Month: March 2026

Now more than ever, an integral part of the recruiting process for college coaches involves piecing together the puzzle of an athlete’s inner circle. It still entails forging relationships with a player’s family and high school coach, but now there are typically a few more tentacles surrounding each potential future star: an agent, a marketing manager, a financial advisor, a strength coach. At times, the entourages seem endless. For Purdue head coach Matt Painter, the figures he’s far more curious about now than at any point during his highly successful career are the private instructors, sometimes known as the “workout guys.” These are the individuals responsible for sharpening a player’s skills beyond the confines of traditional practices or games. In an era when players are asked to think about the game at higher levels — processing more options in real time than ever before — Painter needs to know how that aspect of a recruit’s development is handled. “If they have somebody that is a valuable asset that’s really helping them become a better player,” Painter told me last month, “decision-making should be a part of the workout. Decision-making is so important. If your decision-making only grows during the winter, then you’re probably not going to be a very good decision maker. You’re not going to get to the level that you should get to because it should be a 12-month deal in terms of getting better at reading situations, reading defenses, knowing what’s going on.” An absorption of offensive concepts and schematic ideas from professional leagues across the world has rewritten the traditional responsibilities associated with each position. Primary ball handlers now come in all shapes and sizes. Power forwards and centers are spending more time on the perimeter. Playmaking skills are now expected from at least four, if not all five, players in a given lineup. Glaring statistical changes reflect that. So far this season, there are 44 players listed at 6-foot-5 or taller averaging at least 3.5 assists per game, up from 24 such players 10 years ago. In terms of perimeter shooting, there are currently 30 players listed at 6-foot-7 or taller averaging at least 2.1 made 3-pointers per game, up from 19 such players 10 years ago and only four such players 20 years ago. “One part of the game that I really enjoy as a fan is watching the Euro League,” Texas head coach Sean Miller told me. “I think that might actually translate to college a little bit more [than the NBA]. Their ball movement, their cutting, their concepts — so much of how they play the game today is a lot of what you see in college basketball.” Part 4 of our series analyzes the heightened importance of individual decision-making in college basketball, where on-court processing power is now worth its weight in gold. What used to be a game dominated by heady point guards and back-to-the-basket big men is now an exercise in team-wide basketball IQ. One of the reasons why there are 50 teams averaging at least 120 points per 100 possessions this season — the highest mark in at least 30 years — is because players are getting smarter with the ball in their hands. [Player Acquisition | Shot Selection | Offensive Rebounding] *** *** *** Todd Golden, Florida: That was not something teams really focused on 20 years ago when I was in college. Teams had a traditional point guard, you maybe had another guy out there that could be a secondary ball handler and decision maker, but everybody else kind of had specific roles. Your wings were trying to attack the rim or defend with size, and your frontcourt players were paint players and playing inside the 3-point line. Now, I think the best teams — regardless of whether you’re a team that shoots a lot of 3s or a team that really hunts to play out of the paint — if you can play with multiple decision-makers on the floor, you’re going to be a lot better. Miller: I think there always has to at least be four players on the court who can pass, dribble, shoot, decision-make. The best teams in college basketball certainly have that. And then when you can add that fifth player, even if he does it in a different way, it goes to [the idea] where you try to build your roster with players who can think about the game, who can have a fundamental skill level, but really understand how basketball works. The screen and rolls, the spacing, the importance of cutting, why you make one decision versus the other. T.J. Otzelberger, Iowa State: A lot of bigs now tend to step out more on the perimeter. There’s certainly the extreme example like [Nikola] Jokic in the NBA. Everyone kind of wants that. I just think you’re watching guys’ decision-making in real time, assist-to-turnover numbers. Certainly, the better you shoot the ball as a frontcourt player, the more it opens up playmaking space for you to do things. Ben McCollum, Iowa: Having good passing bigs is more important than having good shooting bigs. Obviously, you’d like to have both, but if you can have a good passing big, a high processor who works pretty fast through some of those things, that’s more difficult to defend than somebody who can just stretch the floor. And so you’re trying to find those processors. Painter: We get it a lot with our big guys, because if you’re not good enough to [draw] a double team and you can’t get position deep, then why should you have ever been a good passer? Zach Edey wasn’t a guy who ever got double-teamed … so we had to get to work on [his passing] right