Traveling calls: UIC finds way to survive mid-major portal madness

UIC's Rob Ehsan is likely one of the few college basketball coaches in America who takes the train to work.

On a typical morning, he'll drive a few blocks to the Wilmette Metra station and ride the rails to the Ogilvie Transportation Center in the West Loop.

“If it's warm out, I take a Divvy bike or scooter to the office,” Ehsan said. “If it's cold out, I get an Uber. Unique for a college coach.”

Ehsan has lived in all parts of America. He grew up in Sacramento, got his first coaching job at Maryland, spent nine years at UAB, and was an assistant at Stanford before taking the UIC job in 2024.

“At this stage of my career with three kids, the No. 1 criteria probably for me is a place where I would enjoy living,” he said. “The opportunity to live in Chicago, one of the greatest cities in the world, has been absolutely amazing.”

Besides travel guides, Ehsan could also write a book on how to succeed in the unforgiving world of mid-major college basketball. He and his staff wasted no time at UIC, going 17-14 in the first season, the school's first winning record in five years.

In Year 2, the Flames are 16-13, but that's a little misleading. They've gone 13-4 since leading scorer Elijah Crawford returned from an injury in early January.

UIC hosts Bradley on Tuesday with a chance to pull into a tie for second place in the Missouri Valley Conference standings. Arch Madness, the MVC tourney in St. Louis, looms next week.

“We're a confident group,” Ehsan said. “I think we've proven we can play with anyone and beat anyone. We'll be very confident to play in the conference tournament.”

The challenge of building a mid-major winner is fairly obvious: Each year, most teams are starting from scratch. UIC has one rotation player who was on the squad last season, Chicago native Ahmad Henderson, the team's second-leading scorer.

Crawford, a 6-foot-3 sophomore, is a Georgia native who spent last season at BYU. There was a connection, though, because he was once a Stanford commit, when Ehsan and UIC assistant David Berkun were on the Cardinal staff. If Crawford was looking for more opportunity, he found it at UIC.

Ehsan found some front-line transfers on the East Coast — Mekhi Lowery from Towson and Abdul Momoh from Central Connecticut. The coach described transfer portal navigation as a long slog of scouting, researching and recruiting.

“I would say it's a seven- or eight-week absolute grind,” Ehsan said. “More of being on the phone nonstop. You're going down rabbit holes. You have to be comfortable with rejection and losing guys over and over. The emotional swings of recruiting in the portal are just absolutely insane, and it goes on for a long time.”

Another key ingredient for the Flames was finding a couple of under-recruited high school players who are now the team's third- and fourth-leading scorers as freshmen — Andy Johnson from Kentucky and Rashund Washington from Georgia.

“I think it's very important as a head coach to do the background to understand the type of people you're getting,” Ehsan said. “Do they fit you as a head coach personally? Do they fit the system of how you're going to play or are you going to be flexible to play a system that fits them?

“I think we're seeing in college basketball, it's easy to spend enormous amounts of money and it not go well, because you didn't get one of those three things right.”

Growing up in California, Ehsan fell in love with ACC basketball. So when he was a college point guard at Cal-Davis, he offered to work at Maryland's summer camps for free, just to get a taste of it. Each summer, he'd fly across the country and live in the dorm with the campers. When the Terrapins had an opening for a graduate assistant, Ehsan got the job and was added to the staff a couple years later at 24.

He spent four years as head coach at UAB and produced four winning seasons but was let go in 2020. So former UIC athletic director Mike Lipitz, who crossed paths with Ehsan at Maryland, found an under-the-radar winner when filling the job in 2024.

“I just think that head-coaching experience is the No. 1 thing,” Ehsan said. “When I got the job, I had a fan email me randomly and said, 'If you win as many games at UIC as you did at UAB, they'll put a statue of you in front of the building.' He was joking.”

Joking or not, Ehsan and his staff seem to know what they're doing.