Basketball Players Go Through Turnstiles at Iowa -- and Almost Everywhere Else

The boots were used here, but I'm tossing them in the closet for a while.

Maybe the Hawkeyes' deck needed a good reshuffle. Maybe, just maybe, the new cast Lickliter assembles will afford his team a better chance at success.

That's said with the good faith everyone understands what the word "maybe" means.

But let's deal with a certainty. Transfers are as much a part of college basketball as television timeouts. Sometimes, coaches make transfers happen. Sometimes, players catch coaches by surprise.

Here is a partial rundown of what has happened from the transfer front within the last two weeks beyond Carver-Hawkeye Arena:

The third-leading scorer on Drake's team, guard Josh Parker, announced he was leaving.

Freshman guard Wes Eikmeier, who sank eight 3-pointers over his first two games with Iowa State (and just 12 more the rest of the season), departed from the ISU program.

Freshman guard Kaylon Williams of Cedar Rapids left Evansville after leading the Missouri Valley Conference in assists.

Liberty University freshman guard Seth Curry decided scoring 20.2 points a game and making 102 three-pointers meant he was ready for greener pastures, so he's transferring to Duke.

"My immediate reaction was what a great opportunity for Seth," said Liberty Coach Ritchie McKay.

My immediate reaction after reading McKay's immediate reaction was the coach wasn't being totally candid.

University of Maine junior Mark Socoby, the Black Bears' leading scorer and a Maine native, opted to leave his state's only Division I program though he has only one season of eligibility left.

"There's nothing that happened, no incident, no person that made this decision come about. It's more of just me kind of taking a look at where I am as a player and person."

Let's hope Vermont or New Hampshire didn't get in Socoby's head.

The easy thing to do would be to rip players for not finishing commitments to their schools. Me, I'm all for players doing whatever they want within their NCAA-imposed limitations.

It's not like they're John Calipari, who is allowed to skip out on his contract and his Memphis team to make more cash elsewhere.

Calipari will do just fine at Kentucky, of course. The players he left behind at Memphis? Well, maybe they'll be lucky enough to play for a coach who leaves some other school in mid-contract.

The players those coaches use for their job-positioning aren't quite as mobile. But at least they can make moves during their college careers to further their pursuit of self-fulfillment. In basketball, they have to sit out a year if they're going from one Division I program to another.

Wouldn't it be nice if it worked that way for coaches, too? You want the better gig at Kentucky, Calipari? Fine. But you'll have to sit out next year, or coach at a junior college for a season.

Coaches can be run off at any time during their contracts, of course. Luckily for them, there's this thing called a buyout. Athletic scholarships are renewable every year. There's nothing to stop coaches from nudging scholarship athletes out the door.

It's entertaining to watch coaches tap-dance when they've offered, say, four scholarships for the next year and have only three available. A holdover player always abruptly leaves for "personal reasons."

Basketball teams only use five players at a time, and from eight to 10 are in a playing rotation. Happiness can be spread pretty thin in that sport.

On and off the court, movement is constant.