Why a segment of UK fans has no choice but to root for Duke in the Final Four
It may not be easy to do, but a segment among the Kentucky men’s basketball fandom really has no option other than to root for Duke to prevail in the 2025 men’s NCAA Tournament Final Four.
If you are the kind of fan who lives and dies on recruiting stars, then only a championship claimed by Jon Scheyer’s Blue Devils in San Antonio on Monday night will support your conception of roster building.
Should any of the other three teams still standing in 2025’s men’s March Madness — Auburn, Florida or Houston — cut down the nets, it will refute the idea that the optimal path to the college national championship runs through the “five star” section of the recruiting lists.
Of the 20 players who start for this season’s Final Four teams, there are seven who were three-star recruits coming out of high school (source: 24/7 Sports recruiting database). Five more of the presumptive starters in Saturday’s national semifinals were four-star recruits.
Among this year’s presumed Final Four starters, there are four players who had no recruiting ranking at all when they entered college hoops. There are also four five-star recruits — all of whom play for Duke.
If Duke sticks with the starting lineup it used in its 85-65 win over Alabama in the round of eight, the Blue Devils will begin their Final Four matchup with Houston with five-star freshmen Cooper Flagg, Kon Knueppel and Khaman Maluach as well as junior guard Tyrese Proctor, another five-star recruit.
Only super-senior guard Sion James, a three-star recruit who played his first four seasons for Tulane, is not a five-star prospect among the players in the Duke starting lineup.
Meanwhile, the Blue Devils’ opponent Saturday, Houston, starts three players — guards L.J. Cryer and Milos Uzan and center Joseph Tugler — who were four-star recruits. The other two Cougars starters, forward J’wan Roberts and wing Emanuel Sharp, were three-star recruits.
In the All-SEC section of the Final Four bracket, the starting lineups of Auburn and Florida are even more devoid of recruiting stars than is Houston’s.
Auburn will start one player, wing Miles Kelly, who was a four-star recruit. Bruce Pearl’s Tigers will otherwise start two players who were three-star recruits out of high school, big men Johni Broome and Dylan Cardwell, and two players, guard Denver Jones and wing Chad Baker-Mazara, who had no recruiting stars at all.
Broome, the SEC Player of the Year and one of the top two candidates (with Duke’s Flagg) for national player of the year honors, is of unique interest to hoops fans in the commonwealth. He began his college career and first became a star in our state playing for Preston Spradlin at Morehead State.
A triumph of recruiting projection and development by Spradlin (now the head man at James Madison University) and his staff, Broome was 6-foot-8, 200 pounds, during his senior season at Tampa Catholic High School in Florida. At the time Broome chose Morehead State, his other Division I offers were from Bryant and Jacksonville.
This season, as a super-senior, the now 6-10, 235-pound Broome was the best player in an SEC that will go down in hoops history as, arguably, the strongest men’s college basketball league for one season ever.
The recruiting profile of Florida’s starters matches Auburn’s exactly.
A native of Nigeria who was developed in the NBA Academy Africa, center Rueben Chinyelu was a four-star recruit. Australian power forward Alex Condon, a product of the NBA Global Academy, was a three-star prospect. So was wing Will Richard, who began his college career at Belmont.
Amazingly, the Gators’ star-packed backcourt of Alijah Martin and Walter Clayton Jr. brought exactly no recruiting stars with them to college.
Martin, who began his college career at Florida Atlantic, picked the Owls over offers from Alcorn State, East Tennessee State, Jackson State and McNeese.
Clayton Jr., whose college career was launched with Rick Pitino at Iona, chose the Gaels over East Carolina and Jacksonville.
Obviously, it takes talent to win. But if Auburn, Florida or Houston win the 2025 NCAA championship, it will reinforce the idea that the most valuable players in March Madness combine talent with physical maturity, ample game experience and “system fit” on their particular teams.
That was the kind of team Mark Pope put together on the fly last spring after inheriting a Kentucky program with no returning scholarship players. We’ll never know what the true ceiling was for the 2024-25 Wildcats had UK been able to reach the NCAA tourney with a healthy roster.
As was, a less-than-100 percent Kentucky still managed to advance to the round of 16 this season for the first time since 2019.
Bottom line for the 2025 Final Four: If you are a college hoops fan who only has eyes for five-star prospects, it is only a championship by Duke — its starting lineup stacked with lavishly hyped recruits — that will reaffirm your hoops world view.
