Mike Rhoades didn’t have much to work with when he landed in State College in March.

Five Nittany Lions had entered the transfer portal and another seven left Penn State for the NBA Draft or simply ran out of NCAA eligibility. All of the team’s committed high school prospects — Carey Booth, Logan Imes, and Braeden Shrewsberry — had also jumped ship. Rhoades was left with two scholarship players and a dream.

Eventually, Rhoades brought back one more player to his Penn State roster with Jameel Brown’s exit from the transfer portal, but Rhoades and the coaching staff that came with him were still tasked with filling more than a handful of scholarship spots.

“We had to make sure we filled out a roster and we were trying to do it with what we wanted and how we wanted it,” Rhoades said Tuesday. “But not everything is always in your control. As recruiting went on, guys pick other schools, and you have to move on to other players and stuff like that.”

Rhoades pulled it off. He brought some players with him from VCU, reached for transfers from the heights of North Carolina and the depths of Lafayette, and even brought in a recruit from Iceland. When the season tipped off, Penn State had a roster.

When Rhoades took the plunge into the waters of coaching for Penn State, he was dealing with issues largely unfamiliar to him. Coaching in the Big Ten was new, and so was recruiting to an institution like Penn State.

Rhoades succeeded in recruiting elsewhere, bringing a future Atlantic 10 Player of the Year to VCU, but the brands of VCU and Rice aren’t the same to those of Penn State. Nearly a year and four high school commits later, Rhoades said he’s started to figure it out.

“I know what I want. I know what our staff wants. We know what we want,” Rhoades said. “Just being here since then, you understand the school, you understand the brand, even more being here every day.”

Not every school has the resources that Penn State does, Rhoades said. Not every school sells out every football game, regardless of opponent. Not every school can bring 12,000 people to a basketball game on a Saturday night. Importantly for Rhoades, not every school has student-athletes who tend to say they enjoy going to Penn State.

“I knew it was a cool place. I didn’t know the athletes love it that much,” Rhoades said. “And we’ve been using that in recruiting because when you’re around people that have like minds and ambitions like that and they love being here, the fun is in the work.”

The Nittany Lions work with NIL to make Penn State a financially attractive option. Rhoades hired his former head coach Pat Flannery, whom Rhoades’ still refers to as “coach” and said will not be outworked, to head up the team’s NIL efforts.

Even the way Penn State plays can be a recruiting tool, he said. Penn State’s style of play is interesting and “fun” enough that showing recruits film of the team helps get them on board.

As a coach, Rhoades said he’s personally benefitted from working with his coaching counterparts at Penn State. He spent a day watching James Franklin coach Penn State’s football team, and he’s learned from 10-time national championship winner Cael Sanderson.

People like Franklin and Sanderson make it easy to ignore Penn State men’s basketball. The Nittany Lions have enough tradition in both football and wrestling to say that Penn State is a football school or a wrestling school. Multiple women’s volleyball national titles and storied success in women’s soccer don’t help the men’s basketball program’s case, but Rhoades doesn’t seem to care.

“I don’t look at [Penn State] as a football school or a wrestling school like you guys do. I don’t,” Rhoades said. “I’m here to coach the basketball team, so it’s a basketball school. That’s that’s your mindset.”

Whether or not people agree with Rhoades that Penn State is a basketball school, he’s certainly willing to change that perception.

“We don’t have the greatest basketball tradition, right? We’ve had success in moments. We haven’t had to continued success, sustained success,” Rhoades said. “That’s one of my goals. Let’s get this thing going, and let’s get it going for a while.”