The transfer portal as a database was launched in Oct. 2018. Despite a slow start, the portal now rules the college world when it comes to roster management. Since its inception, Michigan has taken in 19 transfers.

Today we’re going to take a stab at ranking each of them.

19. Brandon Wade (Duquesne)

Wade was just the second player to transfer to Michigan via the transfer portal and was simply a part of the bench mob.

18. Jaron Faulds (Columbia)

Faulds, also a part of the bench mob for a few years, was a Michigan native who opted for a Michigan degree rather than an Ivy League degree. His impact on the court was minimal.

17. Tray Jackson (Seton Hall)

The first transfer on our list who came to Ann Arbor with a legitimate shot at playing time, Jackson was a bit of a disappointment in his one year at Michigan. He appeared in 28 games but scored just five points per game.

16. Sam Walters (Alabama)

Fans had high hopes for Walters as a lethal sharpshooter, but injuries prevented him from playing much in his one year at Michigan.

15. Jaelin Llewellyn (Princeton)

Like Walters, Michigan was hoping to rely on him before an injury shut him down for the year. In Llewellyn’s case, it was an ACL tear. However, even prior to the injury, he had been slightly disappointing as an up-transfer from the Ivy League.

14. Aday Mara (UCLA)

Here’s where the list starts to get complicated. Mara has yet to suit up for the Wolverines, but the 7-foot-3 big man should play a big part in the rotation next year. Mara could be much higher on this list by season’s end.

13. DeVante’ Jones (Coastal Carolina)

Jones got off to a rough start in a disappointing 2021-22 season. However, he picked up steam as the season went on, including a memorable performance against Ohio State. He was certainly a serviceable Big Ten point guard.

12. Rubin Jones (North Texas)

Jones played just one year in Ann Arbor. While not a stat stuffer by any means, he was a defensive pest who made key plays at key times. I’ll always remember him for his put-back slam at home in the upset win over Purdue.

11. Morez Johnson (Illinois)

Like Mara, it’s tough to project what this year’s incoming transfers will look like without seeing them in action just yet. However, Johnson is expected to be the starting center this year and should play a crucial role moving forward.

10. Roddy Gayle Jr. (Ohio State)

Year 1 at Michigan was full of ups and downs. His three-point shooting wasn’t stellar, but his superb free-throw shooting came up clutch. Gayle should be a major contributor to the 2025-26 team.

9. Elliot Cadeau (North Carolina)

Cadeau is an excellent playmaker and distributor who needs to get better at not turning the ball over. With Michigan projected to be a top-five team in the country this year, it’s hard not to include their presumed starting point guard in the top-10 incoming transfer rankings.

8. Olivier Nkamhoua (Tennessee)

Nkamhoua tends to get overlooked because of how poorly his lone season in Ann Arbor went for the team. However, the team’s failure was hardly his fault. He played 33.4 minutes per game and had 14.8 points and 7.1 rebounds per game. He also battled a few nagging injuries. I firmly believe had the team around him been better, Nkamhoua would be remembered much more fondly.

7. Nimari Burnett (Alabama)

Burnett never quite lived up to his five-star recruiting profile, but that doesn’t make him a bad player by any means. He has been an excellent three-and-D defender at Michigan, and he will be one of the leaders of the team once again this season.

6. Mike Smith (Columbia)

The 2020 transfer portal haul of Mike Smith and Chaundee Brown was the first true taste of the portal for Michigan fans. Despite being undersized, Smith was lightning-quick in the backcourt. In his lone season at Michigan, he averaged nine points, 5.3 assists and 2.8 rebounds per game. While not the most talented player to ever transfer in, his impact was unparalleled, as he led Michigan to a Big Ten championship and an Elite Eight appearance.

5. Chaundee Brown (Wake Forest)

Like Smith, Brown may not have been the most talented transfer portal addition for the Wolverines, but his skillset was exactly what they needed. Brown averaged eight points, 3.1 rebounds and 0.6 assists per game off the bench. He was a wing who was not ball-dominant, which helped space the floor when the Wolverines desperately needed it.

4. Tre Donaldson (Auburn)

Admittedly, Donaldson was the player I had the toughest time placing on this list. He had an up and down season, but it ended emphatically on an up. He poured in 11.3 points, 4.1 assists and 3.5 rebounds per game last season, and was the catalyst to a Michigan offense that lacked playmaking at times. His game-winner against Maryland in the Big Ten Tournament will likely live in Michigan lore for some time.

