College basketball is back! Here are the five most important underlying storylines to follow throughout the upcoming 2023-24 season.
The start of a new NCAA basketball season is finally here, ready to author another chapter in the sport’s storybook.
We know a lot will happen over the next five months. We know there will be upsets. There will be top-ranked teams that stumble and prove to be overrated. There will be teams we aren’t talking about now that prove to be legitimate Final Four contenders. The fun part about every season is not knowing exactly who those teams will be.
But every season also has its own unique variations that make it all the more compelling. Every team and every program has its own story to tell, but what underlying trends will be the most pressing and important topics throughout 2023-24? Here are the five we’re most excited to follow.
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Transfers vs. freshmen
I wrote a column about this way back in May, but this season is setting up to be the ultimate battleground between programs that build rosters through the transfer portal and those that build and develop through traditional high school recruiting.
The new transfer rules have turned the offseason into a spectacle rivaling NBA free agency. The NIL landscape and the extra eligibility from COVID have also played a part here. There’s a feeling that you have to be involved in the portal in some capacity to keep up nowadays. Some programs are taking that to the extreme.
North Carolina used the transfer portal more than ever before to revamp one of last year’s most disappointing rosters. Their four additions are the most in program history, headlined by former Stanford standout Harrison Ingram. West Virginia and Florida went the transfer-heavy route in hopes of returning to the NCAA Tournament. Even Kansas retooled its roster in the portal. Now, the Jayhawks will feature Michigan standout Hunter Dickinson and Towson sharpshooter Nick Timberlake.
Meanwhile, a handful of other high-profile programs have gone the other way and are relying heavily on freshmen. Duke brought in four five-star prospects to build around its existing core of Kyle Filipowski, Tyrese Proctor and Jeremy Roach. Kentucky landed the nation’s top recruiting class (again) and will be relying on six freshmen to play significant minutes. Michigan State and UConn also rounded out their respective rosters with top-five freshman classes.
The transfer portal is now a permanent part of the sport. It is something that can be a useful tool, and I still think a lot of coaches are figuring out the best way to utilize it with their programs. This season could serve as a good indicator of where that line is.
March leftovers
The 2023 NCAA Tournament changed the direction of so many programs. Now, ahead of the new season, last year’s Big Dance still has ramifications for a handful of teams.
The Purdue storyline is obvious, right? All eyes are watching for how the Boilermakers respond after losing to Fairleigh Dickinson. This is largely the same group that won both the Big Ten regular season and tournament titles. Purdue still has the most dominant player in the nation, too, in Zach Edey. But there’s also the added pressure of the only other team to lose to a No. 16 seed — Virginia — bouncing back to win the national championship the very next year. Can Matt Painter and Purdue write a similar fairy tale?
It’ll also be interesting to see how FAU and San Diego State respond to program-changing runs to the Final Four. The Owls return virtually everyone from a 35-win team and will now play in the American, where they project to have a much tougher regular season than in the C-USA. The Aztecs, meanwhile, lost some key pieces. Still, they return their core and feel the program can maintain its level of play. Expectations may be the highest they’ve ever been at both places.
Meanwhile, no one’s talking all that much about the returning national champions at UConn. Make no mistake: There’s a lot on the line for them, too.
Dan Hurley had been building the Huskies and they had their breakout last season. UConn isn’t in the tier of 2024 title favorites (yet) due to some unknowns about their roster. The Huskies will be relying on a lot of youth, but it’s important for the program to maintain a high level of play. This is the season when UConn can re-establish itself as a consistent threat on the national level, which is where the program was a decade ago and wants to be again.
Return of the bigs
I mentioned Zach Edey previously, and he is the headliner of a group of star big men who have dominated college basketball for what feels like a Perry Ellis-level tenure. Recent changes in the NBA game have devalued the skill set of traditional big men. Coupling that with the allure of NIL compensation, many star bigs are choosing to stay in college longer rather than going to play pro ball.
Edey, Dickinson and North Carolina’s Armando Bacot have all been All-Americans previously in their careers. Filipowski, Ryan Kalkbrenner and Oumar Ballo are returning first-team all-conference performers, and all were preseason All-American selections by The Almanac. Even the nation’s biggest breakout candidate, UConn’s Donovan Clingan, is a traditional back-to-the-basket big.
These are the known commodities and stars who will, by and large, dictate how the 2023-24 season goes. Each of the top five players in The Almanac’s Top 100 Player Rankings (and six of the top seven) are big men. We talk all the time about how crucial guard play is in college basketball, but teams may need a dominant big man to win at the highest level this season.
Critical seasons for big-name coaches
A handful of the country’s most notable coaches are facing very crucial seasons that could determine the future of their respective tenures.
Let’s start with Hubert Davis at North Carolina. As noted above, last year was an extreme disappointment for the Tar Heels — and a lot of it fell on the coaching. From the end of Year 1 in Chapel Hill to the end of Year 2, the perception of Davis changed. After his first season, he was the man who immediately took UNC to the national title game and had the program trending in the right direction. Now, it looks more like he had a team that got hot for a month and has been dismal other than that. Another down season and Davis’ seat will get hot in Chapel Hill.
The same can be said for Juwan Howard at Michigan. The on-court results have been regressing since making the Elite Eight in 2021. Recruiting has not been on an upward trajectory, either. Similarly, Arizona State is another program that has been going in the wrong direction in recent years under Bobby Hurley. Elsewhere in the Pac-12, Jerod Haase may be on an even hotter seat at Stanford than Hurley is in Tempe.
But the hottest seat in the country belongs to Kenny Payne at Louisville. The Cardinals’ four wins last season were the fewest in program history — and a loss to Division II Kentucky Wesleyan in the preseason certainly doesn’t show that things are going back in the right direction.
The bottom line: There is an opportunity for a lot of high profile jobs to open up after the season. This will be very interesting to monitor moving forward.
Potential season of firsts
We saw a lot of firsts across the country last season. FAU, Miami and San Diego State all made their first Final Four appearances, it was the first-ever Final Four with two No. 5 seeds. In addition, UNC’s fall out of the Top 25 was the fastest that a preseason No. 1 team has ever fallen out of the rankings.
This season has the potential to push the envelope once again. Five of the top 11 teams in the preseason AP Top 25 have never won a national championship. Two of the top nine — Creighton and Tennessee — are looking for their first Final Four appearances in school history.
We’re also getting our first look at the effects of conference realignment. Can FAU maintain a strong record in the American, or will Memphis emerge as the clear class of the league following Houston’s departure? And speaking of the Cougars, how will Kelvin Sampson & Co. hold up to the rigors of Big 12 play? What about other newcomer teams like BYU and Cincinnati?
There’s also a unique mix of bluebloods and “new bloods” that will battle at the top of the sport, which should provide a fun balance to the season. The usual suspects like Duke, Kansas and Michigan State have targets on their backs, but so do teams like Marquette, Creighton, Tennessee and Miami. How will those programs react to the brighter spotlight?
This dynamic, as well as the others discussed above, will be fascinating to follow in 2023-24.