The initial list of major league teams that expressed interest in Roki Sasaki stretched to 20, his agent, Joel Wolfe of Wasserman Group, said Monday.

Sasaki, the uber-talented young starting pitcher, will join one of those teams at some point in the second half of January and is currently back home in Japan pondering the second phase of his highly scrutinized recruiting process.

Wolfe did not provide many specifics during a conference call with the media, only to state that Sasaki met with “a set few number of teams” over these past few weeks and will make his decision at some point between Jan. 15, when the new international signing period opens, and Jan. 23, when Sasaki’s posting window closes.

Market size, living dynamics and even pedigree won’t be the foremost priority.

“He doesn’t seem to look at it in the typical way that other players do,” Wolfe said. “He has a more long-term, global view of things. I believe Roki is also very interested in the pitching development and how a team is going to help him get better, both in the near future and over the course of his career. He didn’t seem overly concerned about whether a team had Japanese players on their team or not, which, in the past, when I represented Japanese players, that was sometimes an issue. That was never a topic of discussion.”

At 23, Sasaki is already one of the world’s best pitchers, possessing a triple-digit fastball and a devastating splitter. With the Chiba Lotte Marines of Nippon Professional Baseball over the past four seasons, Sasaki posted a 2.10 ERA with 505 strikeouts against just 88 walks in 394⅔ innings. Because he would be classified as an international amateur — meaning he would cost teams their international bonus pools and essentially sign a minor league contract, unable to become a traditional free agent until accruing six years of major league service time — the bidding for his services was expected to be fierce.

Wolfe experienced that at the start of Sasaki’s 45-day posting window on Dec. 15, shortly after sending a letter to every team asking them to send information if they were interested. Within days, recruiting pitches flooded his offices.

“While the quality and the uniqueness varied, it was really something,” Wolfe said. “The level of preparation, the videos — I mean it was like the Roki film festival. There were highly in-depth PowerPoint presentations, short films. Some teams made actual books. They had people that had clearly spent hundreds of hours researching Roki and his personal background, his professional background.”

Various reports have listed the Los Angeles Dodgers, San Diego Padres, Texas Rangers, New York Yankees, New York Mets, Chicago Cubs and San Francisco Giants among the teams that were granted initial meetings. And though there has been a lot of speculation that the bidding for Sasaki could come down to the Dodgers and Padres, Wolfe said it was important to his client that everyone operate “on a level playing field,” prompting specific demands for those initial meetings: that they all last within two hours and take place at Wasserman’s L.A. offices. Sasaki stressed that current players not attend, though some sent their pitches over video.

“I think that the teams that met with him would tell you he was engaged, he asked questions — and he gave every team something that he called a homework assignment, the team that he was going to meet with,” Wolfe said. “And I think it was a great opportunity for the teams to really show what they specialize in. Without giving the actual details of what that assignment was, every team got that very same assignment, and it enabled them to show how they can analyze and communicate information with him and really showed where he was coming from in analyzing and creating his selection criteria in looking at teams.”

Sasaki’s next step has yet to be fully formed. It could involve tacking on a small handful of additional meetings or, more likely whittling his list. Visiting certain cities as part of his final decision-making process is also possible.

At the moment, Wolfe said, Sasaki isn’t expected to pick a team when the new international signing period opens on Jan. 15. Though Wolfe did not note this specifically, utilizing the additional eight days would allow teams to trade for additional international bonus pool money that would essentially act as Sasaki’s signing bonus. International bonus pools for 2025 range from about $5.1 million to $7.5 million, but teams can trade for up to an additional 60%.

Had Sasaki waited two more years to turn 25, he could have instead signed a nine-figure contract similar to what Yoshinobu Yamamoto attained from the Dodgers last offseason. Instead, he followed in the footsteps of Shohei Ohtani, an international amateur when he joined the Los Angeles Angels in December of 2017. Wolfe believes being around Ohtani and Yu Darvish during the World Baseball Classic in 2023 and watching Shota Imanaga dominate with the Cubs as a rookie in 2024 pushed Sasaki to challenge himself sooner.

The sooner he could face the world’s best hitters and utilize major league resources, the better it would make him.

“Roki is by no means a finished product,” Wolfe said. “He knows it, and the teams know it. He’s incredibly talented; we all know that. But he is a guy that wants to be great. He’s not coming here just to be rich or get a huge contract. He wants to be great. He wants to be one of the greatest ever. I see that now, and he’s articulated it. And to be that, he knows he has to challenge himself.”

UConn coach Jim Mora plans to “pursue all avenues” against teams that tamper with Huskies players, warning such teams to “think hard before you tamper with our players.”

Mora posted on social media Monday, hours before star defensive lineman Pryce Yates re-entered the transfer portal. Yates, a three-year starter with 29.5 career tackles for loss, initially entered the portal Dec. 13 before withdrawing Dec. 21 and posting a social media graphic that indicated his intention to return for the 2025 season.