3. Vlad Goldin (Florida Atlantic)

Goldin came to Michigan as a fairly polished big man. His back-to-the-basket game and touch around the basket were exquisite. At Michigan, he dominated throughout most of a grueling Big Ten schedule and helped the Wolverines make the Sweet Sixteen. He averaged 16.6 points, seven rebounds, 1.4 blocks and 1.1 assists per game.

2. Danny Wolf (Yale)

Goldin’s counterpart in Area 50-1 slots in just higher than him. In his one season in Ann Arbor, Wolf tallied 13.2 points, 9.7 rebounds, 3.6 assists and 1.4 blocks per game. His ball-handling ability at 7-foot was second to none in college basketball. He will likely be drafted as high as the late lottery in the upcoming NBA Draft.

1. Yaxel Lendeborg (UAB)

Lendeborg has to be No. 1 on this list, as he was the top rated player in the portal this offseason. Having fended off the NBA for his services, Michigan will likely rely heavily on his talent across the board. He averaged a double-double at UAB last year with 17.7 points and 11.4 rebounds per game. He is also the type of player who should have no trouble up-transferring due to his physical brand of basketball.

The 2025 College World Series field is set. Eight teams are on their way to Omaha, Nebraska to compete for the national championship, and the bracket includes a multitude of surprises after the regional and super regional rounds reshaped the sport’s power dynamics. 

Murray State is the biggest shocker of them all as it defeated Duke to punch its ticket to the CWS for the first time in program history, but the Racers — at +3500 to win the title per FanDuel Sportsbook — are not alone in generating storylines that will define the race to college baseball glory.

Winners of the last five national titles, the SEC boasts more CWS participants than any other conference. But the margin by which the sport’s premier league stands atop the rest is much slimmer than most would have anticipated heading into the tournament. With just two teams remaining, the SEC saw 11 of its record 13 postseason squads fall out of contention over the last two weekends. In turn, six conferences are represented in the bracket, and Oregon State stands alone as an independent.

Parity across conference lines is a step away from the trends that defined the last handful of tournaments when the SEC and ACC separated themselves from the pack. Still, the former features the perceived frontrunner as Arkansas embarks on a potential run to its first national title.

With the College World Series set to begin Friday, here are five key storylines that define the 2025 tournament.

Murray State’s Cinderella run continues

Murray State plays its home games at an 800-seat stadium that until 2014 did not even have grandstand seating. Coach Dan Skirka does the groundskeeping. Reagan Field did not even have a padded outfield wall until less than a decade ago. Yet here are the Racers, as few as five wins from a national championship. The program is the most improbable story in college baseball this postseason, and it is not particularly close.

Jonathan Hogart smashed a pair of home runs in the decisive game of the Durham Super Regional to spearhead the Racers’ 5-4 victory, which sent them to Omaha. He stands in a tie for first place in program history with 22 round-trippers on the year, and the outfielder was instrumental in the entirety of this miraculous tournament run with hits in every postseason game and at least two knocks in every contest but one. He has six homers in tournament play.

With that triumph over Duke, Murray State became just the fourth regional No. 4 seed to punch a ticket to the CWS since the tournament expanded in 1999. The Racers joined Oral Roberts (2023), Stony Brook (2012) and Fresno State (2008) in that rare company. Oral Roberts went 1-2 in Omaha, Stony Brook lost both of its contests and Fresno State stands alone as the only No. 4 seed to win the national championship.

Six conferences represented, plus an independent

Last year’s CWS was the most consolidated across conference lines in NCAA Tournament history; the SEC and ACC were the lone representatives with four teams apiece. Just one season after those leagues tied the record for the most participants from a single conference, the 2025 field could not be much more different. The SEC still leads the way with its two squads (Arkansas and LSU), but six other conferences have a flag-bearer in Omaha and Oregon State made its way back as an independent.

If not for last offseason’s landscape-altering wave of realignment, though, the Pac-12 would be front and center. Arizona represents the Big 12, UCLA hails from the Big Ten and Oregon State, as mentioned, is the lone program to operate this year as an independent. Those perennial West Coast powers long dominated the Pac-12, but the conference did not sponsor baseball this season with just two members under its umbrella.

