In April, Michigan became the first team in college basketball history to win a national championship with a starting lineup composed entirely of transfers. The portal is the way of things in college basketball, and that’s true of Luke Loucks’ Florida State Seminoles, too.
Much of Loucks’ starting lineup for Year 2 of his tenure next season will be players he plucked out of the portal this offseason, but the youngest Division I coach in the country also prioritized High School talent, assembling a strong eight-player recruiting class that ranked No. 16 in the country.
It’s a balanced approach Loucks is taking, building out a foundation of young talent and bringing in veterans to compete in the ACC while the homegrown roster develops. That plan, though, seems to have hit quite a snag in the 2027 class as four-star point guard Kevin Savage committed to Purdue over Florida State on Sunday, leaving the Seminoles still without a single 2027 commit.
Savage opted for Purdue over Florida State, Auburn, Georgia, Georgia Tech, and UCLA.
Kevin Savage's Purdue commitment should get FSU back to Loucks' core philosophy
Spending most of his young coaching career in the NBA, Loucks tends to prioritize length and athleticism in his roster builds. The 5-foot-11 Savage would be quite the departure from that philosophy. His top recruit in the 2026 class, Marcis Ponder, is all about size at 6-foot-11, 328 pounds; he’ll be one of the most physically imposing centers in college basketball as a freshman and give FSU the type of interior presence you need to compete in a sport that is continually supersizing.
However, Loucks brought in 5-foot-11 Jason Lopez in the 2026 class, and after the first half of his first season was marred by poor shot selection and wasted possessions, he also likely understands the value of a cerebral point guard to help his team get good shots.
That’s what Savage, from Wheeler High School in Marietta, Georgia, would have been for the Seminoles and will be for Matt Painter and Purdue. And after Braden Smith’s acclaimed college career, it probably wasn’t a bad idea to be in on an undersized point guard who has drawn Painter’s eye.
Savage is ranked No. 42 in the country by 247Sports Composite and is the No. 11 point guard in the country. Size is a major reason he's not ranked higher, and it will be his biggest issue at the next level. Savage is bound to get picked on defensively by bigger, more switchable teams, and while it's disappointing, this miss could open up the opportunity for Loucks to build more in that NBA image with positional size all across the board.
Without him, though, it’s back to the drawing board for Loucks in the 2027 class. It’s hard to tell exactly where FSU’s interest lies, and maybe after bringing in so many players in 2026, Loucks is content to take a few swings on elite talents like five-stars Isaiah Hamilton and Bamba Touray and build out the roster through the portal if he misses. That only works, however, if he can retain talent from this year’s team, and that’s always a tough task.
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