I fell in love with the alliteration a bit here, but really this is a discussion about all recruiting during this stretch, although the work in the portal is the most relevant and the most competitive. This cycle was a bit of a roller coaster ride, but before I do my standard deep dives into each individual transfer, what they bring to the table, and how they fit in with our team, I first wanted to take a moment to process what we just saw transpire and to talk a little bit about what it means for the present and future state of the program. This was a tale of both caution and encouragement, and I’ll explain why I think so. In my last piece, I outlined how the program has shifted into embracing the new NIL landscape and this was fully on display, even if you wouldn’t know it from the early returns.
Consider, during last year’s portal cycle while we weren’t really emphasizing our NIL game, we pursued and landed four new transfers by April 25th (with Dante Harris committing previously, off-cycle). Now, on paper, we landed the Big East Tournament Most Outstanding Player, The Northeast Conference’s Defensive Player of The Year/Co-Player of the year, The Summit League’s Rookie of the Year, and a 5th/6th man from the Big 12 who had some big moments previously in the NCAA Tournament. Collectively, especially with Rohde and Minor, there was some excitement about the pulls, and there WERE positive traits that all four brought to the roster, which I documented in my respective pieces on each last offseason. But there were also fairly glaring collective limitations as well, which I also documented – Dante Harris was a 6’0″ PG with a poor outside shot, Jake Groves was a 6’9″ sniper but with limited athleticism and mobility, Jordan Minor was strong and powerful, but at 6’8″ was undersized as a true Center in the ACC, and Andrew Rohde, while able to score in a variety of ways, did not do so efficiently, had limited athleticism, and benefitted from his 6’6″ frame against smaller players playing the 1 and 2 in the Summit League. That’s not to say that any of these pieces couldn’t have been valuable and had a role (some played out of position quite a bit, as I’ve previously documented, and I haven’t given up hope on Rohde entirely if he can bulk up and doesn’t have to play the SF), but as a collective group, they were underwhelming – lacking certain skillsets and combined athleticism and length.
This was also illustrated in who our competitors were in pursuing them. It’s not as though Rohde and Minor didn’t have solid interest from other decent programs – but it wasn’t the level of interest nor the kinds of programs you would expect us to lose out to. Basically, we targeted a handful of guys in that sweet spot of potential fits but who weren’t the highest quality option, quickly took the birds in hand as we were the highest profile program to come calling early, and filled our openings quickly.
What I liked most about this offseason was that the approach was entirely different; both in the kinds of players who we targeted and in our patience. First, and this is the tricky part of this process but should be stated and is necessary to run a successful program; CTB, by all accounts, had some very honest and difficult conversations with players. This resulted in two who didn’t really want to leave, entering the program to pursue better opportunities elsewhere. The Dante Harris departure was needed to elevate the roster, and there’s merit to debate between Leon Bond, and Andrew Rohde, who stayed and who left, etc… BUT, the fact that these conversations happened and that the result was freeing up the roster to improve our talent (which I don’t think it can be argued that we did), is a very positive sign for our ability to keep elevating our ability to bolster the roster in the future.
Anyway, we cast a WIDE net early but our initial targets, those who we got to come on a visit, and those who we were in serious conversations with, were a much higher quality of player AND were much more highly sought after. Aidan Mahaney, one of the more visible combo guard recruits in the country gave a visit despite getting calls from “every blue blood” prior to visiting Kentucky and eventually accepting an offer from the two-time defending champs. Joshua Jefferson, a “Point Power Forward” from St. Mary’s and one of the stouter defensive prospects at the PF position took a visit prior to committing to Iowa St. Marlon Mack, one of the most coveted PGs in the country ostensibly used us for leverage to get a good deal so he could play at home for Georgetown (he never visited). Xavier Amos, a stretch 4 with interest from Kansas, Illinois, Texas and more was scheduled to visit prior to learning about admissions obstacles prior to signing at Wisconsin. And then there was Trent Perry, a high school de-commit from USC who would have been the first McDonald’s All-American to join the program since Kyle Guy. That opportunity looked nearly done before he decided to stay closer to home.
