It was time. Seven weeks into the NCAA’s permitted eight weeks of summer basketball workouts, an almost completely new-look NKU Norse basketball team was introduced this week.
An NKU team from literally all around the globe that perfectly reflects the new world of college basketball with the lone Northern Kentucky element about this team the NORTHERN KENTUCKY name on the front of the practice jerseys.
“We’re drawing from a big pool now,” NKU coach Darrin Horn said of his widespread roster. He’s not kidding. “Seven of our 13 players are international,” Horn notes.
And six are transfers. Just two are the classic true freshman recruits. Four come from national or basketball prep programs.
None come from Northern Kentucky.
Donovan Rakotonanahary is the veteran here. The native of Madagascar is in his third season as a 6-foot-6 redshirt sophomore wing about to come into his own if this week’s scrimmage is any indication. We say “native of Madagascar” as easily as we say he’s from Ohio. But there’s a big difference.
Donovan is the lone Division I NCAA basketball player from Madagascar, the second-largest island nation in the world (not counting the continents) of more than 32 million people, 250 miles off the coast of East Africa in the Indian Ocean. It’s more than a 25-hour flight to Greater Cincinnati Airport from the capital city and Donovan’s hometown of Antananarivo, with a metropolitan area of more than 3,000,000, by way of Addis Ababa and either Rome and Chicago or Paris and Dallas.
“I’m the only one,” he says with a big grin. But why “Donovan?” Turns out his dad was a track star in Madagascar and named him after the world and Olympic champ in the 100 meters at the time, Donovan Bailey. “They don’t call me Donovan back home,” he says, “It’s Doe-no.” Or you can do what Horn does and call him “Donny.”
“I played for the (U-18) national team,” he says, and was offered a scholarship to Oak Hill Academy in Mouth of Wilson, Va., which is where NKU saw him. “It’s calm here,” he says of his Highland Heights home. “I really like Northern Kentucky.”
But he still keeps his Madagascar ties, having just returned from playing for the national team in Senegal against the likes of Ivory Coast and Congo. And he rooted for Spain in the World Cup, Donovan says.
But not as much as 6-9 redshirt freshman Juanma Ruiz out of Begijar, Spain, after playing three years for Seville’s Real Betis. “I watched every single game,” Juanma says with a big smile at his native country’s win. “I’m really a soccer guy,” the former goalkeeper says.
But he’s a different guy in Year 2 after working at putting weight and strength on his frame, up from 188 pounds when he arrived to 217 today. Still not quite big enough but he’s getting there. “A lot of progress,” he says after a year of concentrating on building himself up, “but I’m still skinny.”
“They saw me online,” he says of the NKU coaches when he was playing in the national championships for Real Betis. He’s a big fan of NKU. “It’s crazy, the city, the school, the facilities.”
Truist Arena “would be an “elite facility” in Spain, Juanma says. A business major, he gives a big shoutout to his teachers. “Every professor has been really helpful.” As for the season ahead, “I think this year we have more chemistry, we’re all together,” compared to last year’s offensively talented team that finished a disappointing 20-14 (10-10 in the Horizon League) while losing a number of starters who will be playing professionally in Europe this season.
As for keeping up with back home, he met his family and former coaches when they came to meet him and spend Christmas in New York City last year.
A pair of veteran 6-8 Aussie transfers change the look of the NKU front line. Noah Pagotto is a 215-pound senior forward from Port Macquarie by way of West Texas A&M and Texas A&M-Commerce where he was a double-figure scorer, not to mention academic star, at his previous stops. Will Shortt is a 230-pound dual-citizen of Australia and New Zealand.
Noah was discovered on an AAU tour of the U.S. as a high schooler and now in his fourth year in America, it’s no longer an adjustment for him. “I like it here, one of my favorite places,” he says. When the folks back home in Port Macquarie ask him where NKU is, he simply says: “east of Chicago.”
His most difficult adjustment to America? “Cafeteria food that first year – it was really bland.”
