The Kansas Jayhawks claimed their sixth NCAA Men’s Basketball National Championship with a record-setting comeback win against the North Carolina Tar Heels last night. The other notable statistic from the game was that freshmen only clocked three minutes of time on the floor for both teams combined. Dan Patrick points to the changing rules for the transfer portal, as well as NIL rules, as the reason why rosters in the NCAA are skewing older than they did a decade ago. Ironically, as the rules continue to reflect modern sentiments, the rosters are returning to an old-school composition.
Dan Patrick: “We’re getting closer to what college basketball used to be when you stayed because once we get through with the one-and-done and you can go right from high school into the pros again, then we’re going to be looking at teams building their rosters differently. You’re going to have these players who are 23, 24 years of age; Remy Martin was at Arizona State. (Brady) Manek was at Oklahoma...we saw a lot of these teams that had players, some players were 24! I think there was a 25-year-old in the tournament! That’s a big difference.”