Women’s March Madness Has a Portal Problem. Can GMs Solve It?

TAMPA, Fla. — Timing is everything. And at the women’s Final Four, the timing of the transfer portal opening is everything but easy to manage for the four teams still playing.

Coaches and their staffs are pulling double duty, preparing their teams for games Friday and fielding calls from portal players. It’s a role South Carolina coach Dawn Staley said they’re accustomed to. What if they didn’t have to be? 

“We’re in the Final Four,” Staley said. “We’re talking to parents. I’m talking to people in the transfer portal. I’m talking to agents. It’s a lot, but if you’re not someone that can easily pivot, this thing will swallow you up. We’re fortunate that we’ve been working in chaos for a long time.” 

Could the GM role become commonplace in women’s basketball as a result?

“Yes, it will,” Staley responded when asked by Front Office Sports. “It’s necessary. I don’t know if we’ll call it GM, but it will be some of the duties of a GM. It’s a lot of money in the space. … We need somebody singularly focused on that movement and ways in which we need to navigate in that space, so that if we’re here at a Final Four, the GM can be taking care of some of the stuff that we have to take on now.” 

Having extra bodies on staff is one remedy to the issue, Staley said, but that costs the program more money—extra money the athletic department might not have. South Carolina is the rare school that spends more on women’s basketball than men’s, spending $11.5 million on Staley’s program in the 2024 fiscal year compared to $9.8 million for the men. The women ran a deficit of about $5.7 million last year, compared to the men, who turned a profit of $3.4 million, according to the Greenville News. (The revenue gap is almost entirely attributable to the difference in the men’s and women’s media-rights deals.)

A small handful of programs, including USC and North Carolina, have women’s-only general managers, but the role’s adoption has been more widespread on the men’s side. A few programs, like Villanova, have hired GMs responsible for both men and women.

A number of men’s programs have hired wealthy NBA alumni in assistant GM roles—hires that usually come with a healthy donation. Steph Curry’s assistant GM job at Davidson—for men and women—came with an “eight-figure” fund, while Trae Young’s Oklahoma gig was paired with $1 million to spend on players.

In the meantime, players like South Carolina guard Raven Johnson—who said she’s received a number of texts from peers looking to transfer—are comfortable playing the role of recruiter. She said none of it has distracted from the team’s main goal of returning to the title game Sunday. Still, that hasn’t stopped portal players from getting a word in. 

“It’s actually, ‘Good luck! What do you think about this, that, and the third?’” Johnson said to describe some of the texts she’s received from players in the portal over the last 10 days. 

Portal Speeds Up Carousel

“There’s two sides to this,” UCLA coach Cori Close said Thursday. “One is what is best for the student-athletes and what is best for our game. The part that concerned me a little bit about the game part is how quickly athletic departments were trying to fill coaching positions so that they had people in place during the transfer portal opening.” 

Close considers her program “fortunate” because she doesn’t anticipate having much space on her roster to fill. Naismith Defensive Player of the Year Lauren Betts will return to UCLA for her senior season despite being draft eligible and a top WNBA prospect as a junior. 

While Close does have a roster full of returners, she has still had to field calls about the transfer portal in the midst of the program’s first Final Four run. 

“‘Are they interested in jobs?’” Close said she’s been asked repeatedly about her staff.

Last year, the portal opened the day after Selection Sunday. In October, the NCAA’s Division I council approved shrinking the 45-day window to just 30 days. For women’s basketball, the window opened March 24 and will close April 23. 

Ten days into the portal being open nearly 1,800 players had entered, according to CBS Sports. One of them is Notre Dame guard Olivia Miles, who had been projected as a possible top-three pick in this month’s WNBA draft.