Alijah Martin was in Chicago when he answered the phone, about to work out for the Bulls. Johnell Davis was in Sacramento to work out for the Kings when he did the same. Both Florida Atlantic stars are testing the NBA Draft waters. This is normal for any player with pro aspirations, but at the mid-major level, players in their shoes are often giving themselves an extra option and money-making opportunity in this new age of college hoops. They’re also entering the transfer portal.

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Last Thursday was the deadline to enter the transfer portal, and Florida Atlantic was one of five Division I schools not to have one player go portaling.

“I think in the back of everyone’s minds, we all expected each other to come back,” Dusty May told The Athletic last week. May, too, put himself in a position to cash in on FAU success, and he instead signed a 10-year extension. “I think deep down they expected me to come back. They expected the staff to come back, and I deep down was hopeful — I didn’t expect them to come back — but was hopeful that they would all want to come back.”

The Owls, fresh off their Final Four, will likely be in the top five of everyone’s preseason rankings. They graduated only one player. Why wouldn’t the players want to run it back, right?

Well, it’s all about the money.

At every level, coaches are re-recruiting their rosters each offseason, thanks to the bidding wars stemming from the one-time transfer exemption and NIL. Mid-majors can’t compete with what the high-majors have to offer. In Conference USA, among the 13 players on the three all-league teams with college eligibility remaining, eight transferred. All landed at high-major schools. Among the five who didn’t transfer, three of those players (Martin, Davis and Vladislav Goldin) attend FAU. (The Owls will move to the American Athletic Conference before next season.)

Both Martin and Davis have been receiving overtures from high-major schools for the last year. Runners slid in their direct messages on Twitter. Coaches got word to their parents or former grassroots coaches that they’d have a spot if they entered the portal. Martin said some “heavy hitters” came calling after the Final Four.

“It made me feel good that I was wanted, you know what I mean?” Martin said. “But they had the opportunity to get me out of high school and they didn’t do so. So I wasn’t really interested.”

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Success doesn’t always guarantee loyalty. The other three teams that were in the Final Four with FAU lost at least one player to the transfer portal. San Diego State, the team that knocked the Owls out, even lost a starter (Keshad Johnson).

Most coaches in May’s shoes bolt for a job that pays three or four times more with plentiful resources.

“It just shows his character as a human being,” sophomore guard Nick Boyd said. “I mean, that’s why I feel like he impresses me the most — just his humbleness and his attitude for not chasing materials and really just being somewhere where he’s really happy and especially in a world like today. A lot of people chase money and chase fame and glory. And obviously, based on his actions, Coach isn’t in it for money. He’s just in it to have fun, be happy and do what he loves.”

Dusty May is not naive. He knew his players were loyal, but he also knew it was important to at least give them a monetary incentive to stay.

“I told them during the season to make sure you’re not getting distracted with small deals, and all that stuff will be there after the season,” he said. “I told them what the rules are now that we can help them find NIL deals, and I promised them that as soon as the season was over, I wouldn’t be out recruiting all the time. I’d be working for them every day. Anything that I could legally do to help them, that’s what I’d be doing every single day.”

May called on a Monday afternoon after attending the Orange Bowl luncheon and then a golf outing. He didn’t play. Just stopped by to see some donors. Later that day he jumped on a train to Miami to attend Game 4 of the Knicks-Heat series. He’s been running nonstop since the season ended. It’s almost like he took a new job, because the Final Four run could end up changing the entire trajectory of the program forever.

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“You feel like you have to you have to strike while the iron is hot,” May said.

Last night was pretty fun 🙌

What an incredible turnout from Owl Nation!#WinningInParadise

— FAU Men’s Basketball (@FAUMBB) April 20, 2023

May has benefitted from the open communication lines he has with his guys. Trust and transparency, he says, are the signs of a healthy relationship. He knew about other schools tampering because his players told him. “I just kept it real with him,” Davis said, “because he always keeps it real with me.”

The FAU players were aware some of them could probably get more money elsewhere. But …

“That’s not guaranteed,” Martin said. “Coach May is a man of his word. If he tells you he’s gonna get us paid, then that’s what he’s gonna do. He’s gonna speak to it. That number is gonna be that number. It’s not gonna be like, you go to a high-major and they say you’re gonna get 500k and you end up only getting 300. That stuff is not guaranteed at the high-major level, because I’ve heard so many situations where schools still owe these players, and I ain’t trying to be one of those players that didn’t get all my money.”

Martin pauses.

“And it’s not about the money,” he says. “It’s about the hoops.”

Says Davis: “It’s not about the money; it’s about relationships.”

“Relationships were always gonna matter,” May said. “We’ve had players leave in the past, and we still have great relationships with them. And it’s part of it. Also it’s not as if we haven’t benefited from the portal. We have three players on our roster from the portal, and they’ve all been great players, great people, ambassadors of our university and athletic departments.

“It is what it is. You hope you’re providing the best situation for them personally, but you never know. But if they do decide to want something different, sometimes young people just want something different. They’re not even unhappy. They just want different, and we’re not going to be mad at them for that. Our job is to move on and find somebody else that can help us win and have a great experience and contribute to our culture.”

This is where May differentiates himself from a lot of coaches. Everyone is worried about “what ifs,” but he simply focuses on making FAU the best place for his players and making sure they improve.

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Martin said one of the many reasons he didn’t even consider going elsewhere is that he enjoys the basketball part of the equation too much. “I don’t want to have to adjust to another coach or another style of play,” he said. “Everybody knows the grass is not always greener on the other side. Everybody gets along. Everybody competes, like everybody sharpens each other. We don’t have a toxic team where guys be talking behind their backs and stuff like that. We really feel like a team and we get glorified as a team and we just want to be a part of that.”

Refreshing, isn’t it?

This story should give college coaches hope that loyalty and patience still exist in this sport. The most impressive thing May has accomplished this offseason might not be holding onto his top eight guys — all of whom averaged at least 15 minutes per game — but that he held onto the four players outside of his rotation as well.

“They know that their time’s coming,” Davis said, “and if they keep waiting and be patient, it’s gonna be their time.”

Davis and Martin have lived it. Both averaged just more than nine minutes per game as freshmen. Davis says right after he got to FAU he asked May if he was definitely going to play. May told him he would have to earn it.

Some players in their position might have transferred after their first seasons, but neither even contemplated it. The players seem to feel the love whether they’re playing or not.

“The way the coaches treat you, they don’t they don’t treat you based off your good games or your bad games,” Boyd said. “Every single day, they really care. They really care for their players rather than wins and losses.”

It’s that daily approach of treating everyone right and focusing on the work that seems to be at the heart of this whole thing. When the Owls lost to San Diego State, the first question that night on the dais was about their emotions in the moment, and Boyd said it was bittersweet, but “he was ready to get back to work.”

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That was the entire theme of the press conference. Looking forward.

And what May has noticed in the months since is that his players have worked even harder than they did a year ago. “Because they got a taste of it,” he said.

They all say, without hesitation, that their goal is to win a national championship next season.

There’s work to be done to get there, obviously. But it certainly feels possible because they all stayed.

Required reading

(Top photo of, from left, Nick Boyd, Johnell Davis and Bryan Greenlee in the Sweet 16: Al Bello / Getty Images)