By Monday’s Showdown
Monday night’s National Championship game featured two of the premier universities in college basketball. Kansas finished the year defeating Hubert Davis and the North Carolina Tar Heels 72-69. The second half comeback by the Jayhawks showed once again how valuable one of the simplest terms in sports really is. College basketball and specifically March Madness has always been about experience. The flashy one-and-done’s are always fun, but it’s the juniors and seniors that often come up big in March. This year’s champions featured seven seniors and two key redshirt sophomores. The runner-up Tar Heels team featured just two true freshmen that saw playing time, both off the bench. The fact of the matter is, experience runs college basketball.
Past Champions: Proof in the Madness
The last national champion in college basketball to predominantly feature freshmen was the 2015 Duke Blue Devils. The six national champions that have followed have all found success through the same model. Develop your players. Keep them on campus for multiple years. Give them active and consistent coaching. It is few and far between when a team is able to go the distance with eighteen and nineteen year old kids. The discipline and mental fortitude it takes to come up big in big games is often not there in early years. The great coaches in college basketball have been able to tap into the desires of their young athletes and convince them to stay to further their education both on and off the court. This trend is something that shouldn’t and won’t ever go away, no matter the era.
A Shift in the System
Just half of the teams in this year’s Final Four have a top ten recruiting class for the next winter season. Instead of the usual rush for highly rated prospects to go to schools such as Kentucky, Indiana, and Michigan State, many are choosing to go to schools that give them a high chance of spending multiple years in a great system. The rise of five stars going to Villanova, Virginina, and others like it will continue due to the newly-initiated NIL deal. The other issue, and much more importantly, is the use of the transfer portal. The added years due to the Covid pandemic allowed young athletes to get not just an extra year of eligibility, but an open road to transferring wherever they would like. This freedom gave leeway to players like Oscar Tshiebwe, James Akinjo, Brady Manek, and many others to pursue a National Championship opportunity elsewhere. The rush for players with major college experience will only continue to grow. Just as the rush for freshmen seemed to be in the mid 2010’s. Instead of looking into the top recruiting classes each year, now is the time to look for who is staying at their schools instead. The teams who are able to keep and develop their players will always reign supreme.
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