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'We want to go for it:' Mike Magpayo prepares for big Year 2 at Fordham
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- 'We want to go for it:' Mike Magpayo prepares for big Year 2 at Fordham
BRONX, N.Y. — All summer long, Mike Magpayo reminded his frontcourt of two numbers.
"Everybody's giving you all this praise," Magpayo says. "You were the frontcourt for an 8-10 team."
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He's right. Akira Jacobs, Abass Bodija, Roor Akhuar, Jack Whitbourn and Rikus Schulte combined to play over 3000 minutes for Fordham last season, making up the entirety of the minutes at the power forward and center spot, and a fair share of those at the small forward position as well.
In a mid-major college basketball landscape where retention is rare and celebrated, and familiarity leads to positive attention, the discussion around Fordham's offseason would often have you forget the fact that they had a losing record in conference play. The Rams have had just one winning season in conference play over the last 19, and last season was the fourth overall winning season (17-15) of the last 34 years.
Fordham returns its entire frontcourt from last season (Fordham Athletics)
The season served as a proof of concept for many of Fordham's donors. Magpayo said that the administration could "continue to engage the donors" after the Rams outran most expectations in Magpayo's first season.
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Now though, the expectations have been raised. With a returning frontcourt and a few exciting backcourt newcomers, Fordham is ready to compete for more than just respectability in the A-10. The program tasted success in Keith Urgo's 2022-23 season, but failed to live up to high expectations in the ensuing campaign. This time, though, they'll argue, it'll be different.
The road to building a sustainable winner starts long before the offseason. It starts even before Dejour Reaves received MVP chants at Rose Hill Gym in February. Magpayo says retention is an ongoing process that begins even before the offseason. For the frontcourt, as soon as they proved themselves, the Rams wanted to bring them back.
"It started early," Magpayo told Basket Under Review. "I was already selling next year and how we can continue to build this thing. And as you get later in the season, our GM started going to work with their agents, seeing if there was something that we could get done early."
Whitbourn appeared in only 11 games but emerged as a valuable piece with obnoxious rebounding numbers. Bodija redshirted with Magpayo at UC Riverside in 2024-25 and became an important rebounder and glue guy in the frontcourt. Jacobs, a Hawaii transfer, continued to get better as the season went on, while Akhuar showed serious flashes as a freshman.
Fordham head coach Mike Magpayo goes into an exciting year two (Fordham Athletics)
Bringing those guys back was one thing. They all agreed, some, Magpayo says, before the season even ended.
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But Schulte was more difficult. He started his college career at Davidson before joining Magpayo at UC Riverside in 2024-25, and following him to Fordham.
Following a 10.7-point, 9.1-rebound-per-game campaign in the Bronx, Schulte entered the transfer portal on March 24. However, no matter how much interest he received, he kept thinking about Fordham.
Size is the most expensive commodity in the transfer portal, especially after a year where two-big lineups dominated the sport at the highest level. For Fordham, the support from the top helped them get the cash needed to put a competitive offer in Schulte's mind.
"(Athletic Director) Charles Guthrie has done a great job (raising money)," Magpayo said. "But he found that these were great kids, and I think he was also willing to just invest in Rikus."
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A few weeks later, Schulte told Magpayo that he was withdrawing from the portal and completing the set of returners for the Rams.
"I think that has a lot to do with his comfort level in the program," Magpayo said. "But not just comfort; he's thriving in our program. And then I think he just fell in love with the Fordham community. I think they all did."
Returning the frontcourt lets the Rams keep building on what made them difficult to beat last season. Fordham led the A-10 in defensive rebounding and ranked second in offensive rebounding last year. They played excruciatingly slow on offense and won extra possessions with their overwhelming size.
By the end of the year, they also turned their length into a serious defensive weapon with a wicked zone that could tie teams into knots.
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"Fordham does a great job of once the ball goes in, there's a matchup where you're not really getting that in-to-out where it touches the middle and gets pinged out, you give up a lot of shots," Rhode Island head coach Archie Miller said of the zone after his Rams were defeated by the other Rams. "They won't give up a lot of threes, so you have to play below the foul line."
Schematically, it was a hodgepodge, but it drove teams insane. Now, all the tools are back in the war chest for Fordham whenever they need them.
With his frontcourt set, Magpayo could focus on recruiting guards to replace Reaves and Christian Henry, both of whom graduated. Fordham already had two freshmen the staff was extremely excited about coming in, Desmond Bellot and, especially, Stepinac product Hassan Koureissi, but the Rams still needed to add experience and high-end talent. Reaves and Henry combined for 28.6 of Fordham's 69.8 points per game last year.
He sank his feet into the portal and brought a few guards on visits.
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"We needed scoring and playmaking," Magpayo said. "And then we needed some athleticism from the perimeter, but what we added to that was winning. I really put a premium on that."
Lateef Patrick led Stephen F. Austin to 28 wins last season. He's the exact type of volume scorer the Rams needed, averaging 15.2 points per game on a heavy off-the-dribble shot diet. When he committed to Fordham, he joined longtime friend and fellow Massachusetts native Amir Lindsay to form a new-look backcourt.
Lateef Patrick averaged 15.2 points per game for a 28-win SFA team last year (SFA Athletics)
Lindsay also created a ton of his shots himself last year, averaging 17.9 ppg. He rarely left the floor for UAlbany, and when they won, it was almost always because of him. Magpayo says that after a winning season with the Great Danes two years ago, he satisfied the winning requirement.
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Magpayo says that he built last year's roster with age and offensive efficiency in mind. But by the end of the year, it was Fordham's defense and youth that had him most excited about the future. What he had to replace was the scoring.
"You want three to four high usage guys as best you can," Magpayo said. "And then five role players surrounding them. So that's the method behind how, but is it going to be perfect every time, and are you able to do that because of NIL rev share resources and all that? It's not. So you do have to put the pieces of the puzzle as you go at times, but I think we did a really good job."
Guthrie has been integral in Magpayo's first year-plus at the helm. The coach says that his athletic director is a "great teammate" and that while they talk "all the time," Guthrie allows him to operate with autonomy.
"He always says 'you're the chef, go ahead and cook'," Magpayo said.
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But the next gains aren't going to be made in the office. They're going to be made on the court. Magpayo continued to emphasize that 8-10 was not where he wanted the program to be, even if it was an important step in year one.
Before the end of that summer, though, Magpayo had been so impressed with St. John's transfer wing Kelvin Odih that he started up the retention process early for him once again, trying to pitch him on a second season at Fordham before even suiting up for a game. He provides that physical, athletic 6-foot-4 off-ball wing that was missing from a roster full of ball-dominant guards and rebounding bigs.
Mike Magpayo is ambitious on Fordham's future (Fordham athletics)
That summer was built on the Zen Buddhist proverb "chop wood, carry water," which refers to the idea that both before and after reaching enlightenment – or in this case, whatever the goal may be – a person's daily tasks stay the same. They don't go away; just the mentality with which they are done changes.
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Fordham hasn't reached enlightenment yet, but Magpayo is laying the groundwork for the Rams to have a strong season. His team ranks No. 103 in preseason KenPom. The program's highest-ever KenPom finish is 127th.
"We are way more ambitious than 17-15 and being in the middle of the pack at 8-10," Magpayo said. "We want to go for it. Nobody's going to have higher expectations than us and me. And nobody's going to be tougher and more demanding of reaching for the stars than myself and our coaching staff."
