March Madness came early in topsy-turvy college hoops season

HOUSTON (AP)— Everything seemed set for a college basketball season marked bythe familiar — right up until the season, anyway.

There wasNorth Carolina returning four starters from a wild ride to lastyear’s NCAA championship gameto open at No. 1 in thepreseason Associated Press poll. Fellow bluebloods Kentucky,reigning champion Kansas and Duke were near the top. Instead, theycrashed away to bring us here: the season’s final weekend with adecidedly unexpected Final Four.

So whathappened? A bad bout of flawed projection? A shift in the sportitself? March Madness arriving early?

“I thinkobviously between the transfer portal, the extra COVID year andNIL, that created a lot of opportunities, I think, for parity,”Connecticut coach Dan Hurley said this week, “where brand isn’tquite as important when there’s so much inventory in terms ofplayers, and they can move freely. And they’re old and good."

The Huskiesare headliners in Houston, both as a four-time national championand as the team hurtling into the weekendafter dispatching tournament foeswith ruthless efficiency. They’re also a team that was unrankedin preseason, lost six of eight at midseason and was a 4-seed forthe NCAA Tournament ahead of San Diego State (5), Miami (5) andFlorida Atlantic (9).

Of thisquartet, only San Diego State (19th) was ranked inthepreseason AP Top 25. That marksonly the second time since the tournament’s expansion to 64 teamsin 1985 that three teams went from unranked in the preseason toreaching the Final Four, the other coming in 2006 with eventualchampion Florida, LSU and the George Mason team led by currentHurricanes coach Jim Larrañaga.

“I always saywith the NCAA Tournament, if you were to start it off with theexact same brackets and start it today, we’d have four differentteams in the Final Four,” Aztecs coach Brian Dutcher said. “I mean,this is a hard event to win in, and it’s almost a perfect-stormscenario.”

Maybe so, butthis season’s journey is about the headlining teams that didn’tmake it here too.

Take UNC. Itsriveting run last year includedan epic Final Four win againstDukein the first NCAA meeting between the fierce rivalsthat also marked the farewell for retiring Blue Devils Hall of Famecoach Mike Krzyzewski. But this year’s teamlooked weigheddown by expectationsand becamethe first team to go from preseasonNo. 1 to missing the tournament since its 1985 expansion.

Yet it goesfurther.

Three otherpreseason top-10 teams (Kentucky, Creighton and Arkansas) finishedunranked. Two others (Baylor and Duke) spent at least one weekwandering among the “Others Receiving Votes.” Three teams ended upgoing from unranked to the top 10 in the final poll, including Purdue—which became the second No. 1 seedever to lose to a 16-seed— and Marquette joiningUConn.

Bycomparison, only two teams slid from preseason top 10 to unrankedat any point last year during the first full season with thetransfer portal, while one (Arizona) finished in the top 10 afteropening the year unranked.

In all, fourteams held the No. 1 ranking this year, including Houston, Alabamaand Purdue. None gave the whiff of a potential juggernaut like 2021champ Baylor and Gonzaga combining for three losses thatseason.

“Through theseason, No. 1s were losing, rankings were always changing,” SanDiego State senior guard Jared Barnett said Thursday. “So we alwaysfelt like we had a chance.”

Joel BerryII, the Final Four’s Most Outstanding Player in 2017 during UNC’stitle run, is struck by those swings.

He’ll neverforget the last Final Four in Houston: He was on the court in 2016for the Tar Heelswhen Villanova’s Kris Jenkins hit alast-second 3-pointer for the title. That crushing moment wasthe driving force when the Tar Heels returned a year later to claimthe title that had eluded them.

Now, hefigures those redemption arcs are harder to complete with thetransfer portal offering the equivalent of college free agency as alandscape-altering variable.

“Schools likeNorth Carolina, Kansas, Villanova, Duke, these teams can’t get byanymore just bringing in (high school) All-Americans,” said Berry,now an ACC Network analyst. “These other teams have All-Americansthat went to schools and maybe it didn’t work out. Now they’retransferring to other places where they have betteropportunities.”

That was apopular take among players in the locker rooms at Houston’s NRGStadium, too, with several mentioning the portal when asked aboutwhether the season felt more wide open.

“You don’thave to sit out now, so people are changing schools whenever,” saidFlorida Atlantic guard Jalen Gaffney, who transferred from UConn.“So I guess a lot of players, a lot of teams are just evening outat this point.”

And to listento them, it’s both welcome and a sign of what’s ahead.

“High-majordudes could bounce back and go to some of these low- and mid-majorsand really turn a program around,” said UConn guard JoeyCalcaterra, a graduate transfer from San Diego.

“It’s justcool to see the different types of teams who could step up in bigmoments. It’s not always what you expect like in past years.”