I’m going out on a limb, but then my wife says I’m an optimist. And I may not have written this a week ago. If Coach Mac successfully recruits kids to Drake who will commit to his culture, then he will not lose any of his recruits to NIL transfer to greener pastures. That goes for Bennett Stirtz, too.  Naive? Money talks? Maybe. But proof may be in the fact that every former player and coach who was offered a spot at Drake accepted. That we know of, anyway. And then there are Ferguson and Alia, players from the previous regime who formed a piece of this new culture. If you choose and recruit kids who understand the commitment from both directions — Drake’s and the player’s — it goes a long way toward solidifying a so-called culture. And without a real culture, there is no stability in a program. If this works, great. If the coach leaves. So much for that culture. Coach can go make a new one. The good ones always do, or try.

That is exactly right!!! McCollum's entire system is built on the strength of the buy in from the players and the camaraderie between the players amongst themselves. He recruits a specific type of high integrity player who is moldable and highly coachable. I have several guesses for his tenure at Drake...

1. He will rapidly be sought after by many P5 teams, but he will stay put at Drake until at least all of his kids have graduated high school (maybe even college if they stay close). Even after that, I believe he will prefer such regionality (due to family reasons) that only Iowa State, Iowa, and Creighton would be attractive opportunities for him. 
2. He will lose some players due to NIL transfer reasons, but the turnover percentage compared to the rest of D1 programs will be significantly lower. The most likely players to transfer are those at the end of the bench who value playing time and will desire to move down divisions. 
3. You will consistently be underwhelmed by the quality (on paper) of the recruiting classes he turns in every year...but you will be quite happy with the product seen on the court every season. The intangibles that he looks for are rarely included in the prospect rankings, so most of his recruits will be more under the radar guys. 

Overall, Drake fans are in for a terrific ride over the next several years!!! Northwest fans knew we couldn't keep him forever, and we were disheartened to see him leave...but I have to say it has been very rewarding over the last 2 weeks to see your fanbase start coming around and seeing what we've been seeing for years now. There will be valleys unfortunately and heartbreaks, but the amount of peaks you'll experience will outnumber those moments 10 to 1.    

Turnover was very low at NW under Mac and I hope this holds true at Drake. The biggest move was Ryan Hawkins using his Covid year to go to Creighton 1 year(with everyone’s blessing imho and they ended up winning another title without him).
They lost a player who couldn’t play defense at Ben’s standards and a player who saw after 1 year that he was too low on the depth chart(and eventually ended up starting on a small D1 school) and maybe a few others I don’t recall.

On the other hand Ben brought in very few transfers over the years preferring to recruit and develop kids from the start(biggest exception I can recall is Joey Witthus who fit right in and helped win titles)

Thanks BearcatAggie for what appears to be a clear view of Coach Mac's and Drake's near future. I think you nailed it.

I’m very happy with his 2 recruits already landed. And I assume/hope his sons play at Drake, Peyton has D2 offers and a season to grow.

I don’t disagree with any of this, but I do think you all might be severely underestimating the allure of $$ to a 17-22 year old, especially if you aren’t gonna make that money professionally afterwards.

I am pumped for now and the future, but I think it might be a bit more a slog years 2-4 while NIL settles itself. The best character kids in the world, if given the opportunity to make $50k or $350k are going to hve very hard decisions to make.

Mac will certainly develop them. They will gel and do the things he needs them too. They’ll then get offered lots of $$ to try their hand someplace else. Idk how much culture will be able to erase that allure of the dollar. We will see and none of us will truly know that answer until this coming offseason.

Regardless, I agree culture is great and it will continue to manifest.

And I think a lot of us, especially me, thought your point #1 also would have applied to DeVries and we were wrong on all accounts. So it might take a bit for us to believe that again.

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We need more people to contribute to the Collective to be competitive.   Pony up.

Moving forward.....

This.

The better Mac does, the more valuable his players become. If things keep progressing in this exciting of a direction, we will need a much more robust NIL budget. If we can't afford to keep Mac's players, do we deserve to keep Mac?

Let's enjoy the ride and show as much support we can - including through volume of monthly donors to DU Great. 

It looks like we have something SPECIAL!

Not a knock on anyone but I 100% agree here - when I read bullet point #1 I thought "well that sounds really familiar..."

We are going to lose kids. Culture is important - helps us create a team that is better than the sum of the parts, and helps you win with guys others may not want to take via NIL.

But you gotta be realistic that 1st team all MVC guys are going to be recruited up to the Big Ten unless they're the size of Duke Dean

Frankly, this is a benefit in recruiting - Ben can go to kids from low D1 schools or a decent high school kid and say "look at how you will grow here"