By John Pullano, Advisory Editor
Freshmen have headlined college basketball the past decade. However, upperclassmen regained their importance in 2021.
University of Kentucky men’s basketball coach John Calipari set the stage for freshmen to dominate after he guided the Wildcats to the 2012 NCAA Division I National Championship game.
Calipari shuffled three freshmen and two sophomores onto the court to face the University of Kansas who started five upperclassmen.
The Wildcats defeated the Jayhawks and completed a near-perfect season, 38-2, with a starting lineup of teenagers. Those freshmen, immediately after winning the championship, decided to enter the National Basketball Association draft.
Calipari had launched a movement of coaching players for one year.
Over the next eight years, every number one pick in the NBA draft would be a freshman, and college coaches all across America, including hall of fame coach of Duke University Mike Krzyzewski, would change how they coached.
“The controversial rule created a divide in strategy among coaches at elite college programs,” said Brittany Renee Mayes, a reporter for the Washington Post.
From 2010 to 2018, freshmen players dominated.
Kentucky and Duke had the most one-and-done players, 38, and combined for two national championships, six appearances in the national semifinals and 42 NCAA tournament game wins.
However, in 2021 Duke and Kentucky are on the outside looking in at qualifying for the NCAA tournament with a combined 22-27 record, signaling the end of freshmen dominance.
“The way things appear to be going, the window may be closing on one-and-done college players,” said University of Pittsburgh coach Jeff Capel III, Duke’s top assistant coach and recruiter under Krzyzewski for years. “It’s very possible that we’ll never see anything like this again.”
Between the last four national championship-winning teams only two freshmen total have started in the championship game.
A freshman has only won one of the past five John R. Wooden Awards for the best player in college basketball and the 2020 All-American team was made up of five upperclassmen.
The trend continued into 2021.
During the NCAA Final Four the teams, the Baylor Bears, UCLA Bruins, Gonzaga Bulldogs and Houston Cougars, started a combined one freshman in either of the final four games.
Gonzaga started top NBA draft hopeful freshman Jalen Suggs, while UCLA played one freshman off of the bench. Baylor and Houston did not play a freshman for more than one minute.
Baylor, the eventual national champion after steamrolling Gonzaga in an 86-70 championship game victory over Monday, started zero freshmen in the title game and instead had three juniors and two seniors.
The 2021 end-of-season awards followed suit with the trend of old men running college basketball. The consensus first-team consisted of two juniors, two seniors and one freshman. Iowa forward and four years senior Luka Garza claimed the Wooden Award and added Naismith College Player of the Year Award as well.
College Basketball had a youth movement in the early 2010s, but upperclassmen claim the hardware at the end of the season.
pullanjj18@bonaventure.edu
