LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- One senior, two juniors, a sophomore and a freshman.
Three seniors, a junior and a sophomore.
Two seniors, a junior and two sophomores.
Three juniors, a sophomore and a freshman.
I'll stop here to explain my topic before anybody screams. I'm running down the experience level in the starting lineups of recent NCAA men's basketball champions.
I'm doing that because it appears John Calipari will take the University of Kentucky into next season without any juniors or seniors who will play substantial roles for the Wildcats.
The record shows that is absolutely not the way to win a national championship.
Over the last three seasons, the record also shows that Calipari has underachieved by missing the tournament with his 9-16 squad in 2021, losing to St. Peter's in 2022 and checking out in the Round of 32 against Kansas State last March.
The breakdown of the teams in my first four paragraphs were from the starting lineups of the last four men's champions, in this order: Connecticut (2023); Kansas (2022), Baylor (2021) and Virginia (2019).
The only freshmen in the 20-player group were Alex Karaban, a forward at UConn and Kihei Clark, the Virginia point guard. Those two were formidable players. But neither was a primary reason the Huskies or Cavaliers celebrated their one shining moment.
If you are scoring at home, the starting lineups from the last four national champions show a collective six seniors, seven juniors, five sophomores and two freshmen.
Unless something changes before November (and it certainly could), Kentucky is tracking toward starting at least three and perhaps four freshmen next season.
Kentucky coach John Calipari shoots a half-court shot during the team's NCAA Tournament shootaround on March 16, 2023 in Greensboro Coliseum.
Granted, they are supremely talented freshmen. In fact, the addition of three-star Jordan Burks on Monday will give Calipari a six-player class that sparkles with four five-star prospects, a four-star and Burks.
But ...
... a check of the starting lineups shows the last men's national championship team that did not start at least three upperclassmen was Mike Krzyzewski's 2015 Duke team. That group featured three freshmen, a sophomore and a senior in the starting group.
(For the record, I consider juniors and seniors, but not sophomores, upperclassmen.)
In fact, the last 10 men's national champions started an average of 3.3 upperclassmen — and 0.7 freshmen.
The last team that won a men's national title without starting a single junior or senior was (you guessed it) Kentucky in 2012.
That was the Anthony Davis team. That group featured a trio of freshmen (Davis, point guard Marquis Teague and forward Michael Kidd-Gilchrist) along with sophomores Doron Lamb and Terrence Jones.
Aaron Bradshaw is a terrific prospect. Nobody should compare him to Anthony Davis. Justin Edwards is the third-highest rated player in the class. But does he have the blue-collar, pitbull makeup of Kidd-Gilchrist? We'll see.
On the the plus side, both guards D.J. Wagner and Robert Dillingham appear to be more talented than Teague, who strangely remains the only point guard to lead the Wildcats to a national title in the Calipari era.
I'll go ahead and say it: Kentucky will be young. This will be hard. They won't be machines.
It's a stubbornly unconventional approach by Calipari. He was the talk of the town when he blazed this path during his first season in Lexington, bringing John Wall, DeMarcus Cousins, Eric Bledsoe and Daniel Orton along for his splashy 35-3 debut.
But even that team stopped short in March, checking out of the NCAA Tournament at the East Regional final in Syracuse when the Wildcats were bewildered by West Virginia's 1-3-1 zone.
Calipari likely did not want this group to be so dependent upon freshmen. He waited and waited and waited for Oscar Tshiebwe, Chris Livingston and Antonio Reeves to decide if they intended to remain Wildcats.
The transfer decisions by Sahvir Wheeler, Daimion Collins, C.J. Fredrick and Lance Ware also cleansed the roster of experience.
Nobody expected Calipari to whiff in the transfer portal in his pursuit of Hunter Dickinson (Michigan to Kansas); Keshad Johnson (San Diego State to Arizona) and Arthur Kaluma (Creighton to Kansas State).
But that is what happened.
Now, after three consecutive seasons of failing to make the Sweet Sixteen, Calipari will likely try to get to the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2019 with a precocious group of freshmen.
That's been his way.
But it hasn't been the way to win a national title for more than a decade.
Copyright 2023 WDRB Media. All Rights Reserved.
