John Calipari likes to keep things close to the vest in the transfer portal, but the first two portal adds are finally known. The Hogs are adding Cooper Bowser of Furman and Jeremiah Wilkinson of Georgia.

Bowser is a slender 6’11 rim runner with extreme athleticism who likes to dunk everything. Wilkinson is a 6’1 scoring guard who can create his own shot at all three levels. Their exact roles are still unclear: Bowser played the 4 at Furman and seems like a replacement for Trevon Brazile, but with Malique Ewin’s status still up in the air, it’s hard to tell how his minutes will be split. Wilkinson seems like a replacement for Meleek Thomas, who is probably going to stay in the NBA draft.

Ewin and Thomas’s decisions will impact who else the Hogs add. They still have to have a defensive center, and the candidate seems to be Cincinnati’s Moustapha Thiam. If Ewin returns, they probably don’t add any other bigs, which probably puts Bowser as the starting 4 and Ewin splitting between the 4 and 5. If the plan is to move forward without Ewin, Bowser might actually play more 5 and they find another 4, maybe a stockier power forward in the style of Adou Thiero.

Given that Arkansas was reportedly still pursuing Utah transfer Keanu Dawes – a stretch-4 whose skillset is very similar to Brazile – context clues suggest that Bowser is a replacement for Ewin, who is either going to be denied another year of eligibility or is planning to move on. But the alternative explanation is that Cal is finally abandoning his nine-man rotation and going for a bigger lineup next year, with guys like Bowser (and possibly Dawes, had he committed) accepting fewer minutes in exchange for a more specific role and high NIL.

Cooper Bowser

Bowser’s skillset is a pure example of a “rim runner”, a long, very athletic big who can play in transition and dunks everything. He mostly played the 4 at Furman alongside a slower, more defensive-minded center. He was one of the nation’s leaders in dunks and lobs, and his 76% field goal percentage is among the best in Division I. There’s a lot to like in his profile: in addition to a low turnover rate (12.6%), he has a very good assist rate for a player of his type (7.8%), showing an ability to pass out of the post, which is valuable.

On the boards, Arkansas had a nice offense-defense rebounding split with Brazile (solid defensive rebounder) and Ewin (elite offensive rebounder) splitting boards at each end. How does Bowser fit? He is not an overly impressive rebounder overall, with his 12.7% total rebound rate lagging both Brazile and Ewin. His defensive rebounding rate of 17.0% is slightly stronger than his offensive numbers. Again, though, at Furman he shared the floor with Baba Miller, the team’s rebounding specialist.

He’s not a major shot-blocker but he will swat a few shots, blocking 4.8% of 2-point attempts while on the floor at Furman this season, roughly equal to Ewin’s 5.0% and Brazile’s 5.2%.

The basic tools are there for him to find a nice little niche at 8-10 points and five boards per game. He’ll be a solid transition finisher and lob man on offense, while his length will bother opponents at both ends.

Concerns? Unfortunately, there are many. He does absolutely nothing to assuage concerns about Arkansas’ paint defense, as like Ewin and Brazile, he is not a good on-ball defender in the post at all. If you watched the NCAA Tournament, you probably saw UConn’s Tarris Reed put up 31 points and 27 rebounds against Bowser and Furman. And unlike Brazile, he offers no 3-point threat on offense, so he can’t help space the defense out while playing the 4. That’s going to make it a bit harder to create open scoring lanes for the guards, which is what Calipari wants his offense to do.

This pickup doesn’t jump out, but I’m anxious to see what other pieces come together. My fear with Bowser is that he will dominate the weakest competition but be useless against the Floridas and Arizonas of the college basketball world.

Jeremiah Wilkinson

Wilkinson is a bucket-getter. He averaged 15.1 points per game as a freshman at Cal, and then transferred to Georgia and put up 17.4 points per game on extreme volume. He’s only 6’1, but he can create his own shot and score at all levels.

His efficiency numbers aren’t great, but for the volume, they are not bad. I get some JD Notae vibes in that sense. He shot just 51% eFG% this year, including 36% from beyond the arc (about half his field goal attempts are triples). Compared to Thomas and Darius Acuff, he gets to the free throw line at a higher rate, turns it over at the same very low rate, but dishes out assists at a lower rate. He’s definitely a score-first guy.

The ease and volume with which he scores is going to take a lot of pressure off of the freshman and off-ball role players. The concern, as with Bowser, is his defense. There’s a bit to work with here, as his 3.5% steal rate is excellent and higher than any Razorback this season. But some of that comes from the fact that Georgia played much more aggressively on the perimeter. Arkansas might consider doing that – ball pressure is actually a great counter to the Gorilla Ball that destroyed them this year – but Calipari has never been a big ball pressure coach, so it would be surprising to see him suddenly start pressing now.

Despite the steal rate, Wilkinson had absolutely terrible On-Off numbers for defense. What that means is that Georgia’s defense was much better while he was on the bench. Those numbers do not necessarily translate from school to school, as they are heavily dependent on factors like role, fit, and teammates. But generally, it’s rare for a net-negative defender to suddenly become really good in the plus-minus department.

Is this a good class so far?

