SLIDESHOW: Destiny Slocum, Jessica Shepard Lead All-Transfer Basketball Team

The arena goes dark. The music—let’s go with Peter, Paul and Mary’s “Leaving On A Jet Plane”—comes on over the public address system. (Let it play while you read.)

“And now, give a big hand to your Transfer University Travelers!”

Out comes the team: an overstuffed roster filled with talent at every spot. This is the current reality in women’s basketball, and not necessarily one that’s all bad.

Sure, one inherent advantage for the game has been the large percentage of players who stay four years at one school, developing in a single system. But the excitement of significant transfers brings a free agency glitz and attention to the women’s game during an otherwise-quiet period.

And the downside of coaches forced to perpetually recruit and re-recruit their own players cannot be fun or easy. But the upside is the chance to build one’s roster more precisely, in annual rather than four-year increments.

If you think coaches didn’t see what it looked like for South Carolina to add the precise pieces necessary to win an NCAA championship with Allisha Gray and Kaela Davis, then you don’t know coaches very well.

Meanwhile, let us consider just how good the current team of transfers would be as a collection of talent, while an extra layer of recruiting takes place that will help shape the 2018-19 season, once most of these players become eligible. The collection of talent here would be ranked in the top 25, easily, with national championship aspirations.

Presenting: The Transfer University Travelers!