The four-year senior is a dying breed, and that’s not new information. In NCAA men’s college basketball, there were fewer than 30 seniors in power conferences who spent all four years playing at one university. The Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference had only eight of its 58 men’s basketball seniors not make use of the transfer portal.
“It’s a shame,” Quinnipiac head coach Tom Pecora said, following it’s season-ending loss to Marist in the conference quarter-finals. “This crazy basketball world we live in, there will be a lot of moving parts. Who’s staying? Who’s going?”
Pecora’s Bobcats are one of six MAAC schools not to feature even one four-year senior. All three graduating seniors at Quinnipiac came out of the transfer portal: the guard pair of Asim Jones Jr. (Florida International) and Ronell Giles Jr. (Saint Francis).
Monroe may have come out of the transfer portal, spending his first collegiate season at Wofford College in South Carolina, but do not get it twisted. He is part of the old guard, brimming with loyalty and program dedication.
After landing in Hamden, he made an immediate impact. That goes without saying. He led his team to two MAAC regular-season titles and earned MAAC Player of the Year at the conclusion of the 2024-25 season.
“The legacy that he’s left here and the impact he’s had is immeasurable,” Pecora said. “It’ll be something that will last in Quinnipiac basketball history forever, because he did the right thing.”
The “right thing” he’s referencing is the fact that Monroe didn’t leave. He entered the transfer portal during the last two offseasons, and both times chose to stay in Hamden.
It wasn’t for lack of interest. Monroe garnered plenty of lucrative offers from bigger programs. UConn, Kansas, Miami, just to name a few. He turned every one of them down and elected to return to the Bobcats.
Back on Feb. 26, in an interview with Assistant Professor of Journalism and Program Director of Sports Communictions Nick Pietruszkiewicz, Monroe was asked about the worst pitch he received in the portal.
“The very first call I got was ‘What’s your number?’,” Monroe said. “That’s not what you do, you can’t outbid (for) me.”
Part of Monroe’s unique transfer portal experience was not that he returned to his school. It’s that he did it at a discount.
“I wanted him to make the decision for the right reasons, and he did,” Pecora said. “I think he set a precedent by turning down big money.”
It remains to be seen if that precedent will have a trickle down effect on the Bobcat roster he leaves behind. Pecora was blunt about the uncertainty within the program heading into spring workouts.
“Jaden Zimmerman’s been being pursued all season by other schools, Grant Randall goes up and puts up numbers like he did tonight, and his phone is going to light up,” Pecora said.
Zimmerman and Randall are both sophomore guards who started for the Bobcats this season. As ever with the new, volatile world of college athletics, their return is far from a given, and Pecora knows the reality of the situation.
“It’s a personal decision, and these young guys and their families have to make it,” Pecora said. “Hopefully they make a smart one. And hopefully they go somewhere they can graduate.”
It’s always been ‘student-athlete,’ but recently, the changes to the transfer portal have affected more than just year-to-year school identity. They’ve begun to impact the rate at which the NCAA’s student athlete contingent earns degrees.
“All of a sudden, everybody’s pretty hush-hush about what graduation rates are looking like and what they’re going to look like, with guys going to three different schools in four years,”
Pecora said. “I think we’re moving in a really dangerous, bad direction with this whole thing.”
NCAA Research published a report in November 2025 titled Trends in NCAA Division I Graduation Rates that gives a rundown of a variety of different breakdowns of its schools’ GSR (graduation success rates).
One of the breakdowns was titled “GSR Trends of Division I Men’s Basketball Players,” which gave a line chart of GSR from 2002 through 2025. There is a noticeable drop from 2024 to 2025, but the exact percentage drop can’t be deciphered, as the pure statistics are only listed for the first and final years on the chart.
“I think we’re moving in a really dangerous, bad direction with this whole thing,” Pecora said.
Such is life in today’s NCAA. Players constantly bounce around, always searching for the next opportunity or promise of playing time. A star player returning to their mid-major school is uncommon, which is all the more reason for Monroe to be celebrated.
“I don’t care how many points I score, I don’t care about my jersey in the rafters,” Monroe said to Pietruszkiewicz, before the end of the season. “I want to see a banner that says ‘March Madness 2026’ and I want people to say my name when they talk about the banner.”
Maybe this wasn’t his envisioned ending when he chose to come back to the Bobcats, but that does not invalidate his decision.
“I think that Amarri Monroe has a heart of gold,” Pecora said. “The most selfish people on the planet are 20-year-old men… when you find young men that are mature enough to think of other people first, it’s really a blessing.”
Monroe blessed M&T Bank Arena with three stellar seasons of basketball. He stayed to build the foundation of Quinnipiac basketball into something it has never been before. As Pecora leads this team into its next chapter, it remains to be seen if subsequent superstars will follow the path that Monroe trailblazed.
