Amarri Monroe turns down high-major lure of transfer portal to enhance his Quinnipiac legacy

Amarri Monroe resisted high-major transfer offers to stay at Quinnipiac for his final season. (Photo by Rob Rasmussen/Quinnipiac Athletics)

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — Amarri Monroe was leaving.

Shortly after Quinnipiac saw history repeat itself as the Bobcats’ second straight regular season championship season ended one win shy of a Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference tournament title, the junior forward and MAAC Player of the Year entered the transfer portal. Within days, Monroe attracted a bevy of suitors and — despite attempts from heavyweights such as UConn and Kansas to potentially secure his services as an eventual senior — appeared headed to New Jersey, slated to write the coda to his college career at Rutgers.

But before Monroe could finalize his exodus to Piscataway, he had a change of heart and an epiphany at the crossroads he had come to. It was at Quinnipiac where the former Wofford transfer, then known as Amarri Tice, had blossomed and transformed himself into an elite player. In Connecticut, he had grown up and become a man. And when he came to the realization that he could truly carve a legacy on the York Hill campus, Quinnipiac would be where Monroe stayed.

“It was a crazy experience,” he said as he recounted his foray into the portal and recruitment. “It’s completely different now than it was when I was in high school. It definitely felt like a business and I think at this point in my life, I’m fine with that, but I just felt like I was most comfortable and my future would take the biggest jump if I stayed here at Quinnipiac just being able to develop after the year I had last year, just building on that and working on my weaknesses, just getting better at my strengths.”

“While the process was going on, I told him to take a week,” Quinnipiac head coach Tom Pecora recalled. “I had Steve Pikiell come in our building and meet with him in my office, and I wanted the best for Amarri. I still do, obviously. I think he appreciated that we weren’t squeezing him and gave him some time, and he made an incredibly mature decision saying, ‘hey, there’ll be money on the back end.’ He’ll always have a place to come back to. His number will hang in the rafters, and I think those are the things that a lot of these young people don’t understand. You don’t have an alma mater when you bounce around from school to school, especially when you’re doing it three different times.”

Pecora heralded Monroe’s maturity during the process, highlighting the unselfish decision to leave money on the table and return to Hamden for his final chapter, an increasing rarity in the speed-dating nature of the offseason and portal activity that leaves most mid-majors scarce at the end of the day. Monroe’s choice to eschew the larger payday makes him a throwback, in a sense, to some of the former stars Pecora coached in a past life that would have been able to maximize their earning power in today’s market.

“As far as his greatness as a player, he’s in the same class for me as Eric Paschall was at Fordham, Charles Jenkins, Norm Richardson, Speedy Claxton, Loren Stokes and all the great players I had at Hofstra while I was there,” Pecora said of Monroe. “As a person, it’s a generational thing. None of those guys were dealing with NIL. I can only imagine the amount of money that Speedy Claxton would have gotten back in the day after one year at Hofstra, but in similar fashion 100 years ago, Speedy committed to us early and a bunch of schools tried to steal him. He stayed loyal to us and the rest is history. So I just think it’s an incredibly mature decision. We were able to put a small package together for (Monroe). He’s comfortable, but it’s nowhere near what the big boys wanted.”

There was also one more factor for Monroe that weighed heavily in his deliberations: The same unfinished business that propelled Quinnipiac to a repeat of its regular season crown last year. With the Bobcats looking to become the first team to win three straight titles since Fran McCaffery’s Siena teams won the regular season and tournament from 2008 to 2010, the decision became clearer.

“It’s definitely motivated us,” Monroe said of the early exit last March. “I think the biggest piece is us having a fresh team. We have a ton of new guys, we only return three guys that played last year. Guys really don’t know what to expect, and I think it’s better that way when they don’t know the feeling of losing back-to-back years in the semifinal. I think we’ll be hungry, and I’m definitely hungry. I didn’t come back to lose.”

“I wanted to do something that’s never been done at Quinnipiac, and that’s win a MAAC championship and obviously win back-to-back player of the year. I wanted my name to be engraved in the Quinnipiac record books and be named a legend. Everyone chases the money, but I’m all about relationships and they made me feel like family. I love it here, and that’s why I came back.”