“There’s so many good coaches and good players on the West,” UCLA coach John Savage said after the Bruins swept the Los Angeles Super Regional. “We beat each other up. This is for the West.”

No repeat participants

For the first time since 1957, none of the eight teams in the CWS are returners from the previous year. It is not as though the participants are no-names, though. LSU and Oregon State are the definitions of blue-bloods as the only programs with three national titles this century, and each of Coastal Carolina, Arizona and UCLA climbed to the mountaintop since 2012.

What the fresh faces represent, though, is that college baseball still has a sizable upper class that goes well beyond the SEC and ACC, despite recent seasons indicating that those conferences are a cut above the rest. Other sports saw a flattening at the top as the transfer portal and NIL eras progressed, and this could be a sign that the same is underway in baseball.

Lone top-five seed Arkansas enters as betting favorite

Regionals and super regionals were unkind to national seeds, but Arkansas was immune to the upset epidemic that sent each of the other top five seeds packing. That the Razorbacks, the No. 3 team in the tournament, are one of just five national seeds remaining is a welcome development for a program that underperformed each of the last two years, failing in both instances to advance out of its home regional.

Dave Van Horn’s squad is the narrow favorite to hoist the trophy at the end of the tournament, and it holds +200 odds to win the national championship at FanDuel. LSU is not far behind at +230, but the Razorbacks and Tigers open CWS play against each other and only one can advance out of Bracket 2 to reach the championship series.

Oregon State (+650) and Coastal Carolina (+650) have equal odds to win the tournament. UCLA (+850) is the largest underdog of the five remaining national seeds. Arizona (+1400), Louisville (+1600) and Murray State round out the field as relative long shots.

Kevin Schnall defends Coastal Carolina’s College World Series return: ‘This is no Cinderella’

Cody Nagel

Coastal Carolina rides 23-game winning streak

Coastal Carolina is a mid-major program, but do not get it twisted; the Chanticleers are not an underdog story. First-year coach Kevin Schnall has his program on the hottest streak in the nation with 23 consecutive wins. That is the longest streak any team has carried into the CWS since 1999. The Sun Belt powerhouse is back in Omaha for the first time since it won the national title in 2016.

“This is no Cinderella,” Schnall said after the Chanticleers swept Auburn in the super regional round. “I wanna make sure that’s known. This is no Cinderella. Coastal Carolina the past century, only eight teams have made the regionals more than us. During that same period we have the sixth-best win percentage and the ninth-most wins. This is not a Cinderella story. We’re one of the most premier, most successful college baseball programs in the entire country.”

The Chanticleers are the first and only team to 50 wins this season with their sparkling 53-11 record. The perfect run through the postseason thus far moved them into the No. 4 spot in the RPI rankings, and Arkansas is the only active team ahead of them.

STEPHENVILLE, Texas – Following a run to the WAC Tournament title game in the Texans’ first season of postseason eligibility, head coach Mark Cumpian announced the signing of Macie Vickers on Wednesday.
 
Vickers comes to Stephenville after a single season with the Nebraska Cornhuskers. She will look to fill a role that was previously held the past two seasons by Kalyn Hill, who recently wrapped up her playing career after transferring in from WAC foe Seattle U.
 
The Escalon, California, native, appeared in three games for the Huskers in 2025. In all three contests, Nebraska scored at least 15 runs with 20-1, 16-3 and 15-0 victories. She was perfect in the field as well.
 
Before she headed east to the cornfields, she spent her high school career at Escalon High School. During her time there she not only competed on the diamond but also put in work on the hardwood competing in basketball (four years) and volleyball (two years). Vickers was on varsity for all four years of her high school softball days and was a team captain for two seasons. With her efforts on the field, she was named an All-League Selection three times, was named Escalon Offensive Player of the Year twice and earned the Trans Valley League Offensive Player of the Year award her junior year. She was also selected for the 2023 PGF Futures All-American Game Watch List as well.
 
Each season the bat just kept getting hotter for Vickers as she hit .451 her freshman season and by her senior campaign, she hit north of .600. Across her four years, she hit over 20 doubles, five triples and hits 10 homers.
 
On the hardwood, she was the captain for the volleyball team and an All-League Selection. On the hoops side of things she was also named captain and was an All-District selection as she average over 14 points and six rebounds per game throughout her four-year career.
 
For the latest news on the Texans, follow Tarleton Softball on Facebook, Instagram and X @tarletonsoftball.
 