away. Are they covering down ball side? Are they coming big to big [from the] opposite [side]? Are they coming baseline-side on a double? Are they coming when you bounce it? Is there any difference when you’re above the block to whether you’re up the lane or outside a little bit? Now we’ve got to put drill work into effect on those five things and we’ve got to mix it up and not tell him when it’s coming. And then he’s got to make those reads. That’s what we did every day for 10 to 12 minutes. All of a sudden, he went from somebody that was not able to make those plays and passes to someone who was probably the best in the country at it. Golden: That’s an area that we’ve been fortunate over these last three years to have frontcourt players that really understand how to play basketball. They all haven’t necessarily been able to shoot the 3, but they know how to dribble, they know how to pass, they know how to make decisions and that opens up a lot for the rest of your team. McCollum: It’s not the great passes that make the difference. It’s how quickly does the ball come out. You always hear the Spurs talk about half-second decisions. A lot of that is the ball comes out of their hands quicker. … The timing and the rhythm and the flow increases field goal percentages [and] keeps the defense behind quite a bit more. Then you increase your 2-point field goal percentage and your 3-point field goal percentage because of how quickly each individual gets off the ball. I don’t think we ever get the perfect guys to do that, but those are some things that we try to identify. It’s not an objective measure, it’s just like, ‘That guy has a good feel. I don’t know why. He just makes sense to me.’ That’s probably more what we look for. Grant McCasland, Texas Tech: There’s so many variables in this that you obviously start with the basics, which is always assist-to-turnover [ratio]. Then you take into account usage and historical reference on what a coach’s tolerance level is for turnovers. Some coaches don’t necessarily demand [perfection] and some prefer more free-flowing [offense] and have more turnovers. … Usually the guys that have a better feel shoot a higher percentage because they don’t take as difficult of a shot. I think an ultimate separator, too, is how many of those guys have won. That’s an underrated part of all this, when you look at it, is just win percentage. That shows that a guy knows how to do all three: take care of the basketball, what do they shoot, and then have they won doing it. I know that’s probably a simplistic approach, but that says a lot about someone’s understanding of the game. Golden: I think it’s the hardest part with evaluating, whether it’s high school guys or even portal players, to understand how they see the game and how they make decisions. You’ve really gotta watch them. We analyze a lot of data in determining which guys we’re going to target, but an area that we’ve continued to spend more time on over the last two years is really trying to drill down in the film. After we might be intrigued by a guy from their analytical profile, we end up watching more film to make sure that profile is telling us the whole story. Jon Scheyer, Duke: When you’re watching a guy, watching the shots he shoots, how he plays, does he pass to his teammates, the way he processes the game, there’s an eye test component to that. But I think the most enjoyable part for me is that I ask a lot of questions with our recruits. When we show film to them, we also talk about the areas that they have to do better. I love seeing how they respond to that. I love seeing if they embrace that. And I love just asking them questions about the game. If you can find yourself just talking to them, the longer I’ve done this, the more I like to ask questions and get inside their mind of how they process and what they think. Brad Underwood, Illinois: Problem-solving is the game of basketball. We do a lot of disadvantage basketball or advantage basketball. We play 5-on-4, 4-on-3, we play 5-on-4½ from a disadvantage so guys have to learn to process and make decisions in all scenarios. I think it’s helped us and it helps guys improve. Golden: A lot of people spend time in the spring and summer working on individual player development, and we do our fair share of that. But at the same time, we expect our guys to play a lot of pickup — whether it’s 3-on-3, 5-on-5 — to put themselves in those situations outside of the season, to make sure they’re sharpening those parts of their game. From a coaching and player development standpoint, we grade every 5-on-5 possession that we play in practice. We film everything and we grade it. We give our guys feedback based on how they do in what we call our hustle stats. It’s a way to give tangible feedback along with film, where not only can you show them the numbers, but you can also have film to back up whether they’re doing things well or not well. Over the course of time, when you’re using playing time as the carrot being dangled, guys are going to work to do what you want them to do when you can show it to them in a few different ways. Miller: What I have found, the way the game is played today, is when a player doesn’t have that [heightened] understanding, it’s really hard for him. The game is harder for that type of player than it used to be. Painter: That’s a real important piece of somebody’s growth as a basketball player. In The Blueprint, our in-depth, long-form series takes you inside some of the most amazing stories in sports.​Latest Sports News from FOX Sports

