BOISE — Immediately following a first-round exit in the Mountain West Tournament to conclude the 2025-26 season, Boise State men’s basketball head coach Leon Rice hinted some changes needed to be made on the court in the offseason.

Numerous changes — both on and off the court — have defined the Broncos’ offseason.

Along with multiple personnel changes on the bench, Boise State was active in the transfer portal, both in losing and acquiring talent. The Broncos project to have an entire new starting lineup, with three starters from last season entering the transfer portal — Drew Fielder (Alabama), Andrew Meadow (Oregon) and RJ Keene (N.C. State) — and the other two, Dylan Andrews and Javan Buchanan, running out of eligibility.

It left Rice to seek out new players in the transfer portal, preferably ones with a “dog” mentality, a term he used after Boise State’s season-ending defeat to San Jose State in the Mountain West Tournament in March.

“One of the things I wanted is to get back to where we’re a little more athletic,” Rice said when speaking to the media Monday afternoon. “I think we certainly did that. That was No. 1. We wanted high-character guys that had something to prove. Hungry dogs, and it appears we got a lot of hungry dogs.”

The additions Boise State made in the offseason come from a variety of backgrounds, whether it be starring at the mid-major level or being a former top recruit.

Damari Wheeler-Thomas comes in from North Dakota State, where he helped the Bison reach the NCAA Tournament as Summit League Tournament champions. The 6-foot guard averaged 14.5 points, 3.5 rebounds and 2.8 assists per game last season, earning second-team All-Summit League honors. He was also named the MVP of the Summit League Tournament.

Ty Rodgers, a 6-foot-6 forward from Illinois, was a former four-star recruit and played for Team USA at the 2022 FIBA Americas U18 championship, where Rice was an assistant coach. Rice’s familiarity with Rodgers helped bring him to the Broncos. Rodgers hasn’t played in the last two seasons due to injury, but did start in all 38 games for an Illini team that reached the Elite 8 in 2024.

The Broncos also added size in the portal with 6-foot-9 forwards Jerquarius Stanback (Alabama State) and Dovydas Butka (Campbell) and 6-foot-11 JUCO transfer Jikany Deang (North Dakota State College of Sciences).

But the underlying metric for all of Boise State’s additions this offseason has centered around the “dog” mentality, which takes a skillful eye to identify.

“Those are the intangibles that are always the hardest thing to evaluate, especially in a short period of time,” Rice said. “That’s where our connections help with (assistant) coach (Mike) Burns and Berto (assistant coach Roberto Bergersen). Even our young coaches are well connected. So you can get to the honest truths about who kids are and what they’re really about. And then we tried to bring almost every one of them in on a visit. We’d get to know them. That’s kind of uncommon in basketball in the portal … a lot of guys made decisions without visiting.”

With so many new players, who project to have large roles in 2026-27, set to join the Broncos, it makes summer practices and offseason work even more crucial, especially with a challenging non-conference slate that includes a road game at Wichita State, home date with Butler and neutral-site game in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, against Nebraska.

“You have to get a lot more done at an earlier pace because you look at our November schedule, there’s a lot of big opportunities,” Rice said. “There’s a lot of big games and tough opponents. The calendar has moved up as far as how early you have to have a team ready.”

Changes have also come on the coaching side, with assistant coaches Tim Duryea and Lexus Williams leaving. Duryea is retiring from coaching and Williams is taking an assistant coaching role at Minnesota. One coaching position has been filled with the hiring of former player and Rice’s son, Max, a basketball coach joining the staff.

Max Rice had played two years professionally in Germany and Australia, but knew his playing career was coming to a close. He had an eye toward coaching following this past season and was looking for opportunities in the Pacific Northwest. He reached out to Williams for advice after he left for Minnesota and recommended Max jump back into the program.

Having a former player as an assistant coach brings immense value to the program, according to Leon Rice.

“He knows what it takes, he sacrificed for the team, he cares about the program,” Leon Rice said about Max Rice joining the staff. “That’s what you get when you get former players. You get a certain level of how much the program means to them.”

Max Rice said his focus this year is on player development and sees multiple guys on the team who could have a similar jump in production Max had in his playing career at Boise State.

“There’s a lot of little things I can teach them,” Max Rice said. “That jump I made from my sophomore to junior year is something I want to instill in Peanut (Pearson Carmichael) and Jules (Julian Bowie) and some of these guys that have been developing over the past couple years.”

Along with new players and coaches joining the program in 2026-27, the Broncos embark on their first journey in the new Pac-12 Conference, which also includes nationally renowned program Gonzaga.

Boise State basketball will look a lot different in many areas this upcoming season, especially on the court where the top four leading scorers from last season are gone. The challenge for Leon Rice will be assembling all the new players and coaches together to compete in a new conference for a program that aims to make a stronger push for an NCAA Tournament bid in 2027.