The numbers don’t lie. Experience, not star recruits, this season’s winning formula.
Kentucky came into this season with the No. 1-ranked freshman class in the country, and the Wildcats are struggling. Among programs with inexperienced players and the most highly touted of incoming recruits, they’re not alone.
So far in this short, strange college basketball season, it’s been seasoned veterans — not young star power — that have propelled the nation’s best teams. That’s to be expected. With an abbreviated preseason and drastically decreased practice time due to COVID-19 restrictions, it’s been more difficult for teams with several new faces, like Kentucky, to jell.
Meanwhile, those teammates already familiar with each other are thriving.
A simple rundown of the top 10 teams in the Associated Press rankings, going into this past weekend’s games, tells the story of just how much experience has mattered in this 2020-21 season.
No. 1 Gonzaga beat Virginia on Saturday to stay undefeated and earn its fourth victory over a top-20 team this season. The Zags do have one of the nation’s biggest-impact recruits — freshman Jalen Suggs, the No. 11 prospect in the final 2020 rankings — but it’s mostly veteran players leading the way. Junior Corey Kispert (22.4 points per game) and sophomore Drew Timme (21.6 ppg) are the team’s leading scorers, and every other player averaging more than 10 minutes per game played college ball last season (besides Suggs).
No. 2 Baylor has nine players averaging more than 15 minutes per game, and there’s only one freshman in that group: L.J. Cryer, who is sixth on the team in points and seventh in minutes played. Cryer was the No. 94 recruit nationally in the 2020 class.
No. 3 Kansas has five players averaging more than six points and 20 minutes per game this season, and all five of them were with the Jayhawks’ program last season. One of those players, Jalen Wilson, is technically a freshman, but he played at the beginning of last season before suffering an injury early and using a redshirt year. Star recruit Bryce Thompson is KU’s top newcomer with 5.4 points in 17.4 minutes per game, both sixth on the team.
No. 4 Iowa lost at Minnesota on Friday night, but the Hawkeyes shouldn’t fall too far in the rankings. They’re led, of course, by star senior Luka Garza, and all eight Iowa players averaging more than 15 minutes per game were part of the program last season. The top true freshman on the team is Keegan Murray, who is eighth in scoring and wasn’t ranked among the top 300 recruits nationally in the 2020 class.
No. 5 Villanova has just one freshman who’s even played in a game this season: Eric Dixon, averaging 3.8 points in 10.0 minutes per game. The top seven players on that team in minutes all had previous experience in college basketball, and six of them were Villanova returnees. (The other is transfer Caleb Daniels, who spent two years at Tulane and practiced with Nova while he sat out last season).
No. 6 Houston is undefeated at 7-0 and all five of its regular starters were in the program last season, a group that includes three seniors, one junior and one sophomore. The Cougars have gotten solid contributions from freshmen — Tramon Mark is third in scoring, and some others have played considerable minutes — but it’s upperclassmen running the show.
No. 7 West Virginia has just two freshmen, and neither of them is averaging more than six minutes per game this season. The top eight players in points and minutes for the Mountaineers were all part of the WVU program last season, and six of those players are seniors and juniors.
No. 8 Tennessee had the nation’s No. 5 recruiting class in 2020 — led by five-star guards Jaden Springer and Keon Johnson — but it’s still mostly veterans leading the way for the Volunteers, who are 6-0 and have some early COVID-related cancellations. UT’s top five players in minutes played were all in college basketball last season — Springer and Johnson are sixth and seventh on that list, respectively — and the Volunteers have nine total players that are seeing at least 9.0 minutes per game. Springer and Johnson are the only freshmen on that list.
No. 9 Wisconsin (8-1) might be the best example of experience-equals-wins in 2020. The Badgers’ top five players in terms of points and minutes played — and the five players that have started every game so far — are all seniors, and all but one of those players has spent his entire college career at Wisconsin. Trevor Anderson, another senior, is playing 15.6 minutes per game off the bench.
No. 10 Texas is the only team ranked in the top 10 nationally that features a top 10 freshman from the 2020 recruiting class. That’s former UK target Greg Brown, who got off to a slow start but is now averaging 12.5 points and a team-high 7.5 rebounds per game. Still, senior Matt Coleman and junior Courtney Ramey are the Longhorns’ top two scorers. And Texas has three seniors and three juniors averaging more than 11 minutes per game. The Longhorns can go 10 or 11 players deep, and every one of those players (except for Brown) was with the program last season.
It’s more of the same further down the rankings. Among the top three scorers on each of the next five teams — Rutgers, Michigan State, Creighton, Missouri and Texas Tech — 13 of those 15 players are seniors or juniors. And the other two are sophomores.
Not a single team in the AP Top 25 is being led in scoring by a freshman, and just two freshmen — Michigan’s Hunter Dickinson and Duke’s DJ Steward — rank second in scoring for a Top 25 team.
Meanwhile, the two leading scorers on Kentucky’s 1-6 team are both freshmen: Brandon Boston (14.0 ppg) and Terrence Clarke (10.7 ppg). (The Cats’ two leading rebounders, Isaiah Jackson and Boston, are also both freshmen). Five of the eight UK players averaging double-digit minutes are freshmen, and — as John Calipari has pointed out several times — no scholarship player who has played a minute for Kentucky this season played a minute for the Cats last season.
And Boston and Clarke, both top-10 national recruits, aren’t alone as star prospects playing for unranked teams. Only 11 players in the final Top 25 of the 2020 composite rankings are playing for ranked teams. Four recruits from that list jumped straight to the G League, and the other 10 (including Boston and Clarke) play for unranked college teams.
In fact, only two of the top 10 players in the final 2020 rankings — Florida State’s Scottie Barnes and Texas’ Greg Brown — are playing for Top 25 squads.
So far, getting elite prospects from that 2020 class isn’t equaling instant success in this unorthodox college basketball season.
This story was originally published December 28, 2020 at 7:45 AM.