Getting home to Port Macquarie – a beautiful, historic town on the ocean midway between Sydney and Brisbane on the South Pacific’s Tasmanian Sea – even though it’s a 17-hour flight from Dallas to Sydney — hasn’t been a problem. Noah made it back three weeks in May and three weeks in August last year.
And sounding like so many of the World Cup visitors, he says America has been “very welcoming, I feel very wanted here.” He also likes it that Cincinnati “is a major city.” And that starting point guard, sophomore Ethan Elliott, a native of Perth, Australia, will be the man running things for the Norse.
The most fascinating about America? “Yellow school buses,” Noah says. “We don’t have those in Australia.”
A major in electrical engineering, he’ll get a degree in interdisciplinary studies from NKU with majors in math and engineering and then probably go back to Australia to play pro ball while picking up his electrical engineering credits.
“That’s my plan,” he says.
Shortt brings two countries with him. Born in Sydney, where he grew up, he moved with his family to Auckland, New Zealand as teen. “I’m an Aussie and a Kiwi,” he says.
But he misses the ocean. “Wow, do I,” he says, “thanks for asking. I was a pretty beachy, ocean-dwelling kid.” Although his two years at Niagara didn’t offer much beach time after a first year in the U.S. at Florida’s IMG Academy.
“I have three years of eligibility left,” he says after starting 25 games as a sophomore at Niagara. He said the question he had to answer was whether to transfer or not. “My agent in New Zealand, a dude named Stevie,” handled it, he says, after choosing NKU over Stephen F. Austin in Texas. “It definitely helps to figure out what you want in a program.”
Having been “to both Canada and America already, I’m pretty much used to it,” Will says of the adjustment to living here. A psychology major who says, “I definitely want to keep playing ball after college, whatever’s the best fit for me,” but that’s not a thought right now. “I’m kind of focused on the present.”
And that’s a good situation. “I’m loving it, loving it,” he says of the move to NKU. “This is definitely an upgrade – a bigger school – and I live close to the arena.”
Two international freshmen not here yet, 6-9 forward Patrick Otto Mae from Talinn, Estonia, by way of New Hampshire’s Tilton Prep, and 6-5 guard Gabrielius Jokubauskas, from Vilnius, Lithuania, will arrive later in the summer.
Mae scored 13 points a game with eight rebounds for Tilton Prep while also playing for Estonia’s U20 team in the Eurobasket tournament. Jokubauskas played three seasons for Rytas Vilnius in the second level of pro basketball there averaging 9.2 points and 3.9 rebounds a game last season.
2026-27 Men’s Basketball Roster
(NAME, POS., HT., WT., YEAR, HOMETOWN / HIGH SCHOOL PREVIOUS SCHOOL)
• Willie Foster G 6-2 180 Fr. Lima, Ohio / Lima Senior High
• Ryan Tolliver F 6-7 220 So. Hartford, Conn. / Northwest Catholic HS
• Eric Acker G 6-3 165 Sr. ENYC, N.Y. / Eagle Academy for Young Men La Salle
• Bryce Darbyshire G 6-4 180 R-Jr. Cincinnati, Ohio / Sycamore HS
• Patrick Otto Mäe F 6-9 225 Fr. Talinn, Estonia / Tilton Prep School
• Ethan Elliott G 6-1 190 So. Perth, Australia / Joondalup
• Will Shortt F 6-8 230 Jr. Sydney, Australia / Auckland School Niagara
• Gabrielius Jokubauskas G 6-5 190 Fr. Vilnius, Lithuania / Pilaite /Rytas Vilnius
• BJ Davis-Ray G 6-6 195 So. St. Louis, Mo. / JSerra Catholic HS SMU
• Donovan Rakotonanahary F 6-6 190 R-So. Antavaro, Madagascar / Oak Hill
• Noah Pagotto F 6-8 215 Sr. Port Macquarie, Aus./ Holy Spirit/ East Texas A&M
• Juanma Ruiz F 6-9 200 R-Fr. Begijar, Spain / Real Betis 22
• JJ Apathjang G 6-4 185 R-Fr. Salt Lake City, Utah / Judge Memorial Catholic
Contact Dan Weber at dweber3440@aol.com. Follow him on X @dweber3440.