How Penn State men’s basketball is leaning on the top of its roster in 2026
Mike Rhoades did not mince words when he was asked just how different he expects this year’s men’s basketball team to be from the one that took the court last year.
“It’ll be a lot different,” Rhoades said. “This is the landscape of college basketball. You’ve got to move with it.”
The Nittany Lions have only one returning starter from last year’s team — center Ivan Jurić — and their losses include Kayden Mingo, the top-rated recruit in program history, who left for the transfer portal and, ultimately, Baylor. But that doesn’t mean all hope is necessarily lost for the team this season.
Rhoades’ 2026-2027 team will have to be different stylistically, but should be in a way that allows it to be much more competitive in Big Ten games and have a chance to make it to the lower-middle of the conference standings. That starts with guard Roberts Blums and wing Brant Byers, who are joining from Davidson and Miami (Ohio), respectively, and bring elite-level shooting to the roster.
“They’re both really good shooters, and have really good feel of how to play basketball,” Rhoades said. “I think we’ve done a good job of getting guys to play where they were before in a different role. And we got to unlock that. Both of them have got to make shots for us, but they can. You do your evaluation, you talk to a lot of people. Both have good reputations, with the way they approach working, the way they approached their team, and competing. They’re the type of guys we wanted.”
Those two are set to be focal points of what should be a high-octane offense. Their shooting, along with guard Jay Rodgers’ playmaking should create a top group that can both create and make high-efficiency shots — something the team severely lacked as it fell to last place in the 2025-2026 season.
And, while there are some concerns about ball handling behind Rodgers, Penn State still has two more players expected to join from Europe in Roko Prkačin and François Wibaut, and the latter will likely end up being one of the team’s backup point guards alongside Blums.
Wibaut’s ability to handle the ball and defend guards and wings should help a team that is likely to struggle on defense, but it’s Prkačin who has the most upside.
Rhoades and his staff were able to land the 6-foot-9 forward, in part, because of how they handled Jurić last season. Jurić’s development was a bright spot in a down campaign and Prkačin taking a similar step forward would be enormous for his own career. He’s a former projected first round pick in the NBA Draft, but playing with teams where he wasn’t an ideal fit stalled his development. Now, people within Penn State’s program believe he can tap into what made him a high-end prospect in the first place — including his ability to stretch the floor — and should be able to regain some of that form.
That will be crucial for a team that needs to be right about all of its evaluations at the top. Juric, Prkačin, Wibaut, Blums, Byers, Rodgers and center Tim Oboh make up the team’s top seven — and realistically it’s seven primary rotation players. There are players who could surprise and take on rotation roles, like Andy Gemao or Thomas Allard, but the team’s depth is not on the same level it has been in Rhoades’ first three years as head coach.
That’s going to be an adjustment for him, although the roster does come with benefits at the top of the roster.
“I do like the pieces we have,” Rhoades said. “We got older. In today’s landscape, you got to be older to give yourselves a chance, and we’ve done that. Probably not as deep as that I would like, but we’ll continue to address that as we move along, and recruiting never ends, so we’re going to keep recruiting up until they tell us we can’t.”
But, in modern college basketball, that’s reality. Teams must bank on staying healthy because developing depth — and more importantly, keeping it — is harder than ever as players seek greener pastures through the transfer portal when they don’t get playing time. And that’s even further exacerbated at a place like Penn State, which does not have the program history to keep an extra player or two who just wants to win.
It’s on Rhoades and his staff to maximize the hand he’s been dealt. And this year, it’s a much different one. Time will tell if it will be better, too.
