College basketball's off-seasons have become progressively crazier over the last five years and it's reaching a fever pitch in 2022. But nobody has had more drama attached to them than Terrence Shannon, Jr.

It's not Shannon's fault, but his offseason started off on the wrong foot when Jon Rothstein of CBS Sports tweeted that he'd be entering the transfer portal before the Texas Tech basketball team had even returned home to Lubbock after losing to Duke in the NCAA Tournament.

That upset fans, who claimed Shannon Jr. was disrespecting the program by not even getting off the plane in Lubbock before getting in the portal.

In my opinion, Shannon Jr. can't control when the news comes out, but the optics are the optics, and those were bad. To be fair, he did an incredible job at damage control by tweeting out to fans and his teammates in the following days.

In the initial release, Texas Tech was mentioned as a strong contender to retain the services of Shannon Jr. who is rated as a top 10 transfer this offseason. The other potential destinations included some Big Ten schools and Kentucky. My thought was that Illinois would be the front runner because that would be Shannon Jr. going home, and the style they play fits Shannon's skill set.

Fast forward a few weeks and Shannon Jr. announced that he'd be moving on from Texas Tech and would no longer consider a return to the Red Raiders.

But from April 7th to April 22nd, rumors swirled that Shannon Jr. would in fact return to Texas Tech -- even after the above graphic where he said that he'd played his last season at Texas Tech.

On April 22nd, things really started to heat up. Shannon Jr.'s former AAU coach tweeted that he'd committed to Michigan. That was widely reported for an hour or two before being shot down. Shannon Jr. confirmed he wasn't going to Michigan by calling cap on the reports. That's slang for 'not true.'

A week later, Shannon Jr. committed to Illinois, Michigan's basketball rival. For real this time.

That didn't sit well with Michigan player Hunter Dickinson, who felt like Shannon Jr. would have committed to Michigan if it weren't for that dastardly Mark Adams at Texas Tech.

Dickinson went so far as to call Adams a "coward" for not letting Shannon come to Michigan.

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“@CoachAdams_TTU is a coward,” Dickinson said. "How are you going to deny a kid the chance to play where he wanted to go. Were you really under that much pressure by your boosters to not sign off on him to take summer classes there to be able to graduate even after he announced he’s not coming back?

"You should be ashamed of yourself for using your power over a kid to prevent him from going where he wanted to just because you wanted him to stay at your school. Recruits and their families know that if you go to TT and don’t like it you might not be able to go where you want."

Of course, nothing is ever truly deleted off the internet.

When the Michigan transfer did not go through there were reports that academics were a factor, but that's on Michigan, not Adams.

If Shannon Jr. needed more credits in order to transfer to Michigan and he'd already entered the transfer portal, then his scholarship wouldn't cover summer classes anyways. Does Dickinson expect a coach to hold a roster spot open in order for a player to leave in two months? That's ridiculous.

Shannon could have paid cash for classes at Texas Tech and gone to Michigan if he wanted to. He could have enrolled at SPC or Washtenaw Community College in Ann Arbor if he wanted to play at Michigan. He didn't, and committed to Illinois. Get over yourself, Dickinson.

Also, and I'm just asking a question here, but why would Adams block a transfer to Michigan only to allow Shannon to go to Illinois? Neither are on the schedule for 2022-23 (yet), and both are in the Big Ten. Why would Mark Adams allegedly care enough to block Shannon's credits to Michigan but not Illinois?

That makes zero sense to me.

What does make sense is adding Michigan to the schedule this year and beating them by 20 again, just like Texas Tech did in the NCAA tournament a couple of years ago. That'd be fun.

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