“Always be recruiting” is less a motto and more a way of life for Power Four college basketball programs. And, in the day and age of the transfer portal, that often means going above and beyond to scour the lower ranks for potential portal additions.
For at least one SEC assistant coach, that apparently included buying a courtside seat at last week’s Atlantic Sun Conference Tournament to allegedly recruit a player from the tournament champion Queens University. Royals head men’s basketball coach Grant Leonard publicly accused an unnamed SEC assistant of purchasing a ticket to one of their ASUN Tournament games last week in an effort to “get ahead” of recruiting one of his players in a Wednesday morning post on X/Twitter.
Queens University of Charlotte punched the program’s first-ever NCAA Tournament ticket after capturing its first ASUN Tournament championship on Sunday with a 98-93 overtime win over top-seeded Central Arkansas in Jacksonville, Fla. Royals graduate senior guard Chris Ashby dropped a career-high 34 points on 10 3-pointers in the win, while fellow senior Nasir Mann contributed 14 points and nine rebounds to earn tournament MVP honors.
But while Leonard didn’t care to share which player the unnamed SEC assistant was targeting, Queens star freshman guard Jordan Watford was the Royals’ second-leading scorer Sunday night with 19 points and a team-high six assists, while adding four rebounds to the effort.
In his Wednesday post, Leonard quote-tweeted a The Field of 68 video featuring first-year USF head coach Bryan Hodgson, a former Alabama assistant coach under Nate Oats, issuing a clear warning to any coaches that attempt to tamper with his roster before the conclusion of the Bulls’ 2025-26 season.
“Any of these clowns that think they’re gonna reach out to my guys before the season ends and start sending the DMs, and having third-party (contact), I will find you,” Hodgson told The Field of 68. “I’m not like the rest of these college basketball coaches. We will have a face-to-face conversation, I can promise you that.
“I want it out there, because there are some real clowns out there,” Hodgson added. “It may work with other people, it doesn’t work with me. We’ll all be in Indianapolis — I will find you.”
USF won the American Conference regular-season championship and No. 1 overall seed in this week’s conference tournament by riding a nine-game win streak. Hodgson’s Bulls (23-8, 15-3 American) open tournament play in Saturday’s semifinals at 3 pm ET inside Legacy Arena in Birmingham.