Villanova winning its second title in three years has closed the 2017-18 college basketball season. It was a controversial and sometimes difficult season, but the quality on the court remained high and there were a lot of great moments to remember.
Here are 10 major takeaways from this college basketball season.
1) Experience still matters
For all the talk about the talented one-and-done freshmen throughout college basketball, none of the upper-tier ones played in the Final Four. In fact, the only high-profile freshman star in San Antonio was Kansas’ Marcus Garrett, and he wasn’t the number one star of the Jayhawk team. Villanova in particular was a veteran team with a lot of experience. And while the Michigan Wolverines were on the young side, their star players were upperclassmen Moe Wagner and Muhammad-Ali Abdur-Rahkman. The teams with the standout freshmen — like Duke and Kentucky — were watching at home, and that’s been true for the last several years as well.
2) The Golden State Warriors are influencing college basketball
It took a little bit of time, but the Warriors’ influence has spread to the college ranks. All you have to look at for proof of that is Villanova taking 40 threes — and making 18 of them — in the national semifinal against Kansas. Yes, teams still use the post, but some of the more successful units are increasing their emphasis on three-point shooting. Just look at how Dan D’Antoni won a tournament game with a 13th-seeded Marshall team and ask yourself if the approach sounds familiar.
3) The gap between the haves and have-nots is narrowing…
There’s a lot of talent at schools you haven’t heard of, and that became increasingly clear in this tournament. There are a lot of talented basketball players and only so many scholarships the power schools can offer up. Plus, one-and-dones mean that, in some cases, it’s the smaller-conference schools with three or four years of experience under their belts that have the advantage in that department. That all means we got a lot of upsets and Cinderellas. Just look at Loyola-Chicago’s Final Four run, or UMBC’s 16-over-1 upset of Virginia. They don’t even have to be small schools; Nevada was outstanding on their run to the Sweet 16, knocking out second-seeded Cincinnati along the way. Major upsets may never be the norm, but there’s some real talent at the lower-seeded schools, and that won’t change.
4) …but mid-majors still have work to do to get at-large bids
Mid-majors are in a tough spot. Power teams are hesitant to play them in a non-conference setting because they don’t stand to gain much. Their fellow mid-majors could play them, but in the end, the win doesn’t look good enough and a loss would just be worse. Take Middle Tennessee State, who lost in their conference tournament and simply couldn’t overcome their lack of a resume to get into the tournament. Cinderellas are there to be found — it’s just hard for them to get into the tournament sometimes.
5) ‘No great teams’ was a myth
It was a mantra we heard all season long — it was hard to say who the NCAA champion would be due to the belief that there were no obviously great teams. It turns out we were missing the obvious. Villanova won the tournament by outscoring their opponents by an average of 17.7 points per game. They didn’t have a cakewalk there either — they saw off an Alabama team with a future NBA player in Collin Sexton, talented West Virginia and Texas Tech teams, and a No. 1 seed in Kansas. It was one of the more impressive tournament runs ever (as this stat proves), and they certainly qualify as a great team.
6) Defense doesn’t necessarily win championships
Nine of the top ten teams in KenPom.com’s defensive efficiency rating made the NCAA Tournament. Just four of them made it to the second weekend. The top two were Virginia and Cincinnati, who lost in the first and second round, respectively. Only Duke, Michigan, and Texas Tech made the Elite Eight, and the Wolverines were the only one of those teams to win in that round.
That’s not to say defense doesn’t matter — Villanova was 11th, no slouches in their own right. But the Wildcats also boasted an elite offense. That grind-it-out defensive style just isn’t working in today’s game unless it’s coupled with a strong offense.
7) Going small may be the way forward for some teams
We’re back to the Warriors again. Their undersized “death lineup” has become a fad in the NBA, and it may be moving to the college ranks as well. Loyola-Chicago played very well with a smaller lineup, and North Carolina became increasingly reliant on a similar style that helped them stabilize their season late on. Villanova had quality big men, but they too were guard-oriented first. The future is here — expect to see the strategy employed more often in the years to come.
8) An NBA-ready freshman can make you an instant title contender
One-and-done players may not have featured heavily in the Final Four, but they certainly did in the story of the season. Look at Duke’s group of freshmen, led by Marvin Bagley, who was basically an NBA player at the college level. Kentucky’s class of talented freshmen lost in a surprise to Kansas State, but they seemed to come of age at the right time and push them further than some expected them to go. Even non-title contenders were pushed quite far by individual freshmen — Alabama had Collin Sexton, while Oklahoma had Trae Young.
9) A new generation of coaches are coming of age
Mike Krzyzewski is 71. Jim Boeheim is 73. Roy Williams is 67. Three of the top coaches in college basketball probably won’t still be coaching within the next decade, and several others a bit younger — Tom Izzo, Bob Huggins, and John Beilein among them — are also over 60 and simply won’t be around forever.
Room will open up for a new generation of coaches, and some already look impressive. Texas Tech’s Chris Beard has done a very impressive turnaround job. Loyola-Chicago’s Porter Moser put himself firmly on the map with his Final Four run. Ohio State’s Chris Holtmann did a great job after taking over at a very late stage of the offseason. These and many other coaches are looking like the future of the game.
10) Yeah, players are already getting paid
An uncomfortable truth reared its ugly head this season — there’s a lot of money flying around college basketball, and some of it illegally. The season opened with an FBI investigation that ultimately helped claim the job of one of the sport’s iconic coaches, and it ended with a number of allegations against current and former top players. The truth is there’s a lot of shady dealings going on in the sport, and this may be remembered as the year when that truth came to light.
