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At the beginning of the college basketball season, everyone was hailing it as the year of the freshmen. The revolution began with Kevin Durant and Greg Oden a year ago, and now it's become a full-scale takeover.
There was Derrick Rose, Kevin Love, O.J. Mayo, Michael Beasley and Jerryd Bayless, just to name a few. The NBA age-limit rule, put into effect in 2006, made it illegal for NBA teams to draft players unless they are one year removed from their senior year of high school. The rule made these wunderkind AAU players, who would ordinarily jump straight to the pros, take at least a one-year detour to a college campus.
These 18- and 19-year-olds saw the promise of instant gratification in the form of a national championship.
Looking back on Kansas's third-ever national title, we all should have known better.
The same scenario played out just last year. Oden, Mike Conley and the rest of Thad Matta's mega recruiting class at Ohio State fizzled against a veteran-laden Florida squad in the title game. Carmelo Anthony and Syracuse aside, this is what usually happens.
It was not hard to notice how calm and collected the Jayhawks - whose rotation didn't include a one-stop freshman - were down the stretch, despite being down nine with just over two minutes remaining.
There was senior Russell Robinson and his game-saving steal off an inbounds pass that set up a Sherron Collins 3-pointer. And then, of course, there was the shot of the tournament (sorry, Western Kentucky guy from the first round) by junior Mario Chalmers to cap off the Jayhawks' late-game heroics and send the game into overtime.
On the other end of the court was the image of Rose. The freshman missed a crucial free throw in regulation and faded once overtime began.
To be fair, Memphis had its share of veterans. Many of its key contributors, like Chris Douglas-Roberts and Joey Dorsey, were seniors with a lot of late-game experience under their belts.
But the Tigers can't argue they didn't put most of their eggs into the basket of an uber-talented freshman point guard who will likely be a top-two pick in the NBA Draft. And like most 19-year-olds under heavy pressure, Rose wilted.
Though the NCAA's talent pool has expanded, experience still trumps all in crunch time.
Players like Rose, Beasley and Mayo will likely have better NBA careers than someone like Darrell Arthur or Brandon Rush. But by committing themselves to the one-and-done theory that has seemingly "transformed" college basketball, they also won't win a national championship.
The argument goes that the NCAA Tournament is the place where upsets are plentiful and the unexpected is the norm. Really, though, tournament success stems from being there before.
The seniors on this Kansas team experienced first-round fizzles (losses to Bucknell in 2005 and Bradley in 2006) and then fell to a more experienced UCLA squad in the Elite 8 last year.
Guys like Rush and Chalmers took their lumps in years past and ended up at the top of the college basketball world.
Don't get me wrong: I love this new era of one-and-done college basketball. It's just that Kansas proved once again that when it comes to championships, age and experience still matter.