes in their second or third year, a luxury that one-and-done transfers cannot provide. "Teams that prioritize recruiting (or retaining) players who will play for them for multiple years will reap the benefits down the road," he argues.
This framing effectively shifts the conversation from "how many stars can we sign?" to "how long can we keep them?" It forces a re-evaluation of what constitutes a "winning roster." Is it a collection of the highest-rated individual players, or a cohesive unit where the players know each other's tendencies? The data heavily favors the latter.
The Freshman Exception and the Talent Baseline
While the article champions retention, it does not dismiss the value of youth, provided the talent level is elite. Miyakawa draws a sharp distinction between teams that rely on freshmen because they lack other options and those that do so because they have recruited generational high school prospects. When top-30 preseason teams loaded up on freshmen, they still managed to make the tournament every time. However, this success was almost always paired with a solid core of returning players.
The danger zone, according to Miyakawa, is for teams outside the elite tier that try to go young. "The results aren't pretty for teams that rely heavily on freshmen but aren't among the nation's elite rosters," he writes, noting that just 30% of such teams made the tournament. The case of Rutgers serves as a cautionary tale; despite having ultra-talented freshmen, the lack of a supporting cast of experienced players meant they finished exactly where their preseason ranking predicted: in the middle of the pack. This reinforces Miyakawa's primary rule: "Fill your roster with good basketball players." No amount of roster construction strategy can overcome a deficit in raw talent, but talent alone is not a guarantee of success without the glue of returning players.
Bottom Line
Miyakawa's analysis offers a necessary corrective to the transfer portal frenzy, proving that stability is a competitive advantage in a chaotic landscape. The strongest part of his argument is the empirical evidence showing that even with equal talent, continuity wins. The biggest vulnerability lies in the difficulty of execution: retaining players in an era of unlimited NIL money is becoming increasingly hard, making the "50% rule" an ideal that many programs may struggle to achieve. For now, the smartest move isn't to find the next big transfer, but to keep the players you have.