So often, the one-and-dones miss out on Final Four

SAN ANTONIO — The Final Four has all that a major sports spectacle needs: pageantry, intense drama, interesting back stories, favorites and underdogs, a massive audience. It has everything — except freshman phenoms.

Look at the field this year — and in most recent seasons — and notice that one-and-done players are generally done-and-gone by the time the last weekend arrives. This year’s foursome again shows that the teams that reach the height of March Madness are the ones that have players who have been in college for a while.

Because the NBA forces every player to wait at least one year after his high school class graduates, elite players make only cameo appearances on campus to showcase and polish their talents. Who can blame them? The whole idea of college is to open doors to the future. If a person can do that in a mere two semesters, good for the elite players who are known as “one-and-dones.”

In pure basketball terms, you would think that assembling a handful of such figures would make you a college powerhouse, at least for one season. You would usually be wrong.

“I remember when Carmelo Anthony did it with Syracuse and Duke did it a few years ago with some young kids,” said Michigan coach John Beilein, whose team will play Loyola of Chicago in the national semifinal Saturday. “I think there’s a process of going through the season that you have to experience one, two, three times before you can really have this type of success under this pressure in March.”

Kansas coach Bill Self, whose team will face Villanova in the other semifinal, acknowledged that freshman-oriented teams won titles for Kentucky and Duke in 2012 and 2015, respectively. “We were a ball that went in and out, in and out and in and out away from having a bunch of one-and-dones here at this tournament at the Final Four,” Self said, referring to the unsuccessful shot by Duke’s Grayson Allen last Sunday that allowed Kansas to prevail in overtime.

Still, he added, “When you have a 22-year-old man competing against an 18- or 19-year-old freshman who hasn’t been through it, and his body hasn’t quite developed yet, I do think there’s some advantage.”

In a way, there is justice in this. The players who hang in there for two, three or four years are rewarded by playing in the Final Four. “Being in school for four years, Michigan has made me into a man,” Michigan’s Muhammad-Ali Abdur-Rahkman said.

The downside is that, year in and year out, college basketball’s premier stars do not play in the biggest events.

For the college game in general, there also is the possibility that more high school standouts will follow the track of Darius Bazley, a 6-8 phenom from Ohio, who Thursday renounced his commitment to enroll at Syracuse and will instead play in the NBA’s developmental G League. NCAA president Mark Emmert said later that day, “I think that’s a choice that ought to be available to him and anyone else.”

Fair enough, but if more players did that, March Madness would be dimmer. The Big East offered a sensible solution last week: a none-or-two choice, in which any player can go pro right out of high school, or he must wait two years to join the NBA.

What’s frustrating is that neither the Big East nor any other conference or school can do a darned thing about it. As Villanova coach Jay Wright said, “The issue is an NBA issue.” Only the NBA can decide when someone can enter. And given the FBI’s investigation into college ball, who is the NCAA to offer advice?

So, expect to see more blue-chippers saying goodbye to college after one year, without having said hello to the Final Four.