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While the Sweet 16 teams prepare for their weekend wars, every other program is working 24/7 on next season.

The coaching carousel is whirling. Players are pouring through the transfer portal. The annual scramble is underway.

The coaching dominoes are falling: Will Wade escaped McNeese State for North Carolina State. Ryan Odom jumped from VCU to Virginia. Darian DeVries bolted from West Virginia to Indiana. Ben McCollum scooted from Drake up the road to Iowa. Sean Miller moved from Xavier to Texas. Niko Medved landed in Minnesota from Colorado State. Richard Pitino will leave New Mexico for Xavier — the changes just keep coming.

Some coaches — like Brad Underwood at Illinois — are dealing with the likely loss of underclassmen to the NBA. The Fighting Illini expect to bid farewell to Kasparas Jakucionis and Will Riley.

“We will continue to have conversations with those guys and their people and see where that leads,� Underwood said. “But we’ve also got a job to do, and it’s what makes being a college basketball coach really, really hard. You’ve got a timing of the portal and you’ve got a timing of the draft that don’t jive. So we’ll have decisions to make and as they will too.�

Almost every coach is dealing with transfer losses. Some departures, like Aidan Shaw at Missouri, are players who fell out of the rotation this season.

The Tigers also lost walk-ons JV Brown and Danny Stephens because of an NCAA rule change. Schools are now capped at 15 scholarship players with no walk-ons. Last season, Dennis Gates built an 18-player army.

But scores of star players will change teams while seeking better NIL deals in the marketplace. That leaves coaches scrambling to retain their own players and recruit new ones.

“It’s speed dating,� Underwood said. “It’s gathering information, figuring out what you’re, you’re trying to do. We’ve got a pretty good idea of that. We’ve got a lot of really smart people on our staff who’ve been working really hard at it, gathering information.�

Some coaches have more work to do than others. After playing with a depleted roster this season, SLU coach Josh Schertz is looking to make large haul.

Here is what folks have been writing about the offseason:

• Matt Norlander, : “Drake was eliminated Saturday in the second round by third-seeded Texas Tech coincidentally enough coached by Grant McCasland, one of McCollum's best friends in the coaching business. McCollum is considered one of the whip-smart X-and-O tacticians in college basketball. It's a best-case scenario for an Iowa program that ranks near the bottom of the Big Ten in NIL resources and desperately needs rejuvenation after sagging attendance in the past two years.”
• Jeff Borzello, : “The Kevin Willard links to Villanova kicked into high gear last week with his scorched-earth news conference about needing more support in College Park. He then turned around and guided Maryland to its first Sweet 16 since 2016. Willard is going to get a sizable bump in salary, whether it's with the Terps or at Nova. If he turns down Villanova — and all indications are that he's the Wildcats' top target — the next names on the list are believed to be Pitino and Oklahoma's Porter Moser.

"West Virginia has shuffled through a long list of names. When the job first opened, most perceived Utah State's Jerrod Coleman as the favorite, given his ties to the state and his time as an assistant under Bob Huggins. But he's signing a new contract and staying with the Aggies. WVU athletic director Wren Baker is believed to have made a brief run at Ben McCollum, although he was obviously too far down the road with Iowa. North Texas' Ross Hodge is in the mix, as is (Alan) Huss. Another name to monitor could be Wake Forest's Steve Forbes, although nothing has materialized between the two sides just yet.

"VCU might seem out of place in this conversation, but the Rams are arguably the best job in men's college basketball outside of the power conferences, so let's discuss them. ... There were also some links to Huss and UNC Asheville's Mike Morrell, but neither seems likely at this point. Athletic director Ed McLaughlin has played things very close to the vest to this point, with no clear favorite for the job emerging.�

• Jeff Ermann, 247 ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ: “Willard, sources said, grew frustrated not only about funding-related issues, but also with minor requests being denied. For example, he was told no when he wanted to follow in the lead of some schools that have used curtains to block off portions of their arenas to improve the aesthetics of games with sparse attendance, primarily those early-season non-conference games that have been ghost towns at times. There were also disagreements about which office he could have and what sort of offices would be provided at the new practice facility. A lot of small frustrations had snowballed by the time he unleashed that two-minute critique of the administration's support. He's acknowledged he might've come on too strong in that press conference.â€�
• CJ Moore, The Athletic: “(Bryce) Drew and Richard Pitino are this cycle’s boomerang coaches, who didn’t work out at their first high-major stops but have been so good at their next ones that they likely make it back to the high-major level. Drew’s three-season tenure at Vanderbilt looks better in hindsight. He made the NCAA Tournament in his first year but got fired after his third when he went 0-18 in the SEC, in part because lottery pick Darius Garland was lost for the year after only five games. In five years at Grand Canyon, Drew has made four NCAA Tournaments. Last year, the Antelopes knocked off Saint Mary’s in the first round.

"Drew has reason to be picky when it comes to his next stop because Grand Canyon’s resources and fan support make it one of the best mid-major jobs in the country. He gives his players a lot of freedom on offense, which has helped him land talented players, including current stars Tyon Grant-Foster and JaKobe Coles, who both transferred from high-major programs. Another former high-major coach who has reemerged at the mid-major level with great success is John Groce, the Akron coach who coached for five seasons at Illinois.�

Megaphone

"When I was doing that, it was illegal. Just because it's legal now doesn't mean it was the right thing to do then. And I think that's the way that some people rationalize some things, but that's not the reality of what it was. It wasn't right to do then, and you know, I paid for it.�

New North Carolina State coach Will Wade, on his previous life paying players under the table at LSU.