Those are stories of disappointment that lead to such a rocky start to the recruiting season. None of them worked out in our favor and, in some cases like with Mack, it felt unserious and discouraging. But these cases did signal a couple of things:
For one, we didn’t panic and just snap up any interested player. There were a couple of players who we showed interest in who wanted to schedule visits and make decisions earlier in the process; sooner than we were willing to accept their commitment. There were also other players who we liked, brought in for a visit, but waited on the decision from a more enticing option. An example, Anthony Dell’Orso took a visit in late April. The Australian prospect from Campbell had a great season, averaging almost 20 points per game; but also played the PF at 6’6″ and 190lbs and thrived against smaller/less athletic competition. It sounded like his visit went well and he was very interested after taking all of his visits, but ostensibly we were waiting on the decision from TJ Power while continuing to line up potential alternatives for visits. We’ll circle back to Power, but I loved the patience here. Could Dell’Orso have been a viable PF in the ACC? Defensively, I don’t think it’s likely, and offensively that remains to be seen. If he had been slotted to play SF, there was a lot of redundancy with his skillset with both Andrew Rohde and Taine Murray. While he likely would have been better than both… that’s far from a guarantee. The point remains that, despite so many misses as I outlined in the previous paragraph, we didn’t jump at the borderline prospect (who still has interest from other programs) just because he scored a lot of points in the CAA. This was on a team that lost to North Carolina A&T by 14 points, by the way! Instead, we held out for a 6’9″ former 5-star prospect who had committed to the biggest high school talent aggregator in college hoops. That patience allowed them to land Elijah Saunders, as well, which we’ll talk about shortly, while being in good position for several other highly-talented and athletic prospects that entered the portal closer to the deadline.
Additionally, and this is the point that shouldn’t be lost on fans – even though we didn’t win the high-profile recruitments when the portal opened, the fact that we got those players who did visit to do so (or even that we were used as a bargaining chip to increase an NIL offer) indicates that we were able to meet the NIL asks for those players (no problem really). Otherwise, they wouldn’t have come to begin with! For the first time, we were securing and putting together NIL packages with the goal of appealing to individual, coveted, players. Consider, this is after an offseason where we got blown out by 15 or more 7 times and scored 42 points in our single-most visible game of the season (exacerbating the national narrative about our offensive system, and exposing it a bit, along with the controversy around us being “deserving” of making the tournament over some other bubble teams)… we’re still getting visits from highly sought-after recruits. The year prior, fresh off of a shared ACC regular season title, being nationally ranked most of the year, and suffering a bizarre defeat off of an uncharacteristic play from a highly experienced player, we drew audience with basically none of those sorts of players and tied a very quick bow on our portal class. With the national narrative as bad as it has been in a long time, which is surely being used in negative recruiting as well, we still considerably raised the bar on our target quality. That’s, in large part, due to the NIL factor we’ve been discussing.
So, that’s encouraging.
And then came the signings: Jalen Warley, a 6’7″, athletic, multi-year starter at FSU with one year of eligibility left who can play PG and defend 1-3/4ish, who was a top 40 recruit (depending on the publication) in 2021. Elijah Saunders, a 6’8″ athletic PF with two years of eligibility left who played 5th/6th man at San Diego St., shot 32% from three and 96% from the charity stripe, and drew interest from the likes of Clemson, Ohio St., Washington, Texas, Auburn, etc. And, finally, TJ Power, a 6’9″ stretch-PF from Duke with three years of eligibility left who becomes the third 5-Star player, and the most highly ranked overall, to join the program in the CTB era (Mamadi Diakite and Austin Nicholls). Power didn’t play much at Duke last season and got lost in the logjam talent-influx, but shoots the ball well and should fit very well into the Jacob Groves/BVP role but with higher upside. All of this amid quite a few high-quality players who entered the portal later and who seemed very interested in taking a visit in the near future (we’ll see if any additional take place over the next several days/weeks).
