Never stop recruiting. Those are words to live by when you’re a college basketball coach, and in the Transfer Portal era, ‘never’ really means never.
The NCAA moved the Transfer Portal window back to after the national championship game, a welcome change after last season when it was open throughout the NCAA Tournament. Still, the harsh reality remains that the second your season ends, you have to start the work of retaining your roster, which might be the most important aspect of navigating the portal era.
For Brad Underwood, that task began a little after 7:30 p.m. CT in Indianapolis after his first-ever trip to the Final Four ended with a 71-62 loss to Dan Hurley’s UConn Huskies. Through all the emotion of the postgame, and there was a lot for the 62-year-old, that mantra, “never stop recruiting,” still seemed to be rattling around somewhere in the back of his head.
“I’ve never been around a group of guys who have given me more joy,” a visibly emotional Underwood shared in the opening remarks of his final postgame press conference of the season. “We didn’t have the bad practices; they played for the name on the front.”
Then, gesturing to the junior star seated next to him on the dais, Underwood singled out his biggest transfer pickup of last offseason. “Andrej (Stojakovic) came here with the intent of being around winning, and being a part of that, and this young man has grown to a whole new level, couldn’t be prouder of him.”
Brad Underwood’s most important offseason task is keeping Andrej Stojakovic in Champaign
Andrej Stojakovic has played three collegiate seasons for three different programs: Stanford, Cal, and now Illinois. It may feel like a forgone conclusion that he’d spend his final year of eligibility in Underwood’s little slice of Eastern Europe, but history says he could be ready to test the waters in the portal one last time.
Underwood can’t keep Keaton Wagler around; he’s destined to become a top-10 NBA Draft pick. Kylan Boswell and Ben Humrichous are out of eligibility, so they’re gone too. The rest of the roster, at least theoretically, could run it back next season. But that’s rarely the case in modern college basketball.
Whether or not he can keep the entire group together remains to be seen, but Underwood’s top priority needs to be Stojakovic, who, though he only has one year remaining, has proven he can carry a team offensively. He’s not a knockdown shooter, which seemed to flummox the CBS broadcasters throughout the tournament, but his slashing style gives Illinois’s five-out offense the rim pressure it needs to be at its most efficient. Another season with him at the center of the offense, not as a change-up off the bench, and he could easily be one of the best players in the Big Ten.
The effort to make that happen seemingly began on Saturday night. While Underwood eventually shared remarks for Wagler and Tomislav Ivisic, who were also seated alongside him for the press conference, there’s a reason he singled out Stojakovic first in his opening statement. More than likely, that reason is recruiting.