Aug. 29—GRAND FORKS — High school recruiting has traditionally been the lifeblood of college athletics.
The advent of NIL (name, image, likeness) payments and the transfer portal hasn't changed that. Yet for some basketball teams in the Summit League, the new variables are transforming how coaches recruit high school athletes.
"High school is incredibly important," Oral Roberts coach Kory Barnett said. "It's huge for you to be able to still build out that one, two, three years of getting to know a kid and the ones that really fit you. That's incredibly important. But with where the portal stands ... you have to be ready to adjust."
Coaches nationwide face massive attrition from season to season. UND, for example, will enter 2026-27 with just three returning players. North Dakota State lost eight players to the transfer portal.
Each spring, programs are forced to rebuild on the fly. The portal provides myriad options, with players entering from every division of college basketball.
Considering the high rate of turnover, coaches are often looking for experience — something uncommitted high school players can't provide.
"If they don't commit early in the fall, if they wait to try to sign in the spring, it gets harder," UND coach Paul Sather said. "There are junior college, D1, D2 (players) — there are just so many more kids available that are more experienced than high school kids. We signed our high school kids early, we ended up taking DeAngelo (Dungey) late here in the spring from a walk-on standpoint, but it's harder on high school kids."
That's also the case for junior college athletes. Once the Division I transfer portal window opens, JUCO players sometimes don't get recruited as they were before.
"As time goes on, if JUCOs don't make decisions, it gets harder for them," Sather said. "Then the portal opens up, and there's so many kids still waiting to find a place to play."
There's still plenty of homegrown talent in the league. Nolan Minnessale returned to St. Thomas for his sophomore year and was a contender for the Summit League's Player of the Year, averaging 19.8 points, 4.6 rebounds and 4.3 assists per game.
Each of the coaches interviewed for this story spoke about the importance of maintaining strong ties in prep recruiting, even as the portal continues to make multi-year players less common.
The primary change comes in the spring, when programs are looking to fill out their 15-player rosters.
"You're just not going to backfill very often with high school players," St. Thomas head coach Johnny Tauer said. "Even the programs that say, 'We really want to recruit high school kids,' it's hard from a roster management perspective to do that, probably to the degree that any of us would like."
Not every Summit League program faced radical attrition this offseason. South Dakota State was one of the few teams that leaned heavily on homegrown talent in 2025-26. Its four leading scorers had spent their entire college careers with the Jackrabbits.
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