DAIKIN PARK (Houston) – Months before he was distributing espresso shots and cheek-kisses to home-run hitters in the dugout and handing out bottles of wine to the players on the best team in Italy’s baseball history, Vinnie Pasquantino was bored on Thanksgiving. So, the country’s best baseball recruiter used the holiday to reach out to prospective players, as he had done for much of the year after committing to the team for the World Baseball Classic in early 2025. “It was kind of messed up thinking about it, but… I didn’t have a whole lot going on, and I was like, ‘Oh, this would be a good day to hit everybody’s Instagram DMs,’” Pasquantino told me ahead of Wednesday’s game against Mexico.  “So, there was a lot of DM’ing that day. That’s when the WhatsApp was created for the group. It’s been a lot of fun trying to help create this team.” The seeds were being planted for what would become the WBC’s improbable juggernaut, a group consisting primarily of prospects and novice MLB players who quickly blossomed into the tournament’s success story by stunning much more experienced and decorated rosters along the way with their own distinctive panache. The Italians left the best U.S. roster ever assembled dumbfounded in an upset victory on Tuesday. One night later, they bulldozed a Mexico squad that nearly made it to the WBC finals three years ago. That capped the Azzurri’s perfect 4-0 start to the competition to win Pool B and advance to the quarterfinals. “I’m, like, weirdly emotional tonight, to the point I’m thinking about crying,” Pasquantino said in his postgame press conference after his three-homer performance over Mexico helped send Italy through to the next round, “which is funny for a tournament in March.” Really, though, this represented so much more than normal March baseball for the team’s captain, who was so moved by his experience playing for Italy in 2023 — and his trip to the country before that WBC — that he spent the better part of the last year doing whatever he could to help the Italian Baseball Federation field the best roster imaginable for this tournament. The near-catharsis was the culmination of all the effort that led into Wednesday night. “I committed in what would have been spring of last year, right at the beginning of spring training, letting them know that I was in,” Pasquantino told me before the Mexico game. “From there, it was, ‘All right, who do we need to go get? Send me phone numbers. I’ll make cold calls, whatever I need to do.” After receiving a target list of players to call from Italy’s coaches and staff, the Royals’ gregarious first baseman hit the recruiting trail. “I think they know I have a bigger personality, so it was more from their end, ‘If we really need a guy, will you call him?'” Pasquantino said during our chat before Mexico’s game. “And I think from my end, it was like, ‘Why don’t I just call everybody?’” “I think he reached out to everyone,” Italy infielder Andrew Fischer confirmed. “He took this team by the reins, brought us together.” “You’ve got to find out who’s eligible and things like that,” Pasquantino added, “but once we were able to find out different things about guys, that’s when the phone calls really started.” Some pitches, like the one to Pasquantino’s Royals teammate Jac Caglianone, were easy. Some fell short, like the one to Red Sox standout Roman Anthony. Pasquantino had a conversation with the 21-year-old talent, but it never got far. Anthony told me he had no plans to participate for any team in the World Baseball Classic, and was set on staying in Boston’s camp, until USA manager Mark DeRosa called. His Red Sox manager, Alex Cora, thought that was an opportunity he wouldn’t want to miss. In other cases, Pasquantino’s perseverance paid off. He pestered veteran pitcher Michael Lorenzen about joining the squad for years. “When Vinnie asked me if I wanted to play, I did tell him I would only do it if I was a two-way player,” Lorenzen said. That hasn’t happened, at least yet. For now, Italy is just happy to see Lorenzen thriving on the mound, where the veteran MLB pitcher blanked USA’s star-studded lineup for 4.2 scoreless innings in the upset victory that Italy manager Francisco Cervelli described as one of the best days of his life. “Everybody in Italy should see this,” Cervelli said after the win over the USA. “We’re doing it for them, for the kids. It can happen. It’s possible.” Anthony was in the losing dugout of that Italy win, one that threatened to end USA’s run before it could ever really get going. Maybe that defeat wakes up Team USA, which is still fully capable of avenging its 2023 finals defeat and going all the way, thanks to Italy’s win against Mexico on Wednesday. To this point, though, it’s been Italy having most of the fun. “It’s unbelievable how close this group has gotten in such a quick timeframe,” said MLB veteran Jon Berti, who played for the Cubs last season. “Vinnie gets a huge credit for that. He set the tone early for us. He’s an awesome leader, very fun to be around and kind of drew everybody in and together.” Pasquantino was also responsible for the professional manner in which Italy handled the biggest baseball win in its country’s history. In the aftermath of avenging a 2023 loss to Mexico, Team USA stayed back hours after the win sharing stories and sipping drinks together in the clubhouse. “There’s some guys dragging today,” DeRosa said to reporters the following day, hours before suffering