UAB’s Andy Kennedy Talks Recruiting And How He Is BuiLding 2025 Team
By Steve Irvine
BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA - May 6, 2025
Take away three fall signees and a late season commitment, UAB basketball coach Andy Kennedy was basically staring at a blank roster when the season ended with a NIT quarterfinal loss in Southern California.
Technically, Kennedy and his staff only had two players on the roster – Tony Toney and Alejandro Vasquez - with no chance to return to UAB for another season. Realistically, though, they expected a mass exodus from the program and that’s what they got. Thirteen days after the final game, the roster had no returning scholarship players. Forty days after the final game, the rebuild is three players away from reaching the current scholarship limit of 13 players.
It hasn’t been an easy process.
“I've been doing this (as the head coach at UAB) for six years, my 18th year as a head coach, I was an assistant for 10 (and) I played,” Kennedy said. “I've been in this space, this collegiate space, for over 30 years, and this is the most challenging period of my career. Simply because of all of the things that are coming at you, as it relates to transfer portal and NIL, and the complete discrepancies and levels as it relates to funding and all the things that come with this new age. As I say to my players, you better play on two feet, you better to be able to pivot. You better be able to find avenues to build a competitive team and that's what we're trying to do.”
As of today, the roster includes 10 players. High school additions Lance Carr and Salim London and junior college transfer Evan Chatman signed in the fall. Junior college guard Dayjaun Anderson was the first spring signee. The new additions are junior college transfers Ari Gooch (McClennan Community College) and Joao Das Chagas (Indian Hills CC) and transfer portal additions Jacob Meyer (Depaul), Chance Westry (Syracuse), KyeRon Lindsay (Murray State) and Quaran McClendon (Northern Illinois).
“We're trying to be surgical,” Kennedy said. “We need everything. We knew we had our four signees and we just started building from there. Each piece of the puzzle that you recruit, you get a kid, you check this box and now you look for something that can accentuate what you feel like you already have. We're taking some high school kids, we're taking some junior college kids (early), so there's going to be a learning curve with that. We go to Division 1, and then we took the Division 1 guys that have been to multiple schools, and some have produced good in one place and not so good at the other. Some had been hurt. So again, it goes back to what I said earlier, it's very, very challenging in our current environment. I don't feel like we have settled (on any signee).”
Obviously, the process was forced to go quickly. Assistant coach Ryan Cross was on the road watching potential recruits at the junior college national tournament when UAB beat Santa Clara in a NIT second round game in Northern California. He rejoined the team for the quarterfinal loss to UC Irvine. The rest of the work has been done on the road, over the phone and in the UAB basketball offices.
“I'm not one of those guys that will say, back when I was a kid, I used to walk seven miles to school in the snow,” Kennedy said. “I’m not that guy. I tell you how you do it. You work 16-hour days, seven days a week. You watch more tape on kids, that you've never seen before, than you probably watched throughout the entire season in preparing for games. You have a staff committed to doing that. You've got a head coach that's very active in doing that. And we've got a tree of connections that if Joe Blow the agent calls us and I don't know you or somebody that I know doesn't refer you to me, then I don't call you back. I go through the channels. I go to people I know (who say), hey AK, what are you looking for? This is what I got, what about this, what about that. Literally, it changes day by day by day. We’re on two or three guys the last 72 hours that we weren’t on prior and we’re rushing to get them to campus.”
One thing that Kennedy and his staff couldn’t do, that many of the programs he’s recruiting against could do, is use money as the main selling point.
So what did he do to sell his program?
*“We sell a program that's only 48 years old and has been to 17 NCAA tournaments, which is a lot, and 14 NITs. So, 31 of our 48 years we’ve been to NCAA-invited postseason.”
*“We sell that we have won 125 games here over the last five years. There are only 10 teams, out of the 364 teams in Division I of college basketball, that can say they won more.”
*“We sell the opportunity to participate, to play meaningful basketball and to compete for championships. We’ve won two of the last four and we've been in the (conference) championship game each of the last four years to get to the postseason and have a chance to play beyond college.”
“We sell Trey Jemison, who came from someone no one heard of and now he’s in the same locker room with Luka Doncic and Lebron James.”
*We sell Yaxel Lendeborg. They didn't even know how to pronounce his last name and right now he is trending towards being a first round pick in the NBA. The first time for that to happen at UAB since Oliver Robinson in the early 80s.”
*“We sell Jelly Walker, who came from a guy that was an also-ran on a team that wasn’t having much success to being a household name and was on the (Bob) Cousy list.”
*“We sell the fact that I've been head coach for 18 years. I've done it at the SEC. I've done it at the Big East. We've done it here. We have proof of concept and it's gotta be about the right thing. If it’s about the biggest bag, hey, good luck to you, I wish you well but i don't want to waste your time and certainly don't want you to waste our time. And that's been our approach.”
The approach continues. The NCAA Division I scholarship limit for men’s basketball will probably increase to 15 at some point this summer. Kennedy said the Blazers won’t use all 15 scholarships when that happens. It’s unclear whether they will stop at 12 scholarship players or sign the current allotment of 13, but Kennedy said there are a pair of needs that he hopes to meet.
“We need another primary ball handler in our back court and we need another front court player,” Kennedy said. “That front court player could be a variety of things. It just depends on the best available. We feel like we've got versatility in our front court with the four that we have signed, with guys that can play both four and five depending on how we choose to play. We feel the same way in our back court, getting the last kid that we just signed (McPherson). He gives us more size on our wing. McPherson is 6-4. Chance Westry, a kid we got earlier is 6-6. It gives some size in your backcourt. And then we've got some smaller guys, so we've got some versatility. The goal is a primary ball handler to play multiple positions and in the front court, just versatility, whether it be rim protection or whether it be stretching the floor.”
UAB will begin eight weeks of summer practice in early June. Obviously, it would be an advantage to have a full roster at that point. Kennedy said that may not happen.
“You just don’t know, this (recruiting) could go to August 24th when the fall term (starts),” Kennedy said. “Now, some coaches have the means that can go out and do things differently than what we can do and close deals with the signing of a check. They'll probably have their full contingent and be able to start their eight weeks of summer participation in June. We're gonna start our eight weeks in June, but I don't know if we'll have our full contingent just based on how things evolve over the next three weeks.”