South Florida Sun-Sentinel Palm Beach (Sunday)
View from the top
A look at the five best teams entering 2022-23 season
1. North Carolina
One month of inspired play changed everything about how people remember Hubert Davis’ first season at the helm of North Carolina.
It’s also the reason why the Tar Heels open this year as the nation’s No. 1-ranked team.
The Tar Heels went from being a bubble team in February marked by inconsistent play and blowout losses in measuring-stick games to making a rousing run to the NCAA championship game as a No. 8 seed. Four starters return from a team that showed off its bestcase potential, while Davis has restocked a roster that was largely down to relying on an “Iron Five” starting lineup to close last year.
Returning starter RJ Davis even uttered “championship or bust” when discussing his mindset.
“I’m OK with them saying that,” Hubert Davis said. “For me, I don’t look at it that way. For me, one of the many things I loved about last year is I felt last year’s team reached its full potential. And I think everybody would say last year was a successful year. ... That is my hope this year, that this year’s team reaches its full potential.”
Davis, who followed retired Hall of Famer Roy Williams, has never changed his goals of contending for championships. He remained positive while saying he believed in his team amid last year’s ups and downs.
Then came the unexpected win at Duke in the spectacle of a final home game for retiring Blue Devils Hall of Famer Mike Krzyzewski. A wild NCAA second-round overtime win against reigning champion Baylor. A tense Sweet 16 standoff with UCLA and a romp against 15th-seeded tournament darling St. Peter’s to reach a record 21st Final Four.
Once there, the Tar Heels beat the Blue Devils again in an epic third meeting that marked their first NCAA Tournament meeting and closed Krzyzewski’s career. They even went up 16 on Kansas in the title game before losing the lead in a game that ended with Caleb Love’s off-target desperation 3-pointer to force overtime in New Orleans.
Outside-shooting big man Brady Manek is gone. But double-double machine Armando Bacot is back in the post, while Leaky Black returns as the team’s top defender to play alongside the Davis-Love backcourt.
2. Gonzaga
Drew Timme wasn’t ready to grow up, at least not without giving it one more shot at bringing an elusive national title to Gonzaga.
“My heart’s in Spokane,” Timme said. “And I wasn’t ready to be an adult yet, I guess.”
Timme is the leader of a Bulldogs team that should again be among the contenders to lift the championship trophy next April in Houston.
Gonzaga begins the season ranked No. 2 in the preseason AP Top 25. Not being in the top spot in the rankings has been an outlier for the majority of Timme’s career.
The standout forward played his first three seasons on Gonzaga teams that were ranked No. 1 in the country for more weeks than they were ranked below the top. The Zags were No. 1 for 30 weeks over the past three seasons, and were ranked lower for just 26 weeks.
“We really believe if we stay true to who we are, the sky is the limit for us,” Timme said. “We demand a lot of ourselves.”
Timme’s decision to return was a bit of a coup for Gonzaga, especially after Chet Holmgren made the expected decision to enter the NBA after just one season in Spokane.
Timme will be joined by fellow returnees Julian Strawther, Rasir Bolton and Anton Watson to make up the core of this group of Zags.
Young guards Nolan Hickman and Hunter Sallis will take on bigger roles this season. And Gonzaga was active again in the transfer portal, landing Malachi Smith, the Southern Conference player of the year last season after he averaged 19.9 points at Chattanooga.
“This team has a chance to do something special,” Timme added. “It’s going to be a fun, exciting, different team this year, and I’m excited to be part of it.”
Gonzaga went 28-4 last season before losing to Alabama in the NCAA Tournament. After reaching the national title game and losing in 2021, getting bounced in the Sweet Sixteen this year was a disappointing conclusion.
Timme averaged 18 points and nearly seven rebounds per game last season. In addition to his on-court skills, Timme’s fun-loving personality has opened numerous name, image and likeness opportunities.
Timme has said his endorsements in Spokane, which include frequent comedic ads for a local casino, add up to what he might have earned as a second-round NBA draft pick.
3. Houston
After falling in last season’s Elite Eight, the Cougars looked built to stay around as a power program for a long time.
Cougars coach Kelvin Sampson already promised as much.
“We’re not going anywhere,” Sampson said. “We’ll be back.”
With a Final Four appearance the previous season and a rebuilt lineup that nearly got them there again, Sampson’s program has more than revived the memories of the Phi Slama Jama era of Clyde Drexler and Hakeem Olajuwan.
The 50-44 loss to Villanova in in the South Region final will sting for a while, especially given how it played out in a slugfest that left a boisterous “home” crowd disappointed. But there are new expectations and new energy surrounding the program that will be looking to produce national title contenders annually.
Sampson said he wanted his players and fans to respect the past, as glorious as it was under Hall of Fame coach Guy Lewis and the talents of Drexler and Olajuwan, but to live in the present and look to the future. Olajuwan was at the game Saturday.
