MVC Portal Shopping – Part One

Most Stable Rosters

(St. Louis, MO) – ‘Black Friday’ has nothing on this season of portal shopping! Missouri Valley Conference teams are reloading faster than Hawkeye can reload his quiver. While all eleven Valley programs are actively involved, several programs have more roster stability than others and in Part One of this ‘Portal Shopping’ series we will look at those teams with the fewest holes to fill. Make no mistake the portal pandemic is very real.

Bradley, Illinois State and Northern Iowa are retaining more of their contributors than most of their MVC rivals, but like father’s on Christmas Eve, they’ve been shopping for the ‘right fit’ and surprise deals.

During Part Two, we will look at virtually rebuilt rosters at Drake, Murray State and Valparaiso. Part Three will cover the teams somewhere in between.

Illinois State – Not Much Need

The 2025-26 Redibirds are an extremely rare program. They have so many players returning that Ryan Pedon’s shopping was done almost entirely last fall, by sigining four significant freshman. His only portal addition (so far) has been Butler transfer Landon Moore.

Illinois State (22-14) returns the bulk of its CBI Champion squad and the addition of two, starting quality players that missed all of last season. The only two players from the MVC’s first two, all-conference teams returning to the league are Redbirds Chase Walker (first team) and Johnny Kinziger (second team).

All-Bench and All-Freshman team member Jack Daugherty is back, as are Ty Pence and Landon Wolf.

Former all-Summit League member Boden Skunberg and 7’1 center Brandon Lieb are expected to be significant contributors after missing last season. Pedon tells us, each player is healthy and looking forward to productive seasons.

Moore is coming home (Bloomingington, IL native) to provide veteran support to the Redbird backcourt. The 6’3 senior spent one season at Saint Francis and two at Butler and has 87 Division 1 games under his belt.

After averaging over 13 points at Saint Francis he averaged just sixteen minutes per game in the Big East. While his three-point percentages were very good during his first two collegiate seasons, he struggled last year. Moore was a member of the NEC all-freshman team in 2023. He averaged nearly 25-points-per-game as a high school senior.

Pedon’s four freshman signees are outstanding. You can read about them here.

Northern Iowa – Just a Couple of Holes

With the graduation of Tytan Anderson and Jacob Hutson, but strengthened by the return of virtually every other player, coach Ben Jacobson’s portal shopping was done mostly in the ‘Big & Tall’ store.

UNI (20-13) returns too many players to mention, but the Valley’s only returning third-teamer is Panther guard Trey Campbell. Ben Schwieger, Leon Bond and Will Hornseth are the other headlining returners. A healthy R.J. Taylor would be a difference-making addition.

Jacobson signed highly rated high school seniors last fall. Three different three-plus-star players, Trevin Jirak, Jalen Wilson and Geon Hutchins all hail from the Jacobson’s upper-midwest power base. The 6’10 Jirak recently flipped to Iowa, so ‘Jake’ went shopping in the Extra-large part of the portal.

Enter North Carolina State transfer Ismael Diouf and Baylor’s Marino Dubravcic. Neither of the 6’9 power conference transfers are from the US. Diouf is Canadian and Dubravcic is from Croatia.

After playing for the Croatia FIBA U18 team, he participated in just 18 games at Baylor. Diouf appeared in 18 Wolfpack games and is a one-season veteran of the Canadian Elite Basketball league. Some services rated Dubravcic as a four-star player.

Jacobson found real success with last year’s signings of D2 star Max Weisbrod and D3 performer Cael Schmitt and this year lined up NAIA all-American Tristan Smith. The 6’5 Smith was both his league’s player of the year and top defender. He averaged over twenty-points, eight rebounds and four assists during his senior season at Concordia (Nebraska).

Smith scored nearly 1,600 NAIA points.

Bradley – Half Full and Half Empty

The Braves (28-9) sustained massive graduation losses and one very significant transfer, but the returners have played some heavy minutes and shown the ability to be significant Missouri Valley Conference players.

All all-freshman and all-bench team member Jaquan Johnson returns for his sophomore year along with explosive junior guard Demarion Burch. Up front, Brian Wardle returns Ahmet Jonovic and Corey Thomas. Those four should start and hold their own for the new look Braves. Wardle has four new assistant coaches in the biggest shakeup of his staff during his entire time in Peoria.

We have highlighted the outstanding incoming freshman class other places, but how was Wardle’s portal shopping?

The additions of James Madison transfer A.J. Smith, Wright State’s Alex Hulbregste, Mayar Wol and Kai Yu could be the best collection of D1 transfers joining the Valley. Smith who also toiled at Southern Indiana, is a 6’6 win that can score (7.3 points per game) and rebound (6.3)

Hulbregste accumulated 1,000 points at Wright State and last year averaged 13.5 points per game. Wol is a 6’8 wing coming off a ‘Sixth Man of the Year’ award in the Atlantic Sun Conference. The Eastern Kentucky transfer averaged just under nine points and four rebounds coming off A.W. Hamilton’s bench.

Yu is a 7-footer that red-shirted at Liberty. He is a native of China and his US high school ball was played at prestigious Link Year Academy.

EvanMiya.com ranks Bradley’s portal collection as the league’s third best and number 133 nationally. That website ranks Hulbregtse as Wardle’s top portal find.

Due to their lack of portal reinforcements, UNI (eleventh) and Illinois State (tenth) are the league’s lowest rated portal shoppers.

Do Good

 

Editor: Cover photo of A.J. Smith, courtesy of JMUSports.com.