Auburn looked to have five players in its outgoing transfer portal class, but as the portal officially closed to entrants on Tuesday, center Emeka Opurum got in under the wire to make it six.
One of the top JUCO transfers in the country last offseason, Opurum played just six games before suffering a season-ending injury. However, after Steven Pearl’s transfer portal activity, health was no longer his biggest hurdle to playing time on the Plains.
Pearl added three centers: Owen Freeman from Creighton, Bukky Oboye from Santa Clara, and Narcisse Ngoy, an international prospect from France. That haul, along with the arrivals of 6-foot-8 forward Thomas Dowd from Troy and 6-foot-7 Adam Olsen from South Alabama, essentially robbed Opurum of any path into the rotation and forced his hand as a late portal entrant.
Emeka Opurum got boxed out of playing time with the Tigers
A seven-footer from Laos, Nigeria, Opourum began his collegiate career at Butler Community College in Kansas. As a first-year transfer with sophomore eligibility status last season, Opurum played a limited role before his injury, logging his season high of 19 minutes against Merrimack on November 6.
From that point, his playing time decreased before the injury, which Pearl told reporters in December he was “not at liberty to discuss specifics of that situation right now, just out of respect for his privacy."
Like Opurum, Freeman is another player looking for a fresh start. At Iowa in 2024-25, the 6-foot-10 center averaged 16.7 points and 6.7 rebounds on 63 percent shooting. However, last season, his numbers fell off dramatically for Creighton, averaging 5.0 points per game in just 11.9 minutes with only nine starts across 26 games played.
Freeman is a risky bet, as is Oboye, who is making the jump from a mid-major conference. However, Freeman at least has a track record of power conference success, and Oboye is on an upward trajectory after starting all 34 games for the Broncos, who made the NCAA Tournament with an at-large bid.
Opurum is a major question mark, so with five incoming transfers and two freshmen, there wasn’t room or time for him to develop into an answer.
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