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The player pool at this year’s NCAA tournament Final Four reflects that there’s more than one way to build a title contender.
Duke targeted top-tier freshmen and then filled in holes around them by plucking veteran role players from the portal. Houston has won by developing under-the-radar recruits and transfers with multiple years of remaining eligibility. Auburn and Florida both landed their star players out of the portal and built around them with a mix of transfers and home-grown players.
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Those varying approaches helped that quartet of teams separate themselves over the course of the regular season and back that up during the first two weeks of the NCAA tournament. Now the four No. 1 seeds will meet in the Final Four for the first time since 2008 and only the second time in NCAA tournament history.
The Final Four tips off Saturday at 6:09 p.m. ET in San Antonio with SEC regular-season champ Auburn taking on SEC tournament champ Florida. Then the nightcap pits Duke’s No. 1 ranked offense against Houston’s No. 1 ranked defense. Here’s an attempt to rank the starters on all four teams from 1 to 20:
Duke’s Kon Knueppel, Cooper Flagg and Tyrese Proctor will be playing in the Final Four on Saturday. (Lance King/Getty Images)
(Lance King via Getty Images)
1. Cooper Flagg, G/F, Duke
Flagg is the antidote to the commonly held belief that small-town Maine can’t produce big-time basketball prospects. He was hailed as the best freshman to enter college basketball since Zion Williamson. Then he solidified himself as the No. 1 pick in this year’s NBA Draft over the course of one of the all-time great one-and-done seasons.
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Already known as a versatile defender, a willing passer and an opportunistic scorer, Flagg has leveled up at Duke as a perimeter shooter and a shot creator. The presumptive national player of the year leads Duke in every major statistical category and in some that can’t be measured by a box score.