Houston fought hard to first rekindle those memories before it could build new ones. The university was left in the cold when the old Southwest Conference broke up and historic rivals left for the Big 12 and the Southeastern Conference. A succession of coaches and outdated facilities left it floundering.
The 66-year-old Sampson has changed that. He’s revived the program and his own career. He led Oklahoma to the Final Four in 2002 before taking over at Indiana, where he was fired, then eventually landed in Houston.
The steady rise over eight seasons with Sampson first got the Cougars to the Sweet 16 in 2019, then last season’ s Final Four. But last year’s team lost four starters and Sampson had to rebuild his lineup, only to lose two of this season’s top players to injury.
The Cougars got back to the Elite Eight behind young guard Jamal Shead and transfers Taze Moore, Kyler Edwards and Josh Carlton. They challenged bigger opponents all season with grinding defense and refused to back down from college basketball’s blueblood programs in the NCAA Tournament.
Houston will shed the mid-major label it wears in the AAC when it joins a revamped Big 12 in a few years.
4. Kentucky
Kentucky begins the season with college basketball’s best player and a preseason No. 4 ranking, though it’s unknown when injured Oscar Tshiebwe will be available to help the Wildcats live to up to their lofty billing.
To hear coach John Calipari tell it, the consensus national player of the year isn’t the only one nursing injuries as another season of high expectations commences.
Kentucky (26-8, 14-4 Southeastern Conference last season) is again the early conference media favorite thanks in large part to the return of 6-foot-9 Tsheibwe, who averaged 17.4 points and a nation-leading 15.1 rebounds to sweep all six major awards as the nation’s best player.
The Associated Press player of the year returned for his senior season to resume a NCAA championship quest that was rudely derailed in a first-round NCAA upset by No. 15 seed Saint Peter’s, and to expand his skills for an expected spot in next year’s NBA draft.
Which is why Tshiebwe’s recent “minor” procedure on his knee, as Calipari described it last week, has drawn major attention.
He won’t play in Saturday’s BlueWhite intrasquad scrimmage to benefit eastern Kentucky flood victims, and Calipari won’t say when he’ll return.
“To be honest, I can’t tell you because when I saw him yesterday, I just busted out laughing,” the coach said Wednesday. “Like, you’re supposed to be swelled, you’re supposed to be on crutches for a week. He’s walking around showing, ‘Look, I’m fine, and I’ve got no swelling.’
“Now, you know me well enough, I’ll keep him out longer than he probably should. But he’s pretty resilient.”
The Wildcats have plenty around Tsheibwe to make a deep postseason run.
Also back are guard Sahvir Wheeler (10.1 points, 6.9 assists), and forwards Jacob Toppin (6.2, 3.2 boards), Lance Ware and Daimion Collins. Kentucky added high-scoring former Illinois State guard Antonio Reeves through the transfer portal along with another top-three recruiting class.
Which is why Wheeler and Calipari aren’t concerned with when Tshiebwe returns as much as how much better he might be.
“You guys are going to see,” Wheeler said. “All he wants to do is win. That’s who he is.”
5. Kansas
Kansas had a reputation in some corners of college basketball as being a great regular-season team, one that would dominate the Big 12 and win high-profile non-conference games, only to struggle in the postseason.
The Jayhawks squelched all that talk in April.
Leaning on one of the most experienced lineups in the country, Bill Self guided the Jayhawks to the Final Four in New Orleans, where a historic comeback against North Carolina in the championship game allowed them to raise a banner in Allen Fieldhouse for the first time since 2008.
“We talk about this all the time, you know, it’s much easier to have a great team than a great program,” Self said this week, “because it’s just a snippet of time and things could fall just right for one year, and you want to do it where there’s a foundation of consistency that you can, you know, be in the game. And I think we’ve done that. But still, though, in order to validate the first one you have to get a second one.”
Self paused, smiled, then added: “Then maybe to validate a second, you got to get a third one. I don’t know.”
Whether Self needs another on a resume that has already landed him in the Hall of Fame is up for debate. But regardless, that’s exactly what the fifth-ranked Jayhawks are chasing when they open the season in a couple of weeks as defending champs.
“You don’t remember the firstround losses if you win titles,” Self said, “so we needed to do that to validate the success that we’ve had throughout the course of many, many seasons. ... It certainly felt like a burden was lifted after we won.”
The Jayhawks look a whole lot different, and younger, than they did a year ago.
Gone are veterans Ochai Agbaji and Christian Braun, both of them first-round NBA draft picks, along with space-eating big man David McCormack, ballhandler Remy Martin and veteran sharpshooter Jalen Coleman-Lands.
In their place are a bunch of youngsters surrounding Texas Tech transfer Kevin McCullar Jr. and returning starters Dajuan Harris Jr. and Jalen Wilson, making the Jayhawks one of the youngest teams in the country.