Four months ago, the University of New Orleans’ men’s basketball team of head-coach Joe Pasternack, called ‘The Privateers’, was considered Division I and very successful. Since then, the University of New Orleans has decided to move its athletics programs from NCAA Division I to Division III status as a result of major financial problems, and since that decision much has changed within Pasternack’s team. “It’s all because of Katrina,” Pasternack said. “It’s all about enrollment.”

Having a Division III status athletics program, although the school was still classified as Division I, meant that the University of New Orleans was not allowed to offer athletic scholarships to its enrolling students anymore. This unfortunately led many of the university’s students who were on Joe Pasternack’s basketball team to leave the university for a different team. “That’s not what they signed up for,” Pasternack said.  

In addition to the difficulty of losing some of his best and most experienced team players, Joe Pasternack also had to face the challenge of a reduced budget. “We were given a limited budget to make things work,” he said.

When it was time for him to recruit new players for his dwindling team, Pasternack had to follow Division I rules in recruiting, since the university was still classified as Division I. During the months of May and June he was only allowed to recruit new players on-campus. “We had some camps in our arena in June,” he said. He was allowed to attend recruiting scrimmaging camps out of state during two ten-day periods in July. In these recruiting events the players were mainly high school underclassmen, which was problematic for Pasternack, because of their inexperience and young age. “Very few seniors are looking for places to go,” he said.

After he found a player that seemed to be suited for his team, Joe Pasternack had to make sure that player could afford to pay for school, since he would not be able to receive a scholarship. “It was definitely a different type of recruiting,” he said.

Joe Pasternack was able to recruit enough players for his team. The next step was to build a strong team with so many new faces. “We have to slow it down, ” Pasternack said. “It’s a totally new team, because we’re starting from scratch. We’re treating this as a Division I program, because that’s what we are.”