McFeely's Tip Sheet: Reckless speculation on which players might bolt from the Summit League

After spending four days in Sioux Falls for the Summit League basketball tournament, the Tip Sheet is loaded to the gills on scuttlebutt and speculation. Most of it is reckless, of course, but that's what makes it fun.

Will the Summit League expand and add Northern Colorado? Will an expanded NCAA tournament relegate the Summit League champion to a play-in game every year? We wrote about those already.

Here's another on which to chew: Which men's players will use the transfer portal to bolt the league and land at a major-conference program?

Players like Grant Nelson (North Dakota State), Baylor Scheierman (South Dakota State), Max Abmas (Oral Roberts), Andrew Rohde (St. Thomas) and others are making an impact at big schools.

In this transient era, what's to stop this season's top players from leaving the Summit League to chase fame and NIL fortune?

Nothing, that's what is stopping them.

Now that the tourney is finished and SDSU has clinched its spot in the Big Enchilada, let's throw some refried beans against the wall and see what sticks.

So we present to you a purely speculative list of potential men's players who'll put the Summit League in their rearview mirrors once the college basketball portal season heats up. We'll list them in no particular order, other than the first one. Zeke Mayo, SDSU's star guard, was by far the No. 1-with-a-bullet name that popped up in Sioux Falls when talk turned to potential transfers.

Mayo. Mayo's name caused the transfer portal Geiger counter to beep and screech when the bullslinging began about players we won't see in the Summit League next season. Don't know if there's truly something there, but it will be a shock to many in the conference if he stays in Brookings.

William Kyle III, SDSU. The 6-foot-9, 230-pound dunk machine is athletic and explosive and that makes him valuable to a big-time program, even if his offensive skills are limited. He's from Bellevue, Neb., (the same high school as Omaha's Frankie Fidler) so could a nearby Big Ten school or a private in Omaha coming calling?

Fidler. He's different physically than when he first came into the league. Thicker, stronger. Fidler is a scorer at "all three levels" as coaches say and at 6-7, 220 pounds he has the size to play big-boy ball. Completely reckless super-speculation: Since he and Kyle played at the same high school, could they go as a package deal to a Big Ten squad or a private located in Omaha?

B.J. Omot, North Dakota. There was speculation last year at this time that Omot was a prime candidate to transfer, but he stuck around Grand Forks and helped Paul Sather's team be one of the most improved in the conference. Can Sather and fellow Fighting Hawks like Treysen Eaglestaff and Eli King convince Omot to stick around one more season and run it back?

Andrew Morgan, NDSU. He's a Minnesota farm kid who is studying agriculture at an ag school, plus he has only one year of eligibility left, so maybe the 6-10 post has no desire to go anywhere. But he's big enough, strong enough, agile enough and can shoot the 3-pointer well enough that he could help a Big Ten team.

Yes, this list is four Summit League first-team all-conference players and a second-teamer (Morgan). The only first-teamer not on the list is Denver's Tommy Bruner, who is out of eligibility. But that's the way this is going to roll.

It'll be an annual discussion for a mid- to low-major like the Summit League: How many of the league's homegrown best players will transfer to a bigger school for the experience of playing under the big lights and, of course, a bigger NIL check?

Get used to it.

Something that likely won't happen, but if it does I'll look like a genius:

The NDSU women's basketball team will win 25 games in 2024-25.

The Tip Sheet asked some Summit League folks in Sioux Falls if they were worried the conference was going to be a farm system for the major conferences when it came to men's basketball. Generally, they put on a happy face although in private conversations they conceded the obvious. Basically, some have the attitude that if they can keep a top-end recruit on-campus for two or three years before they transfer, that's about all you can expect in this day and age.

"It should be obvious by now that it requires adaptability on our parts, and that's all 362 teams in Division I," said St. Thomas coach Johnny Tauer. "Where the landscape will be two years from now compared to two years ago, I wouldn't make any predictions. But I do think at the end of the day what's incumbent upon us is to create a culture where people are excited to come to our university and once they are here that they want to be here."

St. Thomas lost Rohde, last season's league Freshman of the Year, to Virginia of the Atlantic Coast Conference via the transfer portal. Tauer said that has to be taken in stride and emphasized the Tommies kept everybody else on their roster.

"Obviously there are going to be cases where people have opportunities," Tauer said. "It is a different landscape, but I think that's true for everybody. Duke loses kids one-and-done to the NBA. D-2 schools lose kids to D-I, so I probably worry less about that and worry more about getting kids that really want to be at St. Thomas."

What it will mean in the end: There will be fewer dominant teams in the Summit League and the top-end teams will regularly lose its best talent.

North Dakota State's football program offered a scholarship to Plant City, Fla., quarterback Chris Denson, a three-star recruit who threw for 2,147 yards and 26 touchdowns while rushing for 666 yards as a junior. Denson has a pile of Division I offers including Minnesota, Pittsburgh, James Madison, Coastal Carolina, Arkansas State, South Florida, Georgia Southern, Georgia State, Southern Illinois, Bucknell, Akron and Delaware. Denson is the second QB offered by the Bison for the 2025 class. The other is three-star recruit Ryan Fitzgerald of Wilmette, Ill. ... Tennessee's Dalton Knecht, a transfer from Northern Colorado whose father Corey played high school ball in Enderlin, was named the Associated Press Player of the Year and Newcomer of the Year for the Southeastern Conference. Knecht led the SEC in scoring at 21.4 points per game. The 6-foot-6 Knecht led the nation with five 35-points-plus performances. He had five of the league's top nine scoring performances this season. ... Former NDSU baseball coach Tod Brown, now at New Mexico, won his 399th career game this week with a 6-4 victory over Arizona State. He'll shoot for No. 400 on Friday at Nevada. ... SDSU women's basketball team, which won the Summit League title game over Jorey Collins' Bison, is projected to be an 11 seed in the NCAA tournament by the bracketologists at ESPN.