After watching his rotation thin out down the stretch of a season that ended in a first-round conference tournament exit, Bellwater State coach Derek Sabino turned to the transfer portal this offseason to fix a problem he said had nothing to do with talent and everything to do with depth.
Sabino said the additions were less about upgrading talent than about fixing a specific weakness: a rotation that thinned out badly as conference play wore on. “We were a good team for 25 games and a tired team for the last eight,” Sabino said following a preseason practice at the Miners’ practice gym. “You don’t fix that by asking your returning guys to play more minutes. You fix it by adding bodies who can actually play those minutes.”
Two proven scorers arrive
The headline addition is guard Jalen Ricks, a graduate transfer who averaged 14.2 points and 4.1 assists per game last season at Ashford State before entering the portal when that program changed coaches. Ricks said he chose Bellwater State over two other offers partly because Sabino offered him the starting point guard job outright rather than a competition for it. “Some schools wanted me to come in and win a job,” Ricks said. “Coach Sabino told me I was going to run this team, and then it was on me to prove him right in practice every day since.”
The Miners also added forward Marcus Deveaux, who averaged 11.4 points and 9.8 rebounds last season at Coastal Community College before transferring in as a junior. At 6-foot-8, Deveaux is expected to start alongside returning forward DeShawn Ferris, giving the Miners a frontcourt pairing Sabino called the deepest of his tenure. “Everybody talks about the size difference between junior college ball and this level,” Deveaux said. “I’d rather find that out in October practices than in a conference game in January, so I’ve tried to get physical every single day since I got here.”
- Jalen Ricks, guard: 14.2 points, 4.1 assists per game last season at Ashford State
- Marcus Deveaux, forward: 11.4 points, 9.8 rebounds per game last season at Coastal Community College
A departure complicates the picture
The portal has not been one-directional for the Miners. Backup point guard Terrence Ubaka entered the portal in the spring, saying he wanted a program that could offer him a clearer path to significant minutes, and ultimately transferred to a conference rival. Sabino said he understood the decision even if he did not like losing a player he considered a strong locker-room presence. “I’m not going to pretend that one didn’t sting,” Sabino said. “Terrence earned the right to go find what he was looking for. My job is making sure the guys who stayed understand why they stayed.”
Not every longtime supporter of the program is comfortable with how much the roster turns over year to year. Ed Palowski, a season-ticket holder who has followed the Miners for more than two decades, said he misses the days when a recruiting class stayed together for four years. “I understand why the kids do it, the money and the playing time,” Palowski said. “But it’s hard to build the kind of loyalty to a roster that you used to have when half the team is different every fall.”
Athletic Director Frank Alcott said roster turnover through the portal has become the norm across the sport and that the department’s response has been to invest in the things it can control, including a facility upgrade plan aimed at keeping the program competitive for both recruits and transfers. “We can’t legislate the portal out of existence,” Alcott said. “What we can do is make sure that when a player gets here, the practice facility and the support staff give him a reason to want to stay.”
Every roster in this league turns over more than it used to. The teams that win are the ones that figure out how to build a culture fast with new pieces instead of waiting three years for chemistry to develop on its own.
Derek Sabino, Head Coach, Bellwater State Miners
The transfer additions arrive alongside the program’s incoming freshman class, a group Sabino has praised separately as among the most talented he has signed. Sabino said he has been intentional about blending the newcomers, telling both groups during preseason workouts that no one on the roster should assume a role based on how they arrived at the program. “A three-star freshman and a graduate transfer with 14 points a game both start from zero with me in October,” he said. “What happens in this gym between now and the opener decides who plays.”
Ricks said the non-conference schedule, which includes three teams that reached postseason play last season, will be an early test of how quickly the new-look roster can gel. “We’re not hiding from anybody early in the year,” he said. “Coach wants to know what we are before conference play starts, not after we’ve lost three games we shouldn’t have.”
Sabino declined to set a specific win total for the season but said the program’s expectation is straightforward after last year’s early tournament exit. “We were an eighth seed that played like we belonged higher than that,” he said. “This year the standard is not moral victories. It’s winning the games in March that we lost last year.”