There’s an air of excitement around college basketball this week

On3 imageby:Eric Prisbell11/25/21

EricPrisbell

There is star power galore across the college basketball landscape. There are ultra-talented freshmen such as Chet Holmgren, Paolo Banchero and Emoni Bates, and an unusual number of well-established veterans, including Drew Timme, Kofi Cockburn and Collin Gillespie, back on campus. And there’s a certain legendary coach in Durham, N.C., authoring one last season to remember on the sideline.

The sport finds itself awash in storylines, all of which can be accompanied by an endless supply of superlatives from Dick Vitale, who made an emotional return for Tuesday night’s Gonzaga-UCLA game amid his months-long battle with cancer.

After experiencing a turbulent two seasons amid the pandemic, which included the unprecedented cancellation of the 2020 NCAA tournament and a pseudo-bubble environment for the 2021 tournament, college basketball this week has an air of excitement and newness that’s understandably been lacking in recent years. The buzz is back.

“It just feels bigger, like a bigger deal,” Dan Gavitt, the NCAA’s senior vice president of basketball, told On3 about the early-season matchups and storylines. “The interest is quite high, which is not surprising given that very few people were able to go to games last year. It’s encouraging.”

Pent-up demand can be felt coast to coast. In Spokane, Wash., after a season in which Gonzaga officials filled the famed Kennel with cardboard cutouts of fans, it was a welcomed sight to see the McCarthey Center overflowing with zealous students for the top-five showdown between top-ranked Gonzaga and Texas on November 13. That was an early indication that the fervor surrounding the sport has returned with a surplus this season.

Heightened interest can be seen elsewhere as well. Gavitt said there have been “really good returns” to date on 2022 NCAA tournament ticket sales compared to 2018, ’19 and ’20, even though there was no March Madness that season. 

“We were fortunate to have a season and a tournament last year, which I think went a long way to setting up the potential for this season,” Gavitt said, “because any kind of break would have been problematic on many, many levels. I think that having the extra year of eligibility, and the NIL opportunities, encouraged more student-athletes to come back and continue their college career. And I think that’s resulted in a pretty high level of play and a lot of incredible storylines, starting with Coach K.”

A smorgasbord of enticing Thanksgiving week games rolls on, highlighted by No. 1 Gonzaga facing No. 5 Duke (10:30 p.m. ET, ESPN) Friday night in Las Vegas, which has been the epicenter of college hoops this week. It’s a matchup of two of the top freshmen, Holmgren and Banchero, both of whom are potential top-five NBA lottery picks in June. Banchero already has an NIL deal in which he is the first college basketball player to appear as a character in the popular NBA 2K video game. And Holmgren is a dazzling 7-foot unicorn with guard skills, a smooth 3-point shot and historically good shot-blocking talents. 

The matchup, of course, matches Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski against a West Coast Conference program that has established itself as one of the nation’s preeminent teams. Gonzaga in some ways has reached the status the Duke program had achieved in the late 1980s, when the Blue Devils were perennial national contenders with multiple Final Four runs before they cracked through to win Krzyzewski’s first of five national titles in 1991. 

Gonzaga has won at least 30 games in five consecutive seasons, a remarkable feat considering the state of the program before the Bulldogs first earned national relevance under then-coach Dan Monson with their Elite Eight run in 1999. They now recruit one-and-done stars (Jalen Suggs last season, Holmgren this season) and can reload after losing two All-Americans to the NBA draft without missing a beat.

In recent years amid the one-and-done era, the sport has struggled to attract the attention of the broader sporting audience — beyond college hoops diehards — until after the Super Bowl, if not later in March with the unveiling of the tournament bracket. With the caliber of players in uniform this season, the intriguing storylines and the rich early-season matchups, this regular season is positioned to recapture some of college basketball’s allure from years gone by.

“College basketball needs these games,” Gonzaga coach Mark Few said Tuesday night after the Zags soundly beat UCLA in the rematch of their epic Final Four game. “It doesn’t just have to be in March.”