June 28, 2007

One and done on campus
The first wave of college players affected by NBA's age limit is set to leave school.

By J. BRADY McCOLLOUGH
The Kansas City Star

Just one year ago, the Georgia Tech campus was buzzing. Coach Paul Hewitt had brought in a dream recruiting class, featuring top-10 national talents Thaddeus Young and Javaris Crittenton.

The duo, if not for the NBA's new age limit of 19, would likely have been first-round picks in the 2006 draft. Simple logic said that Young and Crittenton would take the Yellow Jackets back to the cusp of a national championship as they were in 2004.

Hewitt knew the window for Young and Crittenton to live up to those expectations would be narrow. He assumed, given their talents and the lure of the NBA, that one of his stars would leave after one year in Atlanta. At the very least, he figured, the other one would stay for two years.

Turns out, Hewitt's assumptions were wrong. After a disappointing first-round loss to UNLV in the NCAA Tournament, both Young and Crittenton chose the NBA over another year in school. They'll join six other college freshmen expected to go in the first round of tonight's draft, the first with players affected by the age limit.

"It's bittersweet, no doubt," Hewitt says. "But when I look back at it, there's two more millionaires that we're producing."

All over the country, prominent college coaches are coming up with similar ways to view their programs as one-year launching pads for the NBA. Positive spin or not, the reality is clear for college basketball.

"It's a great rule for the NBA," says North Carolina coach Roy Williams, who will lose power forward Brandan Wright after one year, "and they're the ones that made the rule. We have to understand that. This is the world that we live in.

"It's certainly discouraging at times that college basketball can become like a bus stop between high school and the NBA, but we can't compete. We try to do the best we can."

Not all coaches who played the "one-and-done" game this year are singing the Carolina blues, though. Ohio State's draft-eligible freshman trio of Greg Oden, Mike Conley Jr. and Daequan Cook elevated the Buckeye program to the national title game.

"It was a home run for us," says Ohio State top assistant John Groce, speaking on behalf of coach Thad Matta, who is recovering from back surgery. "To have those guys all have a chance to be picked in the first round collectively, it's really exciting for us."

While Ohio State reaped the benefits of its talented freshmen, Washington had one of its worst seasons in recent memory after gambling on a one-year player, center Spencer Hawes. The Huskies, a perennial tournament team, didn't even make the NIT this year. When Hawes announced his intention to stay in the draft earlier this month, the Washington fan base felt slighted.

"A lot of people were disappointed because they got their hopes up thinking that he might stay two years," Washington coach Lorenzo Romar says. "People feel like we are a young team that didn't get to reap the fruit of its hard work. There's an unfinished feeling amongst the fans here."

Speaking of unfinished, how about the college education these freshmen began this past year. Texas Tech coach Bobby Knight, the dean of college coaches, has called the NBA's age limit one of the worst rules he's ever seen because of what he sees as a negative effect on the integrity of college sports.

Knight's fear, and the fear of many faculty members at major universities, is that the one-and-done players will have no incentive to attend class after the first semester. That would make a mockery of the term "student-athlete" and also hurt the individual program's academic standing with the NCAA.

"One wonders how seriously a student who knows he's only going to be there for a year is going to commit himself to his college education," says North Carolina law professor Lissa Broome, the school's faculty athletics committee chair.

The coaches interviewed for this story all spoke highly of their players' academic performance, but all acknowledged that extra efforts were made to make sure their one-year players attended class. Hewitt said he had to speak with one of his freshmen stars -- Hewitt wouldn't say which one -- several times about not looking too far ahead and taking care of his responsibilities while on campus.

Romar says one-year players can be "one foot in, one foot out."

"I just know it's hard when it's just one season away," Romar says, "thinking that, 'Man, I don't want my stock to go down.' It's just hard not to think of it that way."

And that's why Romar and most college coaches would prefer that the NBA and the NBA Players Association would revisit the age limit and make it 20, instead of 19. The NBA originally proposed 20 back in June of 2005 when the collective bargaining agreement was being reached, but the players' union would only compromise at 19.

"I would not be surprised if the players union comes around and does a 20-year limit," Hewitt says. "They're going to find that one year is still not enough time to get the kids ready to enter into that man's world."

Either way, the NBA is benefiting from the new rule. No longer do scouts have to spend time in rickety, old high-school gymnasiums watching the Kevin Durants of the world dunk on kids who go on to play in Division III. The NBA gets a year to watch the high-school talent play against the best competition, a huge advantage for the league. Also, its top draft picks now have a national reputation, which wasn't the case in past years.

So with the rule already paying off for the NBA, it will be up to the college coaches to make the best of it. And that doesn't mean staying away from the country's top talent.

"I think you need a good mix," Williams says. "You want some of those best players period and some of those guys who can be really good down the line."

Romar says that coaches have to be even surer of their recruits' character.

"It's important that, however long they're there, they're there," Romar says. "You'll make a mistake if you go after someone who is going to give you the privilege of coaching them for a year. I think they have to want to be there."

To reach J. Brady McCollough, send e-mail to jmccollough@kcstar.com

J. Brady McCollough - jbrady@coveringsports.com (email) - 816-868-2621 (cell)