During his first 20 days at Indiana, Curt Cignetti did not see much daylight.
Indiana athletic director Scott Dolson sent the plane to pick up his new coach on Dec. 1. What Cignetti and his staff discovered upon landing in Bloomington was a roster crisis. Nineteen scholarship players were already in the transfer portal, including 13 who'd started. They had three weeks to rebuild a Big Ten team.
Cignetti drove to work in the dark before 5 a.m. He'd typically work out of his new office until 11 p.m. One night, it was 12:30. "Haven't done that since 1986," he joked. He was proud that, at 63, he could still do it. The process of assembling the 2024 Hoosiers required an incalculable amount of film, phone calls and coffee.
"It was pedal to the metal, full-steam ahead," Cignetti said.
Cignetti was one of 14 new head coaches hired by Power 4 programs this offseason. Each one dealt with transfer attrition to some degree. None of them lost more than Indiana, with 37 scholarship players ultimately departing after the firing of Tom Allen.
But every job comes with different circumstances. Some are positioned for instant success and some are at rock bottom. Below we'll detail how Cignetti rebuilt the Indiana roster and how the other 13 Power 4 first-year coaches did as well. We've tiered each roster construction.
Jump to a tier:
Plug and play
Start from scratch
The in-between-ers
Portal minimalists
