Building culture in the age of the portal: How NIU men, women approach new era of hoops

DeKALB – The NIU men’s basketball team needed to undertake close to a total rebuild after last season.

The women’s team was looking for complementary pieces to help a group of seniors take care of unfinished business.

For Rashon Burno and Lisa Carlsen, the No. 1 thing they said they looked for in the transfer portal was the right fit culturally.

“The basketball part was the easiest part,” Burno said. “The standards are the hardest part in the climate that we’re in. We wanted to be deliberate with the people we brought in. We’re trying to do something that hasn’t been done. There’s an extraordinary amount of toughness you have to have and a belief in yourself. It’s really hard to win in places that haven’t won consistently.

“It doesn’t take talent alone to get there.”

The year started strong for the men last year. They won six of their first seven games including an 89-79 win at DePaul, and were leading Northwestern at the half before falling 89-67. That started a stretch of 13 straight losses against NCAA Division I programs, and the Huskies finished 11-20, a fourth straight losing season for a program that has had four winning seasons this century.

Then came the losses to the portal – almost everybody with significant minutes left, including David Coit (Kansas), Will Loving-Watts (James Madison), Zarique Nutter (Georgia State), Xavier Amos (Wisconsin) and Yanic Niederhauser (Penn State).

Burno, entering his fourth year at NIU, said the focus was on players who fit the culture of the team. He said Joe Munden, a grad transfer from Fairleigh Dickinson, has been a big pickup. He helped the Knights reach the Sweet 16 last year, averaging 10.1 points and 4.4. rebounds per game.

He added that James Dent, a senior transfer from Western Illinois, also has been a tremendous fit as the Huskies prepare to start the season Nov. 4 at Georgia Southern.

“We wanted to get the right people,” Burno said. “We’ve had talented players, but they weren’t the right fit for what we wanted culturally, which is important.”

Carlsen said her club was focused on culture, as well. But the Huskies, unlike the men’s team, are returning a core of players that includes sixth-year senior Chelby Koker, who took a medical redshirt last year.

She averaged 15.4 points per game in her last full season and is joined by returning senior starters Brooke Stonebreaker (11.3 points, 9.0 rebounds) and Sidney McCrea (9.4 points, 37.6% 3-pointers).

NIU finished 15-16 last year, its third straight season one game under .500. They start the season Nov. 4 at home against Louisiana before heading to national runner-up Iowa two days later.

Carlsen said the team has talked about what it calls unfinished business, and it’s one of the big reasons all three came back.

“They talk about hanging the banner,” Carlsen said. “Whether that means the NCAA Tournament, whether that means a MAC championship, whether that means postseason basketball, that’s what they talk about. That’s the unfinished business.”

She said the trio has been key in instilling the culture into the transfers and the incoming freshmen, and the program is player-led.

All five transfers are juniors this year. Alecia Doyle comes in from Southeast Missouri, led the Redhawks with 13.4 points per game and was a second-team selection on the Ohio Valley’s all-conference team.

The group also includes Regan Barkema, a 5-11 stretch power forward from Bradley who was a starter, and Maria Serracanta, a 6-0 point guard from Mercer who came off the bench in 30 games.

“We wanted to get players who had kind of been there, done that at the collegiate level,” Carlsen said. “Not necessarily did they come from Power Five or Power Four schools where they didn’t get a lot of playing time, they instead came from mid-major schools where they were significant contributors.”