Mark Pope gives update on recruiting strategy in new era of college sports

Recruiting in college sports may be as complex as it’s ever been.

In the ever-changing landscape of college sports, coaches have to navigate tricky waters in the recruiting world, and look far and wide to build their roster.

If high school recruiting and the transfer portal weren’t enough, this new wave of players being allowed to come to college from the pros is quite the new wrinkle in recruiting.

Mark Pope was recently in Philadelphia to check in on G-League guard Dink Pate, who was once a highly-regarded prospect in the Class of 2023, but opted to play professionally with the G-League Ignite.

Pate, of course, entered the 2025 NBA Draft but was undrafted and signed a deal with the New York Knicks. He’s been playing with the Westchester Knicks in the G-League, but has expressed interest in playing college basketball.

Pope was asked at a press conference about his recruiting strategy on the heels of the visit, and said he and the coaching staff would be looking at every legal avenue.

“In terms of the general structure, you have potential avenues in every level of sport right now for recruiting,” Pope said on Thursday. “It’s just new. It’s just new. Some of that, you don’t know exactly how it’s going to pan out, but everywhere the NCAA declares is legal for us to recruit, we’ll explore in-depth. I’m not trying to go rewrite any rules, but whatever rules there are, we’ll play in that space.”

Pope said the coaches have to build in contingency plans and explore different scenarios of what could become available. In today’s recruiting world, a lot of avenues that were once thought to be off-limits have suddenly opened up, and there remains a lot of uncertainty with different rulings.

It sounds like the coaching staff is going to leave no stone unturned when it comes to finding talented players for next year’s roster. Pate is certainly a guy who looks like he could be an immediate impact player in college basketball, and there are potentially others out there who fall into similar situations.

What a wild timeline we are in.