one of the most surprising defeats in WBC history against an unafraid, unyielding, undefeated Italy squad. Pasquantino knew that a 3-0 start wouldn’t mean much if Italy turned around and had a similar letdown the next day against Mexico. So after the win against Team USA, he told his group that once midnight hit, it was time to turn the page. “We had a good time in there,” Pasquantino told me, “but nobody’s dragging over here today.” The results of a 9-1 win against Mexico backed that up. ‘This Team Might Be Different’ Three years ago, Pasquantino was part of an Italy roster that advanced out of WBC pool play without hitting a single home run. This time — an example of the strides the country has taken since then — it has already launched 12. Italy’s offense ranks second in the tournament in both home runs and OPS, despite lacking the established MLB talent that other rosters possess. It does, however, have the best arms it has ever taken to the tournament in Lorenzen and Aaron Nola, a plethora of intriguing young MLB talents in Pasquantino, Caglianone, White Sox catcher Kyle Teel, Marlins outfielder Jakob Marsee and Mariners outfielder Dominic Canzone and promising prospects in Fischer, Aldegheri, Dante Nori and Sam Antonacci. Pasquantino knew for Italy to succeed, he had to foster the right environment for the youthful group to feel comfortable. Quickly, he noticed the unusual confidence the team’s recent draft picks already possessed. “The first day we had a workout, Andrew Fischer talked a bunch of crap about the music I was playing,” Pasquantino told me, “and I was like, ‘All right, you take it.’ I was just playing simple EDM music. But that’s when I kind of knew, all right, this team might be kind of different. “These guys just aren’t scared, and that’s the coolest part, and that’s where I feel like it’s my job to let them know, like, yeah you shouldn’t be scared, this is what you should be doing, having a good time, having a blast, playing with your chest out.” Their fearlessness has been evident throughout the tournament. Aldeghiri, a 24-year-old Angels prospect, threw 4.2 scoreless innings in his lone start. Nori, a 2024 first-round pick of the Phillies, is 6-for-12 with two homers. Antonacci, one of the top position player prospects for the White Sox, has two extra-base hits. And Fischer, a first-round pick of the Brewers last year and the Energizer bunny personified, is 3-for-8 with a home run. “My personality, sometimes, is not really easy to work with,” Fischer told me. “I’m an extrovert. I’m from Jersey. I don’t really care a lot of the time what some guys think of me…but I just come in with a very loud personality, and fortunately enough, they took me in with open arms. “Vinnie’s done a great job kind of taming me back but also letting me be myself,” Fischer continued. “There’s been times I wasn’t sure how he’d react, and I see he has my back, and I feel very good about it, and other times that I’m not sure how he would react and he puts me in my place, and I respect him because he’s been in the game a long time. So, he’s a great leader, great captain.” ‘I Wish My Grandfather Was Still Around’ Even when Pasquantino started the tournament 0-for-12, Antonacci described the captain as the team MVP because of the way he made his teammates feel so comfortable. The slow start offensively did bother Pasquantino, who told Cervelli he would understand if he got dropped from the clean-up spot in the order, but he also knew the value he was providing outside the batter’s box. “I’ve been dog s— at the plate,” he said Wednesday afternoon, before his breakout performance. “I’m not hiding from that. It doesn’t feel the best right now. But… what I see the captaincy being, it’s not about performance in my opinion, it’s about what you can bring to the team. I know these guys are looking to me for mostly offense, which I haven’t been able to provide, but showing them, like, ‘Look, guys, it’s not going well for me right now, that doesn’t mean it can’t go well for the team. That’s what this game’s all about. “I’m not going to have it every night, and I haven’t had it the first three games. It doesn’t mean I won’t have it tonight.” On Wednesday against Mexico, he found it. In his first at-bat, he snapped his skid with a solo homer to start the scoring. Then came another in the sixth, and another in the eighth, all pulled out to right field at Daikin Park. Three homers meant three espresso shots awaiting in the dugout. Finally, he was downing the coffee and not just handing it out. It was the first time at any level of baseball that Pasquantino could remember homering three times in a game. “The Hall of Fame reached out,” Pasquantino said. “It’s the first time they’ve ever reached out for something of mine. … They liked the bat. I said, ‘I need the bat for a few more days.’” One day, Pasquantino’s goal is for Italy’s roster to be composed of actual Italy natives. There are only three on the roster in pitchers Aldegheri, Gabriele Quattrini and Claudio Scotti. For now, though, the focus is on growing the game in the country and showing kids in Italy what is possible. And the best way to do that is by winning games with this group of primarily Italian-Americans. It seems to be working. “Someone sent me a clip. [Italy’s] prime minister gave us a little bit of a shout-out this morning,” said Berti, an eight-year MLB veteran who grew up in Michigan. “I wish my grandfather was still around. He would be loving this.”​Latest Sports News from FOX Sports