The player pool at this year’s NCAA tournament Final Four reflects that there’s more than one way to build a title contender.
Duke targeted top-tier freshmen and then filled in holes around them by plucking veteran role players from the portal. Houston has won by developing under-the-radar recruits and transfers with multiple years of remaining eligibility. Auburn and Florida both landed their star players out of the portal and built around them with a mix of transfers and home-grown players.
Those varying approaches helped that quartet of teams separate themselves over the course of the regular season and back that up during the first two weeks of the NCAA tournament.