Georgetown Looks to Increase Recruiting Presence Internationally

Ed Cooley aims to pursue international talent more in the future.

As college basketball programs increasingly go the international route when recruiting players, Georgetown is beginning to pay more attention to international talent too as it looks to build a new pipeline of talent under Ed Cooley and his coaching staff.

Ed Cooley has made it known to several people around the program this offseason - including at an event for donors in California a few weeks back - about his desire to get into the international recruiting game more moving forward.

The thinking for Cooley and Georgetown is simple: international recruiting is another way to identify and attract talent to Georgetown, and not making a play in the space puts the program at a competitive disadvantage relative to what its competitors are increasingly doing.

Georgetown, thanks to its location in Washington, D.C., along with its School of Foreign Service, is well-positioned to market itself to international players if it dedicates more time to building relationships overseas with various amateur and club teams across the other continents, along with international academies.

When considering that the NBA hasn’t had a U.S.-born MVP since 2018 and Team USA came in fourth place in the FIBA U19 World Cup a couple years ago, it makes sense for college basketball programs to begin to focus more on the international talent that is leading to countries like France, Spain, Germany, and Serbia competing on level footing with the United States in international basketball competitions nowadays.

University of Florida head coach Todd Golden, who has embraced international recruiting for a while now, had this to say about international recruits:

“As coaches we see guys when we go recruit internationally that are really ready to go. They’ve kind of come up through clubs or different organizations where – transparently – they get to train more than our young men and women do. And these international prospects that are coming over generally don’t have a lot of baggage with them. They’re coming over to play basketball, go to class, and do the best they can to prepare themselves to become pros. So you have guys who are really focused and have an understanding of why they’re coming over.”

With Mark Fox departing for an assistant coach position at the University of Kentucky, and Greg Fahey joining Ivan Thomas at Hampton as associate head coach, Georgetown still has two staff positions open.

Former Michigan assistant coach Howard Eisley, who has been spotted on Georgetown’s campus recently, figures to be a prime candidate to be brought on staff and fill one of those positions.

Ed Cooley has also been in talks with other candidates, including a member of NBA Academy Africa’s operation, to fill the second opening on his staff as well.

In Eisley’s case, as a college assistant for four years at Michigan, and an experienced NBA assistant before that, he could potentially be called on to assume a role as assistant coach on the Georgetown bench in future years if one of Georgetown’s current assistants were to retire or otherwise depart the program.

NBA Academy Africa, founded in 2018, is located in Senegal, and seeks to identify and attract the top male and female prospects in the African continent. The academy has two indoor basketball courts, a multidimensional activity center, a swimming pool, a weight room, conference rooms, dormitories, and educational facilities where English is taught.

NBA Academy also has programs in India, Australia, and Mexico.

There are more than 15 current American college basketball players from the NBA Academy Africa, including Kentucky’s Ugonna Oyenso (Nigeria), New Mexico’s Nelly Junior Joseph, (Nigeria), Washington State’s Rueben Chinyelu (Nigeria), Cincinnati’s Aziz Bendigo (Senegal) and Baylor’s Joshua Ojianwuna (Nigeria).

Khaman Maluach, an NBA Academy Africa product and the fourth-best prospect in the Class of 2024 according to 247Sports, committed to Duke a few months ago, giving NBA Academy Africa another success story to prove its value as it works to grow the game of basketball internationally.

Former Georgetown center Timothy Ighoefe (2019-2022) was an NBA Academy Africa graduate.

There are, however, more hoops to jump through when considering how NIL plays a factor in recruiting international players.

The cases of Zach Edey and Oscar Tshiebwe, in particular, have been used in recent years to highlight the disadvantage that international players are at when it comes to receiving NIL payments and signing NIL deals on American soil.

As international students in the United States on an F-1 visa, student-athletes like Edey (Canada) and Tshiebwe (DR Congo) can’t receive money from any NIL deals in the U.S.

As time has gone on, programs like Purdue and Kentucky have worked to find ways to operate within these confines to make sure their star big men got paid. Purdue wound up playing a game in Toronto against Alabama, which allowed Edey to sign and execute NIL deals in Canada; Tshiebwe and Kentucky took a preseason trip to the Bahamas, allowing Tshiebwe to appear in radio & TV commercials along with signing autographs on trading cards.

Kentucky also worked to get Tshiebwe an extraordinary ability visa, which would allow him to earn NIL money on American soil.

While international players are unable to participate in ‘active’ NIL engagements in the U.S., they can participate in ‘passive’ NIL deals, such as jersey sales or video game licensing. Such passive deals, however, tend to be a small percentage of a student-athlete’s NIL profit.

As time goes on an and NIL collective payment practices become more sophisticated, the door is opening wider for foreign athletes to cash in, making more international recruits open to playing in American collegiate athletics as opposed to staying overseas until they declare for the NBA Draft and go pro.

While the same hurdles remain for international recruits, until federal legislation is passed in Congress which would allow international players to profit from NIL, more schools are becoming comfortable with jumping through the necessary hoops - like Purdue and Kentucky did - to make sure their international players can profit off of NIL like their American peers.

Will Georgetown want to get as creative as other big-time high major programs when it comes to making sure their international players get NIL money? That remains to be seen.

Dipping their toes into the international recruiting game more intentionally makes all the sense in the world for Georgetown. How they do it, and how successful they are at it, remains to be seen.