The next rising transfer portal trend and its impact on the Big Ten

Another piece of that evolution is unfolding in the Big Ten. As the 2025-26 season tips off in a month, less players transferred out of their program this season but the number of athletes switching teams within the conference is on the rise.

When Big Ten teams begin play on Nov. 3, 13 players will still be in the conference from last season but donning new school colors. That is out of 53 basketball specific transfers, not including players leaving one sport for another at a different school. 

The intraconference swaps are on the rise, despite the number of transfers fluctuating year over year. Last season, 53 players again transferred out of Big Ten schools, but only eight stayed in-conference. Compare that to the first two portals when players could transfer without having to sit out a year of eligibility. Over two portals, 93 players transferred but only five stayed within the Big Ten.

This trend shows coaches are not looking too far to fill their roster gaps. 

“We’re really familiar with them, and so I think we have a very good feel for who they are and how they play,” Michigan State head coach Robyn Fralick told The IX Basketball. “So much of it is finding the right fit, you really do have a understanding of them because we played against them, and they have a good understanding of us and how we play.”

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Michigan State added within the Big Ten this season when they added Rashunda Jones from the Purdue Boilermakers. The former Big Ten All-Freshman Team member in the 23-24 season joins the Spartans after a season where the sophomore led Purdue with 3.7 assists per game. Michigan State lost three of their top four distributing players, so Jones made perfect sense.

Former Michigan State head coach Suzy Merchant offered Jones a spot on the Spartans in August of 2021 before Jones announced her commitment on Dec. 15, 2021. Before the 20-21 season, Merchant also made Big Ten transfer portal history when the former head coach received three in-conference transfer commitments in the same portal window, a record that still stands today. It accounted for half of the intraconference moves that season.

However, sometimes the Big Ten to Big Ten move dates back to recruiting. Take Penn State head coach Carolyn Kieger, whose high school recruiting paid off eventually with former Rutgers standout freshman Kiyomi McMiller. 

“It was mainly because of Kiegs [Kieger],” McMiller told The IX Basketball. “How hard she recruited me in high school, and her determination to win, her competitiveness, her goals. How we thought really aligned.”

Those 13 Big Ten player moves this offseason went to 11 different programs, the first time it spread to a double-digit number of teams. For McMiller, who was benched by Rutgers head coach Coquese Washington indefinitely at the beginning of February, there is precedent in a new program giving a player renewed life.

Look no further than Kaylene Smikle, a player who was in similar shoes to McMiller at Rutgers. In Smikle’s sophomore season, the outstanding guard ended her season at the end of the 2023 calendar year. Once the season ended in March, Smikle transferred to the Maryland Terrapins where a career season followed. Smikle scored 17.9 points per game at a 44.8 percent clip, both personal highs with one more season still to go. 

“It allows you that freedom to kind of also add different things to your game that you want to be able to. Maybe you haven’t been able to do in the past,” Maryland head coach Brenda Frese told The IX Basketball. “So I think it can be an incredible advantage.”

For the second season in a row, Frese bet on her National Championship experience to bring in a Big Ten player to add different things to their game. Up there with McMiller’s transfer in the attention-grabbing department was the move of former Indiana Hoosier Yarden Garzon.

Garzon wanted to stay in the Big Ten, according to an interview she did with Maryland Sports Radio. Within a week of entering the portal, Garzon joined Frese to become an outside threat for the Terps. Garzon led the Big Ten shooting 42.2% from beyond the arc in the 24-25 season. That kind of perimeter strength, combined with Smikle’s play inside, puts Maryland near the top of the conference, with Big Ten voters putting them in the top three teams in postseason honors. 

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“When you are able to secure a player, you’ve seen them, so you know where their game’s at, and you’re able to kind of put them in positions to be successful,” Frese said.

Indiana head coach Teri Moren’s been on both sides of intra-Big Ten transfers. Before the 24-25 season, Moren secured the commitment of former Penn State guard Shay Ciezki. The junior became Indiana’s starting point guard and led the Hoosiers to the Second Round of the NCAA Tournament, alongside her now former teammate Garzon.

“It definitely is difficult, but I was on the other side of it, so I completely understand,” Ciezki told The IX Basketball. “There’s never any hard feelings. We just saw her and gave her the biggest hug, but it’ll be fun to play against her. I think that’s just the way the portal works nowadays.”

The portal gives and takes away, but coaches in the Big Ten have shown that there is success in recruiting from a known pool of players. Ask the players and coaches and they all echo a similar sentiment that the Big Ten is a great conference. After all, it did set a record with 12 teams in the 2025 NCAA Tournament. 

Despite the easily accessible stars who know the league, know the arenas and know the fans, it still leaves an impact. 

“I think it’s disappointing for me personally. Being in my 32nd year of coaching, I’ve been doing this a while, and I never, ever want players to leave our program,” Moren told The IX Basketball. “Am I naive to think that that’s never going to happen? No, in this day and age, it’s probably going to happen more, more so than it used to.”

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While the early numbers do not support transfers happening more frequently each year in the Big Ten, players are staying in the conference more than ever before. On top of the tough competition and knowledge of teams, there are also the finances. Big Ten schools have deep pockets. Whatever the reasons might be, the intraconference movement is not going to stop, barring any major overhaul to transferring itself. 

Even if a program lands on the wrong side of these too-close-to-home transfers, head coaches need to adapt to keep up. At this point, after seven years of the transfer portal, the inclusion of NIL and recent changes to revenue sharing, the coaches leading power conference programs have shown consistently their competency to do just that. A little reframing of the situation doesn’t hurt either. 

“It’s something that we got to move on from quickly,” Moren said. “When they leave Indiana and they choose to go elsewhere, we know their game pretty well, right? So that may benefit us at some point.”