Observational study finds that roster turnover reduces scoring margins in NCAA men's basketball teams, indicating that even minor player departures impair team performance.
We examine the impact of labor turnover on the performance of men's college basketball teams between the 2021–2022 and 2024–2025 seasons, amid name, image, and likeness (NIL) and relaxed transfer rules. Turnover is measured by the number of minutes played and points scored lost from players who have departed a team prior to the current season, whereas performance is assessed by average point margin per game. Consistent with prior literature, our analysis reveals that higher turnover negatively affects team performance. Unlike many previous studies, we find no evidence of an inverted U‐shaped relationship between labor turnover and performance, suggesting that even low turnover negatively impacts performance.
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Pitts et al. (2026) studied this question.
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