Some transfers, recruits and NBA hopefuls have yet to decide where they will play basketball in the fall, but we’ve got enough information to react.
Enough to declare men’s basketball portal winners and losers and assess best portal fits. Enough to look at the SEC and ACC and size up how they might follow up historical greatness and humbling futility. Enough to hope incoming Vanderbilt recruit Chandler Bing is ready for some of the goofy questions coming his way and can pivot to basketball.
More than enough to ask these 10 questions about the upcoming season.
Did Indiana finally get it right with Darian DeVries?
As Hoosiers fans were reminded plenty in March and April, their school actually has hired a great coach since Bob Knight, but Kelvin Sampson nuked his own tenure (and no, history revisionists, the lack of rules enforcement today does not mean the school should have looked the other way then — that wasn’t feasible and anyone who paid any attention knows it). As Hoosiers fans don’t want to acknowledge, Tom Crean’s success level would have been embraced over the past decade. As they don’t want to believe, it’s been a slow ride of more than 30 years from the top to the middle of the Big Ten as a program.
As they continue to make possible — with their passion and willingness to pack Assembly Hall — relevance is a competent, complete coach away. DeVries was a good hire. That does not distinguish him from some of his failed predecessors, and rosters are too year to year to make comfortable tenure declarations. But his track record, experience in this iteration of the game and early returns — four of our top 84 players in the portal, including star son Tucker, to offset key losses — are encouraging.
Tom Izzo’s Michigan State, rival Matt Painter’s Purdue, IU grad Dusty May’s Michigan and others stand in the way of a Hoosiers ascent. But the support and resources are there. So is this assessment from Painter, given after the announcement that Mike Woodson was done at IU: “They jump on and off things here way too much. Support your coach, man. Support your players. Don’t tweet negative things about them. Like, be supportive. See how that works for you. They build them up and they overdo things. Quit overdoing (stuff). Just accurately talk about what is actually happening. Don’t get recruits and say they are like Michael Jordan or Scottie Pippen. They aren’t Michael Jordan or Scottie Pippen. They’re good college players.”
That actually makes sense. And was taken well in Bloomington, I’m sure.
Matt Painter with a very candid answer when asked about Mike Woodson’s impending departure, what IU should be looking for in a new head coach. #iubb pic.twitter.com/uOgnVGlv7g
— Jared Kelly (@Jared_Kelly7) February 23, 2025
Will Cinderella resurface?
That’s a question that can be answered only by the random killer of dreams known as the NCAA Tournament, but people will be fretting about it until then, considering all the chalk we’ve seen since the Florida Atlantic/San Diego State Final Four of 2023. Yes, we had great matchups and ratings last year, but no one (with a soul) wants an annual power conference invitational.
Two years is not a trend. Four years of money at the top luring players from mid-majors to high majors suggests it will become one. But remember, plenty go the other way as well, stripping top programs of depth and giving smaller programs opportunity. Just 106 players declared for the draft, the fewest in 10 years and a whopping 257 fewer than four years ago — when the primary definition of “NIL” in sports was going scoreless in soccer.
“Now, talent is spread out more than ever,” ESPN’s Jay Bilas said this week in an X post. “Cinderella is not dead.”
Bilas is bullish, maybe a bit too bullish, on the last two tourneys representing random blips. But an open mind is appropriate here.
Does anyone come to mind as a 2025-26 candidate?
Glad you asked, and you came to the right place, considering my correct preseason forecasts of UMBC in 2017-18, Saint Peter’s in 2021-22 and Fairleigh Dickinson in 2022-23, on a Substack that no longer exists and can’t be searched on the internet but can be confirmed by my mother. But really, who knows? One team that intrigues me: UC Santa Barbara, coming off a couple of slightly down years under Joe Pasternack, now boasting the No. 3 mid-major transfer class per EvanMiya.com.
That includes former UConn (and Saint Mary’s) point guard Aidan Mahaney and former Baylor (and Utah) guard Miro Little. To Bilas’ point, there’s some talent going the other way and trying to find a better fit. Maybe the Gauchos will regain their 27-8 form of 2022-23, when they won the Big West and lost in a 3-14 game to Baylor.
Are we finally going to fix the endless reviews and interminable endings to games?
I think so. Let’s not jinx it. But the NCAA Rules Committee meets next week, and this issue is central to the discussion. As we’ve written, coaches hung up on “getting everything right” would be the primary roadblocks, but there’s optimism that the prevailing sentiment is to figure this out — fan frustration is understandably high, and right now we can watch the NBA playoffs and see how the challenge system has streamlined that product.
