PMP 2024: Recruiting In 2024

I had another question queued up to go next, but after the Josh Whitman media roundtable yesterday, I'm switching to this one instead. The question:

Question regarding basketball recruiting (and in a sense football recruiting) Please compare what the Basketball recruiting environment was like for a College Coach 10 years ago or 5 years ago to today and what you believe the environment will be like 5 years from now if there are no changes to the rules surrounding NIL?  And, lastly what percentage of a college basketball team will be "old school" what has been described as a scholar-athlete in 5 years and what will be strictly "mercenaries"?

~Mark H.

I feel like I should start by acknowledging how well Brad Underwood has navigated these changes. Any time there's a major shift in the world of college sports you can find a "maybe there's an opportunity here for us to take advantage of the moment" article from me. And I really do think we've taken advantage of the moment.

So let's begin with something I tweeted when the final AP Poll came out after the season:

Hmmm... in the preview it's showing the image truncated with the Illini cut off. Let me attach the image as well so you can see the full image that I was tweeting:

I've thought about that top-6 a lot over the past few months. There's not a single person who would have believed that top-6 had I tweeted it in 2017. The same programs had a stranglehold on college basketball at the time (Duke, Kentucky, Kansas, UNC, Villanova) and it didn't appear to be changing anytime soon. They would get all the 5-stars, they would win. The run of NCAA champions right up until the transfer portal was introduced in 2018 – Duke, then Villanova, then North Carolina, then Villanova – felt like certain programs had the top-5 on lockdown.

Flip to the other side of Covid – which is also the other side of the portal being introduced in 2018 and NIL being added in 2021 – and the landscape feels different, right? I mean, Duke and UNC and Kansas will always be good. I can't see any of them falling from their blue blood perch like Indiana did (shots fired!). There has definitely been a shift. And programs like Houston, Tennessee, and Alabama (and Illinois!) have very much entered the conversation.

The best example of mastering the portal + NIL is easily UConn. No one really remembers that UConn only made the tournament one time between their appearances in 2014 and 2021. They were a mess. And now they've won back-to-back titles mostly by figuring out how to build a roster in the NIL/portal world.

Of that list, Purdue is the only one that has built a team the conventional way. Their only portal guy last year was Lance Jones. Everyone else has leaned heavily into the "NIL offers in the portal" route. And, I should note, teams like Kentucky stuck with the "we can still win with freshman five-stars" route five years too long before finally realizing it won't work anymore.

So I feel like I needed to start there before answering your question. I know that many fans don't like the current NIL/portal environment. Coleman Hawkins remains the only Underwood recruit to play four years for Underwood. And even he is finishing his career by using his Covid year somewhere else. But I needed to start with that. We just went to the Elite Eight pretty much 100% because of NIL and the transfer portal.

NOW I can answer your question.

10 years ago, recruiting was all about AAU ball. Coaches would camp out at every game a kid played at the Peach Jam in July. They'd try to set up those September and October visits, usually on a football Saturday. And then they'd work to close the deal before a kid took all of his visits. Get that signature in November and you were going to have that kid for four years (or, hopefully, 3 years or fewer because he was so good he'd head off to the NBA).

So I think the biggest change is the de-emphasis on high school/AAU recruiting. Those tournaments are still going on. Coaches are still attending. But it's usually because they're focused on one or two kids, not because they're looking to fill out a class of five players. No one is going to sign five players in November anymore. You have to save the majority of your scholarships for spring transfers.

I've made the argument before that a talented senior in the transfer portal should be a 6-star recruit. No 18 year-old kid besides maybe Kobe or LeBron could provide what Dalton Knecht provided Tennessee last season. You're getting a super talented player AND he's 22 years old. That's why all of these coaches are saying "to hell with development - give me Quincy Guerrier with four years of experience elsewhere."

I do understand what you're asking with your question. When John Groce was pursuing Jalen Brunson, we were all imagining a career where Brunson would provide us with two national titles in three years (and a Player Of The Year) like he did at Villanova. We'd invest in our guy for 3-4 years and then we'd hang his jersey from the rafters. You grew up on that, and I grew up on that, and now it just feels like the players are all, as you said, "mercenaries." I still struggle adjusting to a world where Luke Goode will visit the State Farm Center wearing those god-awful pants next year.

But if this past season proved anything to me, it's that I'll grow attached to mercenaries at an alarming speed. A year ago today I couldn't tell you anything about Marcus Domask and now I feel like he played at Illinois for years. I do think the "old school" 4-year student athlete that you described is probably a thing of the past, save for a Ty Rodgers here and there. But that darn "Illinois" across Justin Harmon's chest still meant an incredible amount to me.

You asked what it might look like in five years and I do think it might shift back a bit. Josh Whitman even mentioned yesterday that he could see NIL Collectives going away in the future. These last two years, with so many players having the ability to add one more year (their "Covid year") meant we were in the wild west. I believe that will settle down a bit starting next year (and I think you saw us anticipating that by only adding one senior through the portal this offseason).

As I wrote yesterday (I guess that was in the newsletter that not everyone receives so you'll just have to trust me that I wrote this), Whitman noted that the new "revenue sharing" model might come with restrictions on "artificial NIL" - collectives providing eye roll-inducing "appearance fee" deals for athletes. The new structure starting in 2025-26 might come with some NIL rules that provide a sheriff for the towns overrun with bandits. We'll have to see how that all shakes out.

But it's possible that we just went through the worst of it. Revenue sharing begins in 2025-26 with student athletes receiving 22% of the revenue (distribution model still TBD). But that might calm some of this "the best way to maximize my NIL earnings is to move to a different school after the season" craziness. There will still be Luke Goode-like "I always dreamed of playing at Indiana" transfers, but maybe there will be fewer one-and-done guys like Amani Hansberry.

Are the days of "whoever lands the best players in summer ball will win the NCAA title in a few years" over? Absolutely. That toothpaste can't be put back in the tube. The teams that will win will find their foundational pieces through high school recruiting (like UConn with Castle and Clingan) and then supplement with transfers in all the right spots. Brad Underwood has shown he has a knack for that (adding Plummer to the 2022 roster; adding Shannon + these three fifth-year seniors in 2024 to foundational pieces Coleman Hawkins and Ty Rodgers), so I'm encouraged that we'll remain quite relevant in the new Big Ten.

And that's the thing that has kind of squelched my "will it be fun to cheer for mercenaries?" fears. We're quite relevant now. A top-15 player from Canada is currently considering us (and we haven't landed a player ranked higher than 19th in the RSCI since Richard Keene in 1992 and yes you read that right). We have navigated these NIL/Portal waters quite well and are wildly relevant with high school recruits and transfers (to the point where Orlando Antigua came back instead of following Cal to Arkansas). I am 1000% focused on the year after next (Morez as a sophomore, Fears as a freshman) and the St. Louis -> Chicago -> Indianapolis path to the Final Four. I still see this offseason's plan as a 2-year plan.

Yes, I still weep for what it used to be. I'd much prefer the feeling on Trent and Da'Monte's senior night. I was raised on that. I took all of my boys to Dee and Augie's senior night in 2006 because I told them it would be important later in life that they were there.

But I realized in Boston this year that we've not only adapted to the NIL/portal world, we've capitalized. And that made me warm up to it all right quick.