Now, I’ll do a deeper dive into all three of these guys and there’s no guarantee on any of them (there never is). Warley only took 7 shots from outside last season, Power hardly played and there were questions about his defense, and Saunders allegedly hasn’t yet figured out how best to use his athletic ability/physicality (I have only just started on Warley for the deep-dives). But there’s zero doubt that the combined pedigree, competition faced, and physical traits of these three players far surpasses that of last year’s class with one scholarship still available for use, should we so choose (and I hope that we’re judicious about using it considering the potential for NBA withdrawals or 2025 re-classifications – flexibility is nice once you’ve got your needs mostly filled). In fact, with these three signings, we currently have the most consolidation of 4-star/top 100 recruits ever in the CTB era and a team plagued by size/athleticism issues over the past several years is currently loaded with length. Now, of course this doesn’t mean anything by itself, there’s still a lot that needs to happen for the team to gel, there’s a ton of youth on the roster, and concerns about the system still linger; so that’s all in play. Additionally, landing one of those early and highest priority targets would have certainly upped the ceiling of this transfer/recruiting class even more and that’s where we want to be as a program with regard to our pull in the portal; but given how last season ended, the patience, persistence, and selectivity was good to see.
But here’s the other side of the coin. We DID cast a WIDE net across quality transfers early, we DO have competitive NIL, a pedigree coach and great facilities and, to be honest, there were still a lot of guys not at all interested and we did strike out repeatedly early-on. Despite CTB doing his best James Murphy impression, as accounted in post-recruiting interviews with players (and for those of you who get that reference, high-five, for those of you who don’t, here you go:)
We didn’t land our first portal commitment until 8 days after we’d wrapped up our class last year. Again, positive by comparison because it means we were patient and held on until we found higher quality, but still illustrative of the struggles we had early and our inability to close any of our initial priorities. Some of that was circumstantial but still very relevant, like with Amos’s credits and the school’s admission standards or the distance with Perry, but missing out in those situations along with not getting interest back in many cases were limiting factors from where we would ideally like to be.
While there are many variables at play here, the glaring one is that NIL alone is not going to get us where we want to be. We’re going to have to showcase on the court that we DO have the ability to change our approach to the game and are no longer the kind of team that’s going to be prone to scoring under 50 points per game seven different times (few under 60 would be ideal!)! The warning signal has been ringing for a while, but it would be incredibly unwise not to heed it now, given the shift we’re seeing and how, even when we make strides around NIL, we still don’t see the full impact of changes nor have the pull that we’re hoping to. If all of this talk of change this time (and, to be fair, we’ve never really seen this level of smoke around these kinds of conversations with recruits – certainly not so overt – about this previously) results in few noticeable differences in terms of system, pace, or style, I do think that’s going to continue to hurt our ability to draw in the portal. You’re going to lose a lot of tie breakers to similarly funded programs because of it.
This is going to be one of those things that requires proof of concept to actually change that narrative and allow us to truly be competitive with elite prospects in the portal. Coming into the offseason, it sounded like the staff’s solution was primarily going to be “add more talent” and they were going to do so by being more aggressive with NIL. This cycle should have, and likely will, remove any doubts that our style of play and the narrative out there does matter and is playing a role – which will be a positive development as long as we don’t ignore the signals.
That being said, I’m very pleased with the overall execution of this portal period (so far – there’s still room to add to our haul, although there’s also the potential to unnecessarily eliminate flexibility with the last scholarship – we’ve got to wait for that perfect opportunity) given everything involved. I’d actually posit that anyone upset with these three signings probably had unrealistic expectations going in and failed to fully appreciate the gravity of the situation we were facing. We’d made our bed, so to speak, but this was a really good step in the right direction. Finally embracing NIL mitigated some of the damage and was an on-ramp back to improved talent acquisition. Staying patient and keeping our sights high kept us from filling roster slots with players who didn’t raise our ceiling, and allowed us to be well-positioned for the influx of talent that hit the portal closer to the declaration deadline. Of course, only time will tell how these moves pay off, but the strategy was much improved and is a great blueprint for when, hopefully, our reputation and allure catches up again.
While not the full solution, hopefully this stretch, supported by some alterations to how we utilize this group, will provide the path back to where we want the program to be. Speaking for myself, after having written my State of the Program piece, this was the first opportunity to observe the staff’s plan from a distance since the CSU game, and it felt/feels positive! Now, we just need to capitalize on that change in momentum!
Alright, thanks for the quick read. My next pieces will be the “Tracking A Transfer” deep dives on Jalen Warley, TJ Power, and Elijah Saunders (and a 4th if we fill the final scholarship through the portal). I’ll see you again when we break down Jalen Warley’s game!
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