It’s easy to see all the ways college basketball in 2026 looks a lot different than it did a decade ago.
Name, image and likeness opportunities have put players in the commercials we watch during games. Conference realignment has remade leagues into monstrosities. The shorts guys wore back in 2016 were a whole helluva lot longer, too.
But what’s changed the sport more than anything, obviously, is the transfer portal. It’s created incredible roster turnover, skyrocketed NIL compensation and reinvented roster construction. The biggest and best programs are spending big to get the best, and they’re staying old by bringing in players who are entering the basketball prime of their early-20s.
Michigan, this year’s national champion, had four of its five starters arrive via the transfer portal.
That’s just the way things are done at the top of the sport.
Well, I suppose, there is an exception.
Iowa State.
I’d say the Cyclones are zigging when so much of the sport is zagging, but the reality is that coach T.J. Otzleberger’s roster building almost looks like a direct line from the one he was a part of back in The Olden Days. That’s when he was an assistant under Fred Hoiberg, whose unconventional and splashy transfer players got a lot of the headlines but who really built his program on good-but-not-elite high school prospects.
Which is basically what Otzelberger is doing now as the head man. Though it’s hard to say his collection of high school players is short of elite when his three-man 2027 class currently ranks No. 1 in the country after the weekend commitment of top-50 Wisconsin native Jack Kohnen.
Iowa State is, frankly, killing it on the recruiting trail.
And I think it’s for a couple of interesting reasons.
The obvious is that Otzelberger has always been a top-tier recruiter, and that hasn’t changed at all since he took the helm of the Cyclone program. Now, though, with the program absolutely humming after three Sweet 16s, a Big 12 Tournament championship and what seems like a permanent weekly spot in the top 10 of the rankings, he’s got to do less selling and simply more showing.
Things are pretty good with the Cyclones, and recruits can see that.
Additionally, Iowa State is getting helped out by the fact that Otzelberger retains an iron grip on his home state of Wisconsin. If there’s a player from the Badger State that Otzelberger sets his sights on, that player more often than not ends up in cardinal and gold.
And in the high school class of 2027, the land of cheese and Miller Time is particularly strong in basketball talent. That’s been a big part of powering the Cyclones to the top of this year’s recruiting rankings as their top-two prospects, Donovan Davis and Kohnen, hail from Wisconsin. And Otzelberger wanted them, so, lo and behold, he got ‘em.
Pair them with Iowa’s own Josiah Harington of the Quad Cities, another top-50 prospect, and that’s how you get such a stellar recruiting class.
What I think is most interesting about all of this, though, is that, given the current state of college hoops, I think some version of this is sustainable.
A recruiting class that’s ranked No. 1 in June and maybe finishes somewhere in the top-5 or –10 when things are all said and done might prove to be a high-water mark, but I’m not sure it’ll be a total outlier.
Because as programs continue to pursue the top (and more experienced) talent in the transfer portal, that’s leading to less competition for some of our country’s best prep players.
Now, don’t get it twisted. Kansas, Duke, Arizona and the other blue bloods are still going to spend big dollars and lots of time trying to reel in the no-doubt lottery picks that populate the top of recruiting rankings. But that next tier of prospects – let’s say 25-through-75 – that appears to be what economists refer to as a market inefficiency.
As those big and deep-pocketed programs cede that space to pursue transfers, it creates an opening for programs like Iowa State, which isn’t going to be able to spend what it takes to get a top-10 player or transfer, but its NIL budgets are hefty enough to play in this other sandbox and come home with some darn good players.
For the price of what might be a Tier 3 (or lower) type of transfer, you can find yourself in realistic conversations with some high-level high school kids.
While the top of the NBA draft is populated by those can’t-miss top-10 and –15 prospects, a third of the players taken in the first round of the 2025 draft were ranked outside the top-25 of their recruiting class.
If you nail your evaluations and can develop these players, there are some true stars among them every single year.
Now, that’s easy to say and hard to execute, and you’ve also got to keep them in your program and out of the transfer portal, but you get the idea. This is a sweet spot that Iowa State can exploit. And, they are.
Then you fill in with undervalued transfers that have been a hallmark of Otzelberger’s success – think Joshua Jefferson, Izaiah Brockington, Curtis Jones and Keshon Gilbert – and, man, you’ve got yourself a team that can continue this heater the Cyclones are on.
And if that sounds familiar, well, trust your instincts.
As much as Hoiberg’s Transfer U teams were heralded for some of the big stars he brought in from other programs, the foundation of the success after 2012 was high school players like Melvin Ejim, Georges Niang, Monte Morris and Matt Thomas.
If the formula works, why change it? Even if – and maybe especially when – everything else changes around you.
Iowa State columnist Travis Hines has covered the Cyclones for the Des Moines Register and Ames Tribune since 2012. Contact him at thines@amestrib.com or (515) 284-8000. Follow him on X at @TravisHines21.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Is Iowa State basketball’s recruiting success sustainable? | Hines
Reporting by Travis Hines, Des Moines Register / Des Moines Register
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Travis Hines, Des Moines Register | USA TODAY Network
