What College Basketball’s Talent Drain Might Mean for March Madness
In a season already devoid of star power, injuries and defections have further weakened the talent pool, flattening the crop of contenders for the NCAA tournament championship
What a difference a year can make. This time 12 months ago, even the most casual college basketball fan couldn’t open up Twitter without a Zion Williamson or Ja Morant highlight flooding their timelines. It wasn’t just those two, either. Even teams thought to be boring like national finalists Virginia and Texas Tech each had their own future lottery picks in De’Andre Hunter and Jarrett Culver.
In the absence of superstars, a power vacuum has formed in the 2019-20 season. Seven teams have held the no. 1 ranking in the AP poll thus far. The current holder, Baylor, has won 21 consecutive games but is still fourth in the county by Ken Pomeroy’s metrics and lost an early-season contest to an underwhelming Washington squad. Duke once owned the top spot before falling at home to Stephen F. Austin; the Blue Devils recently needed overtime to come back to beat a North Carolina team with a losing record. And this week, Michigan State became the second preseason no. 1 to ever fall out of the top 25, after losing three in a row.
Thanks to an underwhelming freshman class made weaker by injuries and defections, the failure of typical blue bloods to hit their strides, and widespread parity that’s elevated even the unlikeliest of mid-majors to contenders, this year’s NCAA tournament has the potential to be the most chaotic in decades. College basketball may have flatlined, but the same parity that’s made this campaign lackluster could lead to a wild March.
Where Are the Usual Suspects?
Normally, by mid-February, college basketball’s hierarchy has become more defined. In recent years, there have been the gold-standard teams like Duke and Kentucky, buoyed by top recruiting classes and impact upperclassmen; high-level major conference squads like Michigan State and Virginia that rely on deep rosters and veteran leadership; and a handful of other power-conference teams (and Gonzaga) that have set themselves apart from the rest of the pack.
Last spring, Las Vegas gave nine teams at least 5 percent odds to cut down the nets entering the NCAA tournament, and four teams—Duke (11-5), Gonzaga (5-1), North Carolina (6-1), and Virginia (8-1)—had significantly stronger chances than the rest of the field (Virginia went on to beat Texas Tech in the national championship game). This season, with less than a month remaining before conference tournaments begin, 12 teams have at least 20-1 odds of cutting down the nets, and no team has better than 7-1 odds.
According to KenPom’s adjusted efficiency margin (AdjEM)—which quantifies a team’s quality—Kansas is the best team in the country. But compared to their historical contemporaries at the top, the Jayhawks fall a bit short. No top-ranked team by KenPom’s metrics since Florida in 2006 has finished the season with a lower AdjEM than the Jayhawks. Gonzaga and Duke, which rank second and third in AdjEM this season, would’ve finished eighth and 10th compared to last year’s competition, and you’d have to go back to Duke’s 2006 team to find a no. 1 ranked offense less efficient than this season’s top-ranked Gonzaga unit.
Even looking beyond advanced statistics, this season’s picture is fuzzy. Only four of the AP’s top 10 teams have won a championship this century, and only two—Duke and Louisville (sorry, NCAA)—did so in the 2010s. There are two schools of thought when it comes to building a national championship contender in the one-and-done era. Some programs build with experience, relying on upperclassmen and strong chemistry to power past the competition. Others look to high-flying freshmen to carry them to glory before they leave for the NBA.
In recent years, both paths have resulted in hardware while following a similar pattern: In years when the freshman class is strong, those superstars-to-be win national championships, like Anthony Davis at Kentucky in 2012 or Jahlil Okafor, Justise Winslow, and Tyus Jones at Duke in 2015. Beyond those champs, seasons with strong freshman classes often have a handful of freshman-centric Final Four teams as well. In seasons when the class is weaker, it’s the more experienced teams that shine through, like either of Villanova’s recent title teams or North Carolina in 2017. This season, neither path appears more likely to deliver a winner. No team of veterans has coalesced into a standout contender; neither has any freshman-laden team. The closest analog to this campaign might be 2011 or 2014 when UConn emerged beyond two similarly weak draft classes to cut down the nets behind two guards (Kemba Walker and Shabazz Napier) who caught fire at the perfect time. It takes only six games to win a national championship, and unlike years past, this season’s race is wider than it’s ever been.
Bueller? Bueller? … Bueller?
All but three lottery selections in last summer’s NBA draft—Darius Garland, Jaxson Hayes, and Romeo Langford—and 22 of 30 first-round picks played at least one NCAA tournament game last season. The year before that, 12 of 14 lottery picks made an appearance in the Big Dance, and before that, 11 of 14 did. It made sense; the best players either suited up for the best teams, like Duke or Kansas, or carried their teams into the tournament, as Trae Young did in his lone season at Oklahoma.
Of the 14 players ESPN draft expert Jonathan Givony projected to go in the lottery in his most recent mock draft, only four—Kentucky’s Tyrese Maxey, Arizona’s Nico Mannion, Auburn’s Isaac Okoro, and Dayton’s Obi Toppin—play for teams that could see themselves in “One Shining Moment” montages. Two-thirds of the way through this season, the biggest news from college hoops isn’t about who’s tearing up the hardwood but rather who’s missing. Not only did a few top players turn down the NCAA altogether, but several who opted to play in college landed on teams that aren’t built to challenge for a title.
Before the season, projected top picks LaMelo Ball and RJ Hampton eschewed the traditional prep-to-pro path and took their talents to Australia’s National Basketball League. James Wiseman—long considered one of the brightest stars in his class—turned down offers from Kansas and Kentucky to play for his mentor Penny Hardaway at Memphis, only to leave the team after an NCAA investigation into his recruitment led to a 12-game suspension. And highly touted guards Anthony Edwards (Georgia) and Cole Anthony (North Carolina), despite living up to their scoring prowess, will likely miss the tournament entirely. The same goes for Washington’s Jaden McDaniels and Iowa State’s Tyrese Haliburton, who will miss the rest of the season after fracturing his wrist in a win over Kansas State.
Even at full strength, this season’s draft class lags behind last year’s—a crop of talent my colleague Zach Kram discovered is among the worst in recent memory, despite being buoyed by Williamson and Morant at the top. As for the current class, after the injuries and defections, there’s not much left to see.
Welcome to the Party
The blue bloods’ loss is the mid-majors’ gain. Gonzaga, while not playing in a power conference, has been closer to elite-level mainstay than it has Cinderella for more than a decade now, and looks poised to claim its third no. 1 seed in the past four seasons. But beyond the Bulldogs, there are a handful of party crashers that could make deep runs this March.
San Diego State has been on a tear after missing the Big Dance last year, winning their first 24 games this season en route to a no. 4 ranking. Sixth-ranked Dayton is 21-2, with only overtime losses to no. 3 Kansas and no. 16 Colorado blemishing its record, while 10th-ranked Seton Hall is running away with the Big East regular-season crown. Even power-conference teams like Florida State and Auburn are outpacing traditional league powers in the ACC and SEC. Perhaps the surest sign that things have gone awry is in Pennsylvania: Villanova is the second-highest ranked team from the Keystone State, behind no. 13 Penn State—a team that’s gone dancing only four times since the 1960s, and not at all since 2011.
The absence of a dominant team, or even a handful of them, this season has left the door wide open for a challenger to bully its way to a championship. Only a few games remain in the regular season, and time is running out for the usual suspects to pull ahead. Unless one does, we’re headed for chaos.