One night in April 2019, Kent State women’s basketball coach Todd Starkey opened up the computer in his office to check the NCAA’s transfer portal. He jumped back when he came across Linsey Marchese’s name.
When Starkey was an assistant coach at Indiana University, he had recruited Marchese out of high school, where she was an all-state center from Georgia and a top 100 recruit in the country. As soon as he saw her name in the portal, he started formulating a recruiting strategy.
Within a day, Starkey emailed her — the only contact information he had from the portal.