How Matthew Mitchell and UK women’s basketball are now winning ‘the transfer game’
Matthew Mitchell has been on both extremes of “the transfer game.”
The University of Kentucky women’s basketball coach can tell you it’s a whole lot more fun when you are getting players in rather than watching them leave.
On Wednesday, UK announced that starting guards from two of its SEC rivals will be joining the Wildcats.
Jazmine Massengill, who started 30 of 31 games for Tennessee in 2019-20, is coming to Lexington. So too is Auburn guard Robyn Benton, who averaged 10.1 points this past season.
The additions of Massengill and Benton form a meaningful milestone for Mitchell and UK Hoops.
You will recall that in Kentucky women’s basketball’s rocky 2015-16 school year seven players with remaining eligibility left UK for various reasons.
With Massengill and Benton coming on board, Kentucky and Mitchell have now added seven transfers from other Division I schools since the 2016 “troubles.”
“We’ve had great success over the years welcoming people into the program looking for a fresh start,” Mitchell said Thursday. “Outside of 2016, we’ve usually enjoyed (more) welcoming players in than seeing them leave.”
A 6-foot guard with a versatile game, Massengill was a player Kentucky recruited hard out of high school. The Chattanooga, Tenn., product played AAU basketball on the same team as current UK star Rhyne Howard and prized incoming Wildcats recruit Treasure Hunt (the team was coached by Hunt’s mother, Keisha).
“We knew her real well, we’d been to her home (in recruiting),” Mitchell says. “We were very familiar. We had watched her play a ton (as a prospect). And we had watched her, obviously, play against us at Tennessee.”
As a sophomore at UT, Massengill averaged 6.5 points, 4.7 rebounds and 4.1 assists. She had an impressive 128-to-49 assist to turnover ratio.
Massengill made 39.9 percent of her shot attempts, 28.3 percent on three-point tries and 75.6 percent of her free throws.
“A very talented player. Great size; good speed, good quickness; strength,” Mitchell says. “She has a lot to work with.”
An 5-9 product of Atlanta, Benton missed the first nine Auburn games last season due to injury.
In the 20 games in which she played, she averaged 10.1 points and 2.9 rebounds while shooting 33 percent from the field, 31.8 on three-pointers and 84.3 from the foul line.
A defensive ballhawk, Benton had 56 steals, and now has a robust 90 steals in two college seasons.
Mitchell notes that, although Auburn and UK use different defensive schemes, they share similar preferences for aggressive, attacking defene.
“Robyn will fit well in the way we design our defense,” Mitchell says.
The Kentucky coach also likes the idea of adding a player who has already proven she can be a double-figure scorer in the SEC. “Another really attractive quality that Robyn brings to the table,” Mitchell said.
Barring an unforeseen circumstance, both Massengill and Benton will sit out the 2020-21 season as required by current NCAA rules then have two years of eligibility remaining.
There has been rampant speculation about the NCAA adopting a new policy that allows all athletes to transfer once without sitting out.
However, Mitchell says “the last guidance I trust was from the Southeastern Conference saying that, pre-Covid 19, the (NCAA) was going to discuss (the change) in June and it was probably going to go through in August.
“Now, with all of the disruption that has been caused by the pandemic, if I understand it correctly, they are tabling (the new transfer rule for 2020-21) and the soonest that would happen would be for (2021-22). So, this year, we are going to play under the current rules.”
Regardless, Massengill and Benton could apply for NCAA waivers seeking immediate eligibility.
“Nothing in my conversations with them has made me aware that that is something they will be doing,” Mitchell says. “That doesn’t mean they won’t. But what we are going on right now and what we are prepared for for next season is for them not to be playing in games.”
Kentucky still has one open scholarship for 2020-21. Mitchell says UK is hoping to use it via the transfer portal to address a persistent weakness: A lack of front-court height.
“We just want to continue to seek out height that fits our style,” Mitchell says. “We’re always looking for a taller player that is mobile and aggressive, and can run and has some speed. They don’t have to be an Olympic sprinter, but we need them to run as fast as they can run, move laterally and defend all over the floor.”
Since Kentucky’s 2016 mass exodus, UK has added D-I transfers from Stony Brook (Ogechi Anyagaligbo), Arizona State (Sabrina Haines), North Carolina State (Nae Nae Cole), Texas (Chasity Patterson), Utah (Dre’Una Edwards) and now Tennessee (Massengill) and Auburn (Benton).
As Mitchell and Kentucky can attest, in the never-ceasing NCAA women’s basketball transfer game, it’s generally better to receive than give.
