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MBBALL Wazup at NAU

oldrunner

Well-known member
Does anybody have a clue about what is going on with NAU men's basketball?

VC shows one returning scholarship player and two walk on players returning, with no players signed or committed. VC shows two JC players offered and two HS players offered. Those offers were made a long time ago. It looks like no activity at all. I know that there are still players left in the portal and in the HS ranks, but shouldn't there be some sort of activity visible?

Have they fired their coach and just not announced it? Is the coaching staff in jail or dead? Did the school drop athletics?

It seems like very little effort being put into it at NAU. I'm a bit worried for them.
 
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A LOT, and by I mean A LOT, of lower tier D1 schools have had to wait out the process and let the market come back to them. Probably close to a 1/4 of D1 schools either opted out again, or have extremely low revenue sharing/NIL. This market for this transfer portal ran completely away. Programs knew that the market was over saturated with players, but with what most of these bottom 25% could offer (NAU included), even bottom barrel NIL/revenue sharing contracts were out of their budget from the start.

NAU opted out and their department wide NIL was likely less than 300K and than meant mens hoops might have had maybe 100K at most. Most D1 recruits out of HS, were running 50K for much of the early portal, and a lot of the move up candidates from DII/DIII/JUCO were getting similar amounts. Basically NAU is offering scholarship plus maybe 10 to 20K for its scholarship rostered players in NIL (they are locked in to 13 full boats). There isn't a lot out there initially as they met with players that would be compelled to take a pay cut unless there were no other offers coming from other schools. Plus Burcar seems to be in way over his head, the Athletic Department is moving at the pace of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet in amplifying its NIL presence.

There have been a slug of signings in the past week or two as teams want to solidfy their rosters before summer recruiting starts June 1. I feel for programs who are struggling with navigating this new era, because it would suck as a head coach or an assistant to have to say all we can offer you is a scholly, Arctic Circle food benefits, and a pair of shoes.
 
because it would suck as a head coach or an assistant to have to say all we can offer you is a scholly, Arctic Circle food benefits, and a pair of shoes.
ISU has gone the other way in most of this. They don't have much in the way of resources either. They dive into the lower division markets early hoping to get the best of the lowest, those that are not looking for a fat check. They probably won't be going for a championship run that way, but they do fairly well with that approach. Most of the big money is gone from the portal market now, so teams like NAU may get some who have been passed over and don't have good prospects for getting paid. PSU seems to be spending what they have on two players and then bringing in role players around them. UI has struggled to find bigs, as has UM. The game and recruiting have really changed.
 
It's ALIVE!

They just signed a 6'5'' wing out of a JC in California. That shows us where the transfer market is at right now. Gives them two scholarship players and two walk ons.
 
ISU has gone the other way in most of this. They don't have much in the way of resources either. They dive into the lower division markets early hoping to get the best of the lowest, those that are not looking for a fat check. They probably won't be going for a championship run that way, but they do fairly well with that approach. Most of the big money is gone from the portal market now, so teams like NAU may get some who have been passed over and don't have good prospects for getting paid. PSU seems to be spending what they have on two players and then bringing in role players around them. UI has struggled to find bigs, as has UM. The game and recruiting have really changed.
I think Looney is a very good coach. If he had resources of some other schools he would have some championships. In my opinion
 
Since I last posted they have signed three freshmen. A couple of these signings look pretty good for this late in the process.

I agree, Burcar and Looney at ISU are really good coaches with not a lot of resources to work with.
 
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