Zack's interview with Tony Bozzella
setonhall.rivals.com
Part 1
TROVE: You have been someone who's embraced the transfer portal for years as your teams have seemed to have a certain level of turnover, but things are completely different now. Can you touch on what's so difficult about running a program in this type of environment?
BOZZELLA: Before this unlimited transferring, we really only had one year where we had a lot of kids transfer. For the most every other year we'd basically lose 1 or 2 kids, but we would go after and we would be able to identify a certain amount of kids and do very well that way. What hurts now is two years ago I brought in seven transfers and six of them were seniors so I had to start all over again. It's just made it very difficult because the way recruiting has changed.
We don't want to bring in a ton of freshmen because two things happen with freshmen. One, they don't play, they're going to leave. Two, you have a lot of them play you're going to lose. We're in the Big East where we're playing against women, especially even now with still the Covid year available. We have a kid on our team Faith Masonius, she's going to be 24-years old. How is a 17-year old going to compete against them all the time? You're not. And it's just changed the whole dynamic.
It's not the portal, it's the immediate transfer rule. We don't know from year to year who's going to stay or who's gone. When [players] had to sit out a year you had a little bit of an idea of who was staying. Now we don't. People are like 'Who are you recruiting?' Everybody. 'What position?' Every one. I wish I could tell you that Jada Eades, who is one of the best freshmen I've ever recruited and Savanna Catalon, who is an All Big East rookie team kid - I wish I could tell you that that's going to be my backcourt for the next three, four years. I hope so, but you know I don't know. One's from Florida, one's from Texas and then if we start talking NIL it really becomes difficult.
PirateCrew: Seton Hall Pirates Football & Basketball Recruiting
The definitive source for all PirateCrew news.
Part 1
TROVE: You have been someone who's embraced the transfer portal for years as your teams have seemed to have a certain level of turnover, but things are completely different now. Can you touch on what's so difficult about running a program in this type of environment?
BOZZELLA: Before this unlimited transferring, we really only had one year where we had a lot of kids transfer. For the most every other year we'd basically lose 1 or 2 kids, but we would go after and we would be able to identify a certain amount of kids and do very well that way. What hurts now is two years ago I brought in seven transfers and six of them were seniors so I had to start all over again. It's just made it very difficult because the way recruiting has changed.
We don't want to bring in a ton of freshmen because two things happen with freshmen. One, they don't play, they're going to leave. Two, you have a lot of them play you're going to lose. We're in the Big East where we're playing against women, especially even now with still the Covid year available. We have a kid on our team Faith Masonius, she's going to be 24-years old. How is a 17-year old going to compete against them all the time? You're not. And it's just changed the whole dynamic.
It's not the portal, it's the immediate transfer rule. We don't know from year to year who's going to stay or who's gone. When [players] had to sit out a year you had a little bit of an idea of who was staying. Now we don't. People are like 'Who are you recruiting?' Everybody. 'What position?' Every one. I wish I could tell you that Jada Eades, who is one of the best freshmen I've ever recruited and Savanna Catalon, who is an All Big East rookie team kid - I wish I could tell you that that's going to be my backcourt for the next three, four years. I hope so, but you know I don't know. One's from Florida, one's from Texas and then if we start talking NIL it really becomes difficult.
