The transfer portal opens Tuesday. Over the next 15 days, coaching staffs at every level will try to sort through hundreds of available players under a compressed timeline with incomplete information. Most will do it the way they always have: pull up a player’s stats on two or three websites, watch some film, call around, and make a decision.
We built a tool that does the data side of that process in seconds.
The Transfer Portal Evaluation Engine is live right now at engine.getthebreakdown.com. It covers all of Division 1 men’s basketball. You type in a name, select a destination conference, and the engine generates a full scouting report — stats auto-populated, conference translation projections calculated, comparable historical transfers matched, and risks flagged. No manual data entry. No spreadsheets. No cross-referencing three different websites.
Here is exactly what you get and how it works.
Watch the Full Demo
We recorded a full walkthrough of the engine before launch. Since this video was recorded, we’ve added a Watchlist feature for tracking your top targets, along with other updates and NIL improvements. Everything else you see in the demo is live and available right now.
Prefer to read? Keep scrolling for a feature-by-feature breakdown.
The Evaluate Tab: Instant Scouting Reports
The core of the engine is the Evaluate tab. Enter any D1 player’s name and the engine pulls their current stats from Barttorvik — points, rebounds, assists, steals, blocks, three-point percentage, true shooting percentage, usage rate, and more. That data populates instantly. No typing numbers into a spreadsheet.
Then you select a destination conference. This is where it gets interesting.
The engine runs the player’s stats through a projection model trained on over 3,000 actual transfer outcomes. It asks: when players with this statistical profile moved from Conference A to Conference B historically, what happened to their numbers? The answer is not a guess — it is a data-driven projection based on real results.
A guard averaging 17 points in the MAAC will likely not put up 17 in the Big East. But how much does it drop? To 14? To 11? To 8? The answer depends on the specific player’s efficiency profile, shot selection, metrics, and the gap between conferences. The engine calculates that projection automatically.
Every evaluation includes a rating — Strong, Average, or Risk — based on the overall statistical profile and projection strength. This gives you a quick read on how confident the model is in the player’s ability to translate. Players who show signs of a potential performance jump also receive a Breakout badge, flagging them as candidates to exceed their projections at the next level.
Conference Translation Projections: The Feature Nobody Else Has
This is the single biggest differentiator. Portal trackers on the internet shows you raw stats. 247Sports, On3, Verbal Commits — they list what a player averaged last season. That is useful, but it is incomplete. It tells you what happened. It does not tell you what will happen when that player changes environments.
The engine projects what each stat line looks like at the destination conference level. Here is the same player — Lewis Walker from North Carolina A&T (CAA) — projected at two different destinations:
Projected at the Big 12, Walker’s 18.9 PPG drops to a projected 9.4 PPG. His rating: Average. The T2 → T5 conference jump is significant, and the model reflects that.
Projected at the WCC instead, Walker’s numbers hold up better — 12.0 projected PPG with a Strong rating. Same player, different destination, different projection. The competition gap is real, and the model accounts for it.
This is something coaching staffs likely have been doing manually — if they do it at all. They pull up conference averages, try to estimate how a player’s numbers will translate, and make educated guesses. The engine replaces the guessing with historical data from actual transfers who made similar jumps.
Comparable Transfers: See What Actually Happened
For every player evaluation, the engine matches comparable historical transfers — players with a similar statistical profile who made a similar conference-level move. You see their stats before the transfer, their stats after, and whether they improved, declined, or held steady.
Instead of wondering what will happen when a 15 PPG scorer moves from the WCC to the ACC, you can see what happened to the last five guys with a similar profile who made a comparable jump. Did they break out? Did they struggle? Now, you can easily see.
The Discover Tab: Reverse Player Search
Most portal evaluation works forward: you hear a name, then you look up the player. The Discover tab works backward: you tell the engine what you need, and it finds players who fit.
Need a guard who projects to score 11+ points in the SEC, stands at least 6’3″, dishes 3+ assists, and shoots 36%+ from three? The engine searches the entire D1 database and returns every player who matches — with their projected stats at your conference level already calculated.
For coaching staffs who know exactly what their roster needs but do not have time to manually screen hundreds of portal entrants, this is a game-changer. It takes a process that used to take days and compresses it into minutes.
Watchlist: Track Your Targets
Once you find players you like — whether through evaluating specific names or discovering new ones through the search tool — you can add them to a watchlist. The watchlist saves your prospects in one place with their projected stats visible at a glance. As the portal fills up over the next two weeks, this becomes your recruiting board.
What It Does NOT Do
This tool does not replace film evaluation, character assessment, or the relationship-building that every good coach does. Analytics tell you whether a player’s production is likely to translate. They do not tell you whether he will show up to workouts, fit in your locker room, or compete when the game gets physical.
What the engine does is save coaching staffs hours of manual data work so they can focus their time on the things that require human judgment — watching film, making calls, and having real conversations with players and their families. The data side should not be the bottleneck. Now it is not.
If you want to understand the full analytics framework behind how we evaluate players — which stats matter most, what red flags to watch for, and how conference translation works at a deeper level — read our full guide: How to Evaluate Transfer Portal Players Using Advanced Analytics.
Try It Right Now
The Transfer Portal Evaluation Engine is live and free to use at engine.getthebreakdown.com. The portal opens Tuesday, April 7. The best time to start evaluating targets was weeks ago. The second best time is right now.
Kent Auslander is the founder of The Breakdown. He is a former D1 player (Maryland, Coppin State), former D1 assistant coach under Juan Dixon (Coppin State), 2024 Coach of the Year (Clarke County HS, Virginia), and TBT Elite 8 assistant coach. He holds a Master’s degree in Adult and Continuing Education from Coppin State University. Try the Transfer Portal Evaluation Engine →