STATE COLLEGE | Penn State men’s basketball coach Mike Rhoades was blunt about his team’s budget situation in the summer, saying the Nittany Lions were “at the bottom” of the Big Ten in NIL funding.

But Penn State still needed to fill a roster for the 2026-27 season because it saw 10 players from last year’s team depart. Rhoades wanted to have an older and tougher team this season, which begins Monday night at home against Canisius, but a limited NIL budget made that goal difficult to accomplish.

Still, general manager Scott Pera thinks Penn State is positioned as best it can be. Rhoades added 11 new players this offseason, including six transfers and two international players with extensive professional experience.

“We feel that we did the best we could in the situation,” Pera said. “We feel good about this group. We got older. We certainly got longer, and now we'll see how it all translates.”

How Penn State revamped its roster with a limited budget 

Penn State has a limited budget to build a roster. CBS Sports’ Matt Norlander and Isaac Trotter reported that the Nittany Lions are in Tier 6 out of 7 in spending among power-conference teams, placing their budget between $7.1 and $9.9 million.

The only Big Ten school below the Nittany Lions in CBS Sports’ report is Washington, which spends between $5-7 million. Without much room for error, Penn State has to make the most of its smaller budget competing against Big Ten teams like Michigan and Illinois that spent more than $20 million, CBS Sports reported.

“You have to make sure you're in sync with the head coach, which obviously Mike and I are, being as good friends we are, and with what the staff is looking for, and then it becomes a jigsaw puzzle,” said Pera, the former Rice head coach who was Rhoades’ associate head coach there from 2014-17. “You get one piece, and maybe you get a piece that you weren't sure or unexpected, then you got to fit the other pieces around those.”

This offseason, Penn State’s goal was to get older and tougher. Rhoades called last season’s team the “weakest” and “softest” he has coached, and that squad was one of the youngest in college basketball.

A year after having eight freshmen on the roster, the Nittany Lions now have an average age of 21. The average Penn State player has 1.9 years of college basketball experience, and international additions Croatian forward Roko Prkačin, who was declared eligible three days before the opener, and French forward François Wibaut bring extensive overseas professional experience.

Before the transfer portal opened in April, Penn State made a massive move in retaining center Ivan Jurić back for another season. Rhoades added shooters to give Jurić more space inside, including Miami (Ohio) transfer Brant Byers and Davidson transfer Roberts Blums, who both shot over 39 percent from 3-point range last season.

The Nittany Lions added St. Bonaventure transfer Dasonte Bowen, who projects as the starting point guard to facilitate the offense around those shooters and Jurić. They signed depth pieces in guard Jay Rodgers, guard Thomas Allard and forward Tim Oboh, who each have at least two years of collegiate experience.

Then, Penn State received unexpected news in the summer, according to Pera. Forward Josh Reed returned for a fifth season after a lawsuit against the NCAA in Ohio made him eligible to play.

Pera said the Nittany Lions had a bigger budget this year. According to Jon Sauber of the Centre Daily Times, Penn State’s budget “nearly doubled” from a number “around $4 million” last season.

“We've gotten more,” Pera said. “Is it where it needs to be or where you want to be in terms of the Big Ten? Not yet. We hope that that will continue to go this way. It'd be one thing if it stayed here or went down. Then you have a lot more concerns. But we feel we're hopefully evolving with what is happening. We wish it would happen quicker.”

Penn State’s creative approach to roster construction

Penn State has to look all over the world for players, and this season’s roster has four players who didn’t compete in the United States last season. Prkačin and Wibaut played professionally in France, Serbian forward Aleksandar Zečević was on a U22 team in Spain and Filipino guard Andy Gemao was at a high school in Canada.

Rhoades credited his staff and the relationships they’ve formed while playing overseas in developing their international recruiting approach. Assistants Brent Scott, Talor Battle and Dwayne Stephens each played at least eight years professionally overseas, Rhoades said.

Rhoades said the people his staff knows reach out to connect them with potential players. Rhoades’ first question: Can Penn State afford the player? His second: Does the player fit Penn State?

“We discuss it a lot, we debate it a lot, and we try to do the best we can with what we have to get the players that we can,” Rhoades said. “Everybody wants that player, right? But there's only a few of those, and you just got to keep digging and keep finding them, and then as a staff, do a really good job of staying on the same page to get the right fits.”

Rhoades knows Penn State’s NIL situation. He knows he’s working with a smaller budget than most of his Big Ten counterparts are. He knows it’s a difficult job to build a program in Happy Valley in the current era of collegiate athletics. 

But Rhoades thinks back to what his late father Jim would tell him.

“My dad always used to say this to my brother and sister and me: ‘It is what it is, figure it out, move on, move forward,’” Rhoades said. “That's all I'm doing. Since July, I'm in the foxhole. I put all my energy and attention to my team, and we're going from there.”