USI men's basketball uses scouts to help recruit in portal era: 'It's money well spent'

EVANSVILLE — Recruiting the transfer portal as it swirls in the immediate offseason isn’t a daily practice. Try hourly.

That’s how University of Southern Indiana men’s basketball assistant coach John Spruance put it. The Screaming Eagles constantly looked in the portal for improvements. It provides a get-rich-quick scheme for some but can leave others scrambling. The game is to be among the former.

USI’s four-year postseason ban due to the Division I transition makes it more imperative that the Eagles don’t fall behind. Five-year players like Jacob Polakovich are mostly a thing of the past. Head coach Stan Gouard likened portal recruitment to speed dating. That makes the hourly scrolling through the Verbal Commits Twitter page or The Portal Report’s website all the more important for team’s in USI’s position.

“It’s gotten crazy,” Spruance said. “You don’t have that long to build that relationship, that connectivity.”

That’s where recruiting services, teams of scouts who recommend players to a coach for a light cost, come into play. Gouard, for example, was at Peach Jam to recruit in the top environment in boys high school basketball and had a scout watch one of the players the Eagles were recruiting.

“(Scouts) have an in on information that sometimes we don’t know about a kid,” Gouard said. “Who’s recruiting him, who he’s leaning towards, how he feels about us. All those kinds of things. Those things are a very key component to our recruiting and that’s something probably never gonna change.”

Gouard has used such services throughout his 24-year coaching career. He said he and the staff used one service while he was an assistant at the University of Indianapolis, while he uses upwards of 10 now at USI. The Eagles are attempting to expand their recruiting foothold throughout the Midwest — “There’s a guy or two in every state that can help us out,” he said.

That’s largely for high school recruiting. The daily portal grind requires something different, which is where The Portal Report and some junior college services that have been big assets for USI in the transition come in. The NCAA limits what schools can say about particular services, but products like that have enhanced the early stages of the Eagles’ D-I transition. Gouard wants everyone to stay but knows that's not likely given the landscape of college athletics.

In an age of under-the-table dealings and tampering, going through services is one way of recruiting by the book.

“(Transitioning) just kinda opened the doors up a little bit more. Obviously, as we continue to make this transition, we’ve brought higher-level kids than we ever have been,” Spruance said. “We weren’t gonna get a UConn transfer (in Division II), like let’s just be real about it, right? It’s been fun to be on higher level guys and get guys out here for visits that have been proven at the Division I level.”

How USI conducts recruiting through services

Recruiting on all levels is a relationship game, whether talking to a high school prospect, a portal goer, a scout or any other party involved. Gouard knows that. He saw a scout he’s worked with while at Peach Jam across the parking lot and made an immediate move to talk to them for about 10 minutes. The little things matter.

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“These guys are your resource for getting to the next level of play because they know everybody near the gym when we can’t be in the gym,” Gouard said. “They can give us all kinds of insight.”

George Michalowski co-founded The Portal Report alongside Pittsburgh Sports Now before the 2022 transfer season. It’s now an NCAA-approved scouting service and was founded largely by college students and recent graduates. USI, among other institutions from D-I to the junior college realm, has access to the paid service.

The Portal Report provides contact information for players looking to transfer, stats and even a heat map of where a player is from if a program is looking to recruit regionally like USI is while incorporating a media aspect that other services don’t. The goal was to be a two-way help for players and coaches alike.

“It’s just really cool to see them using our service,” Michalowski said. “It was really, really rewarding to see that many people trusting us and trusting our work and believing in our ideas.”

USI is among those schools. The Eagles need to replace 81% of their scoring following a portal exodus and graduation and hope to do so with five portal newcomers: Yarin Hasson (UConn), Nolan Causwell (Tennessee Tech), Jordan Tillmon (Florida A&M), Xavier McCord (Laramie County Community College) and Javius Moore (Southwest Mississippi Community College).

While he couldn’t go into specifics due to NCAA regulations, Michalowski has been impressed with the Eagles’ portal ventures.

“(USI is) looking at this thing every single day: They’re looking at the kids, they’re looking into their stats, they’re looking into who these kids are,” he said. “Their transfer classes have been really solid. … They have been very articulate, very detailed in their approach.”

As for The Portal Report itself, like the coaches the service works with, relationships are at the center of it. That comes regardless of the level a particular coach is at: “I always try to tell our guys to treat junior colleges like Duke,” Michalowski said. Coaches will contact scouts looking for a particular player archetype, with helping both the staffs and players serving as “1A and 1B,” The Portal Report scout Nick Lorensen said.

“It’s really rewarding when you see these players in the transfer portal who we’ve already seen and gone through us and have success and continue to turn along in basketball,” Lorensen said. “It’s really rewarding to see everyone be successful.”

“I’m proud of our growth over the past calendar year, especially,” analyst Ethan Bock said. “I think (the transfer portal) is a unique thing to cover right now. There are not many people really diving deep into it. … I would credit our growth to how unique it is.”

Relationships, relationships, relationships

With all of that, it comes back to the basic function of recruiting: Relationships. The speed dating, connections, calls, analysis and everything else in it falls under the same category.

Bonds with scouting services are a crucial piece in that.

Gouard has developed many of those relationships since he started his coaching career. Sometimes a service tells him about a player he hadn’t seen before and gets the parties in contact.

“I think it’s money well spent because it helps decrease your travel budget a little bit,” Gouard said. “It keeps you in the loop on what’s going on in the state. … It’s a very big help for us.”

That trust goes both ways. A service can’t consistently offer players who don’t fit the system. Michalowski recognizes that. He wants coaches and players alike to see how much The Portal Report helps, and that remains consistent among other services.

“We aren’t in this for the money right now, it’s really a grind so we can all make it in the basketball world because we love it. That’s what the coaches see in us,” Michalowski said. “It’s been, for us, a goal to get to know as many coaches as we can and build genuine relationships.”

This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: USI men's basketball uses The Portal Report to help recruit