Colin Cowherd has always had an interesting relationship with USC and how he discusses the football program on his FS1 show. During one of the latest episodes of ‘The Herd with Colin Cowher,’ he and coach Urban Meyer discussed the expectations for the Trojans this upcoming season.

It is how Cowherd phrased the initial question, though, that shows an overall lack of appreciation of what this team has done up until this point. He, like many others in college football, is not being thorough in his evaluation of the Trojans.

The extent of how good Jayden Maiava will be in 2025 can be the source of a lot of debate among the Trojan fan base. Though the quarterback is someone who should, in general, be held in higher regard. There are a lot of areas on this roster that shine, beyond safety Kamari Ramsey, who is excellent.

Sticking on the offensive side of the ball, Makai Lemon and Ja’Kobi Lane are two wide receivers who will produce. The worst-case scenario is that they will be a serviceable tandem. Their ceiling is being considered the best overall WR duo in college football by the end of the year.

Maybe not knowing too much about players who were at the junior college level last year is understandable. In any event, Waymond Jordan is about to be a nationally known name. Then Lake McRee is someone who just knows how to make plays and will look into conversations with some of the better tight ends in the Big Ten.

Notable names for USC outside of Ramsey

Defensively, Ramsey certainly deserves a lot of love early on. Jahkeem Stewart is a gigantic talent in more ways than one. It should be equally telling that he is not expected to start on a defensive line that will be improved from last year. Anthony Lucas, Devan Thompkins, Keeshawn Silver, and Kameryn Fountain are only some of the bodies up front who will help turn around narratives about the Cardinal and Gold on that side of the ball. 

Eric Gentry and Desman Stephans II are two excellent linebacking options for coach D’Anton Lynn. Bishop Fitzgerald is also patrolling the backfield and is someone who can more than hold his own.

These are only some of the Trojans who will dictate how this season will go. Safe to say, there is a lot of talent and a lot of players beyond just one singular piece that should have USC fans excited about the upcoming year. 

Florida State came a game away from returning to the College World Series for the second-straight year, but fell short, and now a bevy of offseason questions need to be answered.

For starters, the Seminoles should lose a chunk of the roster that carried them deep into the postseason, similar to what happened in 2024. Jamie Arnold should be a top-five pick when the Draft rolls around in June, Alex Lodise and Max Williams should also be early-round selections, and quite a few other veterans will need to make a difficult choice of staying in school or turning pro.

There are also obvious needs within the roster that must be addressed in the transfer portal if Florida State wants to remain in the upper echelon of college baseball teams. The bullpen in general, but specifically, a left-handed high-leverage arm, should be one of the first priorities for Link Jarrett in his staff. The Noles could not dictate matchups with their right-handed-heavy bullpen in 2025 and need to increase their options next season. FSU also needs to add a power right-handed bat in the outfield. Max Williams’ departure opens up a spot and the Seminoles were too left-handed dominant in their lineup last season. With Myles Bailey, an LHH, headlining FSU’s lineup in 2026, he needs to be protected by an RHH either behind or in front of him.

What the portal looks like as a whole for college baseball will be fascinating. On the one hand, it should be a madhouse with 14 of the 16 SEC teams who did not make it to Omaha looking to course correct and break through in 2026 by throwing gobs of money at players. However, college baseball will be the first sport operating under the new House settlement guidelines. Could that make it a fairer and normal market? Only time will tell.

A season ago, Link Jarrett saw how his team lost in Omaha and tried to plug those holes in the portal. Outfield defense became a struggle to end the year, so he grabbed Chase Williams and Gage Harrelson to give him three center fielders in the outfield. He realized that to defeat high-quality SEC lineups, he needed more velocity in the bullpen, so he found Peyton Prescott and Maison Martinez to run up the radar gun. The direction he takes this offseason will reveal a lot about what the manager feels his team fell short on and what FSU must do to get over the hump.

Roster Departures:

Transfer Portal Additions:

– INF Eli Putnam (Davidson): 64Analytics and Noles247 reported last Wednesday that Eli Putnam would transfer to the Seminoles for his redshirt senior season. Putnam was named First-Team A-10 in each of the last two years and went .349/.419/.660 in 2025 with 19 homers. Putnam mostly played 1st base with the Wildcats, but with that position filled by Bailey, he will most likely move somewhere else on the infield.

High-School Recruits: