Brown: COVID seniors have been around forever. NCAA basketball is better because of it

Enjoy this final season of the “COVID seniors” in basketball, just realize that nothing will ever go back to the same.

High school recruits will still, by and large, take a back seat to transfers. Name, image and likeness — and the House v. NCAA settlement that allows for universities to pay players — will still keep older players who are fringe pros in school instead of them leaving to turn professional. And the transfer portal itself won’t make as big of an impact.

All of that is good for college basketball and just might be the legacy that the COVID seniors era leaves behind.

“I don’t know if back to normal is a term we should ever say, because I don’t know what normal is anymore,” Duke coach Jon Scheyer said.

COVID seniors refer to players who took the NCAA up on its offering a fifth year of eligibility to anyone who played during the 2020-21 season. The pandemic wrecked that season with canceled games; players in quarantine; and cardboard cutouts in place of people in the stands.

That extra year tilted the “get old, stay old” mantra coaches like to use like a seesaw with an elephant on one other side. It made it nearly impossible to win big with the one-and-done model favored by former Kentucky coach John Calipari of loading up with the best young talent around.

Instead, COVID seniors including Tristen Newton and Cam Spencer helped UConn win its second straight national championship, with Newton named the Most Outstanding Player in the 2024 Final Four.

COVID seniors such as Dalton Knecht went from a little-known wing at Northern Colorado to SEC Player of the Year at Tennessee and a first-round NBA draft pick.

And COVID seniors including 24-year-old Jack Gohlke, who would have finished his career after playing four years at NCAA Division II Hillsdale College, stayed around long enough to become a giant slayer.

Gohlke knocked down 10 3-pointers and scored 32 points as Oakland eliminated UK in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. After his 15 minutes of fame, he signed with a professional team in Montenegro, while the Cats’ Reed Sheppard and Rob Dillingham went on to be two of the top eight picks overall in June’s NBA draft.

Remember the narrative on what hindered college basketball before the pandemic? That players left programs too soon before fans could really get to know them. COVID seniors made fans joke about how long players such as North Carolina forward Armando Bacot stayed.

NIL helped slow that transition, too, and the settlement allowing schools to pay players from a revenue share of about $22 million will help to keep players longer. Maybe even in the same spot.

“Programs like ours, who really, last year was the first year really had any type of NIL, we’re going to do a better job of retaining our players,” Wake Forest coach Steve Forbes said.

High school recruiting may slightly change, too, in which early commitments are valued. Otherwise, if prep stars wait until the spring they may still get pushed out in favor of coaches pulling a more experienced player from the transfer portal.

“High school recruiting is always going to be different than it’s ever been, just because of the transfer portal now,” Louisville coach Pat Kelsey said.

Kelsey said he always wants to keep high school players “at the core” of U of L’s recruiting, but getting one last year of COVID seniors made the timing right for Kelsey and UK’s Mark Pope to make their new jobs easier. The Cards have eight players, including walk-ons, and the Cats have six, who are only still eligible to play this season thanks to the NCAA’s waiver.

Had the coaching changes at U of L and UK occurred after this season instead of last, it would have been considerably more difficult to field a team that is, on paper, good enough to be ranked in the preseason Associated Press Top 25 Poll, such as the Cats at No. 23, or even receiving votes, like the Cards.

The pandemic owed college basketball for taking away the 2020 NCAA Tournament. Turns out, that fifth year of eligibility for players was a nice parting gift for recalibrating the game.

Reach sports columnist C.L. Brown at clbrown1@gannett.com, follow him on X at @CLBrownHoops and subscribe to his newsletter at profile.courier-journal.com/newsletters/cl-browns-latest to make sure you never miss one of his columns.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: NCAA basketball: COVID seniors rule leaves strong legacy for programs