The author of that rule change, Garth Glissman, is an SEC associate commissioner and driving force behind the effort to pass a similar rule for men’s college hoops. If the Rules Committee goes for it, the Playing Rules Oversight Panel would review it for final approval.
Are we headed toward angst on Tobacco Road?
Obviously, Hubert Davis is embarking on what could be his last season at North Carolina. The North Carolina football coach is doing a good job right now of producing enough drama and negative attention to supply several athletic departments. But at some point, the focus will shift back to the coach of the school’s most important sport, and Davis needs a strong, bubble-talk-free, second-weekend kind of season.
Hubert Davis is under pressure to win big in 2025-26. (Andy Lyons / Getty Images)
What about the rival coach, though? Does this seem silly? There’s no comparison, but, well, Duke is Duke. Jon Scheyer has taken steps forward each season. He’s 89-22 with an Elite Eight and Final Four in just three of them. He’s proving a strong choice as Mike Krzyzewski’s replacement. Also, he had the team to win it all last season and didn’t. And he’s probably taking a bit of a step backward with his next one.
Understand, the only angst we’re talking about is fan angst, but that matters more now than it did back when Krzyzewski started 38-47 and needed a fourth season to make an NCAA Tournament, an eighth to make a Final Four and an 11th to win his first national title. These are fans that haven’t suffered more than a decade between titles since that first one in 1991.
It’s been 10 years. And fair or not, the longer Scheyer goes without one, the more you’ll hear sentences that start, “If he couldn’t win one with Cooper Flagg … ”
Who is next season’s Florida?
If there is one, that is, a team that starts the season largely under the radar — The Athletic’s CJ Moore had the Gators No. 21 going into last season — and ends up being a dominant team for most of the season and a convincing champion.
Let’s visit the same range in Moore’s way-too-early rankings for next season and find another team with a young, rising coach, a team with a guard who was excellent last season and could be one of the game’s big stars next season, a team with a loaded frontcourt. I give you another SEC team. I give you Kentucky. Kentucky can be under the radar, right?
At No. 18 in those rankings, the Wildcats have since added Jayden Quaintance inside and Florida’s own Denzel Aberdeen to the perimeter group. If Otega Oweh doesn’t stay in the NBA Draft, he’s my SEC player of the year and an All-American. And this could be a dominant team and more.
Who is next season’s Kansas?
If there is one, that is, a team that starts the season on the short list of top title contenders and proves to be nothing of the sort. How about Moore’s No. 1 (and a team in everyone’s top five, at least), Purdue? Braden Smith is great. Fletcher Loyer is embarking on his fourth season of hitting shots off Smith passes. Trey Kaufman-Renn is a scoring force. But I don’t love the loss of Cam Heide to Texas. And I need to see evidence that Daniel Jacobsen is ready to fix the glaring weakness that is to Purdue what outside shooting was to Kansas last season — interior defense.
Is Will Wade a great coach?
Some would say to check his record (246-105 in 11 seasons with four programs) and ask a smarter question. There’s no doubt he’s very good. And refreshingly honest and outspoken. And ruthlessly effective at compiling talent. But if he’s truly great, he will soon get NC State to a level of consistent success like it hasn’t had since Jim Valvano. For all the fuss over what Wade did in five seasons at LSU, he got to the second weekend once.
What happens first: Dan Hurley’s third title, Rick Barnes’ second Final Four or Kelvin Sampson’s first title?
Is this the weirdest question of the bunch? Yes. But I think any of the three could happen this season. As many as two of the three, in fact. Alex Karaban is back for UConn — thank you, name, image and likeness — and that increases the potential for Hurley to get right back to talking trash because he’s winning every night. All the ring reminding and anger displacing because his team wasn’t very good might have been fun for his rivals, but it got a little hard to watch.
Barnes loses the heart and soul of his program, Zakai Zeigler, and a guy in Jahmai Mashack who would be considered the departing heart and soul in any year other than the one in which Zeigler is also departing. These are huge losses. But this is going to be another very talented, likely deeper, team. Nate Ament, the highest-ranked recruit in modern program history, might be a freshman, but he also might be an instant shot-making star.
As for Sampson, he appears to have the goods to get it done. Which means he should be looking to repeat. Sorry, I know it hasn’t even been a month yet, but man, what a crusher for the Coogs.
Will the Big Ten win a national championship for the first time in 26 years?
This is no longer a serious question. It’s a running joke. Maybe that will change when football pushes Big Ten membership into the 20s. Duke basketball, fighting to restore the tradition established by Isiah Thomas, Magic Johnson and John Havlicek. There’s a stirring thought.
(Top photo of Darian DeVries: Rich Janzaruk / USA Today Network via Imagn Images)