Yates, a redshirt junior from San Antonio, Texas, earned defensive MVP honors Saturday in the Wasabi Fenway Bowl, recording a sack and three tackles for loss in UConn’s 27-14 win against North Carolina. Yates led UConn with 14 tackles for loss in 2023 and had 12.5 career sacks, including 3.5 this season despite being limited to seven games because of injury.

“A simple note to the schools and coaches that have blatantly broken @NCAAFootball rules by tampering with our players in the last 24 hours,” Mora wrote Monday on X. “We do know who you are, we will pursue all avenues to hold you accountable. We are excited that we’ve built a program where coaches have to cheat to beat us and we will protect that program. Think hard before you tamper with our players.”

Mora later wrote in response to a post that he doesn’t know how to fix the tampering issue in college football, but that “we will expose any program and coach that violates” NCAA rules. He added: “I’m 100 percent against grown men cheating the rules and teaching players horrible life lessons.”

Mora guided UConn to a 9-4 record this season, the team’s first winning season since 2010 and its most wins since 2007.

LOS ANGELES — Jeremiah Smith served notice Monday to Oregon‘s defense if it chooses to play single coverage on him or any of the Ohio State receivers.

“I’m just laughing in my head. Why are y’all really playing man-on-man against us, or against me, I should say?” Smith said. “And when we see man [coverage] against any of our receivers, we’re going to take a shot down the field.

“So I’m just letting everybody know right now that if you play man Wednesday, we’re taking a shot.”

Smith, Ohio State’s dynamic freshman receiver, torched Tennessee with six catches for 107 yards and two touchdowns in the Buckeyes’ 42-17 rout of the Vols in the first round of the College Football Playoff on Dec. 21. He was a one-man wrecking crew against Tennessee’s man coverage.

Smith will be a focal point for Oregon in the Rose Bowl Game presented by Prudential when the two teams meet Wednesday in a rematch of their Oct. 12 game, won 32-31 by the Ducks in Eugene.

“They’re going to see a completely different player than the last time,” said Smith, who caught nine passes for 100 yards and a touchdown in the first game against Oregon. “Even [receivers] Coach [Brian] Hartline told me the other day that I’m a whole different player from the first time we played Oregon until now. It started with understanding the game plan and knowing what the defense is trying to do.”

Smith said the entire Ohio State team was “pissed off” about the 13-10 home loss to Michigan to end the regular season and played that way against Tennessee. He said the same goes for the Buckeyes’ first loss, earlier in the season to Oregon.

“We were ready to get that bad taste out of our mouth, let it all loose and dominate Tennessee,” Smith said. “Here’s a chance to do it again.”

It was an “angry” team that took the field against Tennessee, Ohio State quarterback Will Howard said.

“And you could see it,” Howard said. “And I think when we play like that, we’re hard to beat, and we have to keep that same mentality. I think that’s really what the difference was, that anger, [being] pissed off, that chip on our shoulder we played with, and that’s going to be crucial in this game.”

The same goes for getting the ball to Smith, who leads the team in receiving yards (1,037) and touchdown catches (12). He said he arrived on campus weighing 208 pounds but is now up to 225 — and hasn’t lost a step.

Senior cornerback Denzel Burke is amazed every time he sees the 6-foot-3 Smith make an opposing cornerback look helpless.

“He’s one of the best I’ve seen, and I think will be the best to come through here, and I’ve seen a lot of great ones and played with them,” said Burke, reeling off the names of NFL receivers Garrett Wilson, Chris Olave, Marvin Harrison Jr. and Jaxon Smith-Njigba. “You see all those same qualities. He’s calm. His work ethic is crazy, and he performs on game day.

“He’s just different. He’s a dog. You don’t see that in a young 18-year-old coming out of high school.”

Ohio State offensive coordinator Chip Kelly, who has been a head coach at both the collegiate and NFL ranks, said Monday that he has yet to see a receiver just like Smith.

“Not with that combination of size and speed and ability to catch and ability to track the ball,” Kelly said. “There have been some other guys smaller that can do it and guys who were the same size, but they didn’t run and move like him. And then it’s his approach and mindset that truly make him special.

“We have to pull him back sometimes in practice. Some guys with that skill set will be like, ‘Nah, I’ve got this.’ But he never wants to miss anything. He’s going to continue to grow because he wants to.”

Smith said the leaders of the team, the regular and fifth-year seniors, have been the ones to help Ohio State weather the storm this season and get the Buckeyes to this point where they still have a chance to win a national championship despite the close losses to Michigan and Oregon. The loss to the Wolverines was especially hard to stomach. Ohio State was a three-touchdown favorite and has now lost four straight in the rivalry after winning eight in a row.

“Nobody wants to lose to [Michigan]. Everybody knows that, and I know the fans hate it. It’s been going on for the last couple of years, and I know they’re tired of it,” Smith said. “But we were going to move forward, and the leaders on our team were going to make sure that happened. We were going to be ready for whoever we played first [in the playoff], and I can promise you we’ll be ready for this game and everybody else who comes next.”

ESPN’s Pete Thamel contributed to this story.