When it comes to Arkansas transfer portal classes, the goal is to be better than the disastrous 2023-24 portal class that led to the end of the Eric Musselman era. That class included Keyon Menifield, El Ellis, Tramon Mark, Khalif Battle, Jeremiah Davenport, and Chandler Lawson. Mark and Battle had some moments, but that was just a terrible class all-around.

The biggest issue was the advanced stats knew that class was bad based on how those guys performed at their previous stops. The two point guards – Ellis and Menifield – were inefficient on offense, terrible on defense, and had bad On-Off numbers. Mark was fine offensively but his defensive issues were concealed because he played for Houston. Battle was strong offensively but a very bad defender. And Davenport had done fine as a role player but his On-Off numbers were bad. The end result was a group of players who were mediocre on offense and awful on defense.

While no all-in-one stat will perfectly predict fit at a new school – individual stats like the ones listed in the brief evaluations above are good, and obviously film and the eye test are essential too – an all-in-one stat can give you a pretty solid idea of how good a player actually is. Our in-house stat is xRAPM. We’ve discussed it many times before, but it uses both box score stats and On-Off numbers in a ridge regression to guess actual net output per 100 possessions for each player, adjusted for who they play with and against. Most major all-in-one basketball stats – RPM, EPM, LEBRON, PIPM, many others – are essentially different versions of this same concept.

That 2023-24 portal class was bad on the way in. Menifield and Ellis both had negative xRAPMs at their previous stops, while Lawson, Davenport, and Battle were mediocre. Only Mark (plus-4.4) was a good add, per xRAPM.

Past xRAPM is decently predictive of future xRAPM, even at a different school. Here’s a look at Arkansas’ transfer adds over the last three seasons plus a random assortment of other high-profile transfers to other SEC schools:

The upper-right guy is Ja’Kobi Gillespie, who transferred from Maryland to Tennessee and was very good this year. You can see that of the five worst transfers in this set, four of them had negative xRAPMs at their new schools. Those are Ellis, Menifield, Davenport, and Nick Pringle. The “bad” guy that managed to be positive was Denzel Aberdeen, who transferred from Florida to Kentucky.

Hopefully you get the picture. Unfortunately, that leads us to the xRAPM values of the two adds, which aren’t great. Wilkinson was +2.2 at California, which is decent but not overwhelming. And despite 17.4 points per game this year, he was just +1.1 at Georgia this season.

Is Wilkinson a shot chucker?

It’s easy to get swept up in point totals, but in many cases, high-scoring guards are just stealing shot chances from their teammates and not really adding value. Take them off the floor and the offense still scores just fine, and maybe plays better defense. That’s actually what happened with Georgia this season. With Wilkinson in the game, Georgia’s team offensive efficiency was 120.1, but when he was on the bench, it was still 120.0, basically no change. But Georgia’s defensive efficiency went from 111.2 (very bad) to 98.7 (decent) when Wilkinson left the game, a massive drop worth about eight points over a full game.

To be clear, the math says Darius Acuff did the same thing, which is why he finished just third on the team in xRAPM this year despite all his offensive production. Arkansas’ offense was basically the same whether or not he was in the game, and the defense was slightly better when he was on the bench, though the change was not nearly as radical as with Wilkinson.

This is where you have to use your head, because there’s a big difference between a high-minutes starter sitting out a few possessions a game and that player simply not existing or missing the game completely. Because despite what the On-Off numbers on Acuff show, there’s no doubt that Arkansas’ offense played a little bit worse when he didn’t play at all against Missouri. The dropoff wasn’t huge, but the Hogs scored in the 70s in regulation, which only happened a couple times when Acuff played.

What the numbers are telling us is that if this add doesn’t work out, it will be because Wilkinson’s defense is so bad that it doesn’t justify his cannibalizing offense. I don’t know if that will happen, but that’s the worst-case scenario. The best-case scenario is that Arkansas’ staff is going to protect him defensively and allow him to thrive in driving the offense.

Is Bowser a defensive liability?

Bowser is the opposite of Wilkinson in a lot of ways: lower volume, but much more efficient. But the On-Off results are the same: Furman as a team was actually better at both ends of the floor with Bowser on the bench, which was a major driver in his xRAPM being just +1.6 despite excellent box score stats.

As with Wilkinson, there are mitigating factors related to Bowser’s role. He played the 4 alongside another non-shooter at center, so Furman struggled to space the floor offensively. I would guess the Hogs get Bowser into better spots for him to thrive.

However, it’s hard to be positive about his defense, especially against bigger, more physical opponents. Even if he plays the 5 and gets fewer minutes against bigger teams, he’ll have to play some in those games.

What about Moustapha Thiam?

It’s important to remember that returners (namely Billy Richmond, but possibly also Ewin) and five-star freshmen (JSJ, Abdou Toure, JJ Andrews) are going to drive the success of the 2026-27 Razorbacks, not these portal players, who are more likely going to be asked to fill very specific roles. So unimpressive xRAPM numbers aren’t really worth getting panicked over.

There is one portal position that has to be a home run: the defensive center. Arkansas’ top target, Thiam, has an excellent +5.6 xRAPM, including a whopping +4.6 Def-xRAPM, suggesting that he’s every bit as much of an elite defender as he appears. He blocks shots at a good rate and Cincinnati’s interior defense was elite this season with him on the floor. Add Thiam and no one is worrying about what the advanced stats say about Wilkinson or Bowser.