How Penn State Basketball Built a Roster With Limited NIL Funding

It’s no secret Penn State men’s basketball is strapped for cash. The program has generally been an afterthought among both university leadership and the fanbase, with attention going to more successful programs like football wrestling, volleyball and hockey.

According to an article released earlier this month by CBS Sports, the Nittany Lions were estimated in the range of $7.1 million to $9.9 million for this year’s roster, which placed them in tier six out of seven among high-major teams and well below the Big Ten average of $12.7 million.

And while this year’s figure is notably higher than last year’s, which head coach Mike Rhoades previously said was “at the bottom” of the conference, it still requires the team to be ballin’ on a budget.

“We’re going to do the best that we can with what we have, and go from there, and I’m not shying away from that,” Rhoades said at local media day on Wednesday. “And you know I’m always gonna fight for our program and do it in a first-class manner and never embarrass our team and our university. But let’s keep finding ways to make it better and keep pushing forward.”

Rather than letting financial limitations dictate the ceiling of the program, Rhoades and the staff have embraced a resilient and creative mindset to navigate hurdles. He credited his father for instilling a “figure-it-out” mentality in him and his siblings.

General manager Scott Pera, who plays a critical role in roster assembly and NIL management, compared the process to putting together a jigsaw puzzle, trying to find pieces that fit together despite limitations.

“Well, we’ve gotten more (NIL),” Pera said. “Is it where it needs to be or where you want it to be in terms of the Big Ten? Not yet. We hope that that will continue to go this way. It would be one thing if it stayed here and went down. Then you’d have a lot more concerns. But we feel we’re hopefully evolving with what is happening. We wish it would happen quicker. Everybody does.”

For Penn State, bringing in highly touted prospects is a difficult task. The team made a monumental splash with four-star Kayden Mingo last year, the highest-rated recruit in program history, but wasn’t able to retain him after a standout freshman campaign.

Mingo landed at Baylor, a school in the $12.1 million to $15 million roster range according to CBS Sports, on a deal rumored to be very lucrative. 

Instead of getting into bidding wars for top high school recruits, the Nittany Lions looked internationally to fill out their locker room. This year’s roster features seven players from six different international countries.

“We feel that we did the best we could in the situation,” Pera said. “We feel good about this group. We got older. We certainly got longer, and now a week from Monday, we’ll see how it all translates.”

Rhoades said the most important thing is leveraging connections overseas. Staff members Brent Scott and Talor Battle had extensive playing careers outside the United States, which serves as a good starting point.

The staff is close with several agents, some of whom previously worked with Scott and Battle, and their recommendations have led to some hits.

“‘I got a kid for you, you might be interested in,’ and it just starts with that,” Rhoades said. “And then you really dig on a player, and you do your homework on them. Watch a lot of tape, make phone calls of other people that played against them, might have coached them, national team coaches and stuff like that.”

But the first question the staff must discuss is “can we afford them?” Luckily, for some international players, NIL provides an opportunity to make more than they’ve been garnering playing in European professional leagues.

Other schools have begun expanding their external operation, but Rhoades referenced his long history of recruiting internationally going back to his days coaching at Randolph Macon from 1996-99.

The difficulty is understanding how their skill sets will translate to Division I college basketball, which requires heavy research and evaluation.

“Film is accessible anywhere now,” Pera said. “So we can watch anybody play any game, unless he’s playing outside in a playground somewhere in the Netherlands, you know, maybe those are hard to obtain. But if they’re in a building in a gym and they’re keeping score, we can usually find the game.”

As the Nittany Lions prepare to tip off a new campaign, the reality of life in the Big Ten remains daunting. But by scouring international markets and leveraging connections, Penn State has built an older, more proven squad that may yield better results on the hardwood.