An epochal Final Four is here
Thoughts, stories and notes on the greatest last weekend ever
You don’t want to stare at this Final Four. It is too radiant to hold the gaze. It is the titular artifact in an Indiana Jones film: You think you want it, you desire it desperately, but you’re afraid — or at least you should be afraid; only the bad guys are never afraid — of what it will mean to finally possess it.
Either of Florida-Auburn or Duke-Houston would rank among the greatest halves of a Final Four in NCAA Tournament history. It’s been said plenty, but the scale of the matter really does bear repeating: These are all historically incredible teams.
In most years, one of these four would waltz into April favored to obliterate whatever No. 2 or No. 3 or No. 8 seeds were hapless enough to wander in their path; they would win two games by 14 and 17 points and go down as one of the most dominant champions in college basketball history. You’re lucky to get one of those teams in any season, really. Save UConn last spring and the 2022 Gonzaga team that entered the national title game 31-0 before getting blitzed by Baylor, these four are analytically the closest thing we’ve seen to 2014-15 Kentucky in the past decade:
KenPom NET rating
2025 Duke: +39.63
2025 Houston: +36.42
2025 Florida: +36.06
2025 Auburn: +35.28
2024 UConn: +36.43
2022 Gonzaga: +36.48
2015 Kentucky: +36.91
Yes, the Duke hype is real, which doesn’t really need to be said; the Blue Devils are so good no one in even the most remote and casual regions of the wider sports media ecosystem is even attempting the contrarian hot take. The only team in KenPom’s database that rates out higher is the 1998-99 Duke Blue Devils (+43.01, which is a comical number). It has been almost three decades since any college basketball team was this objectively, mathematically good.
None of which guarantees a procession. After all, just ask … the 1999 Duke Blue Devils. Or Gonzaga. Or Kentucky.
By this metric, none of the opponents at the 1999 Final Four were as good as any of the three that have joined Cooper Flagg & Co. in 2025. (Respectfully, of course. We can already hear the 1999 UConn fans getting mad.) All four No. 1 seeds have mostly batted away the random-number-generator gauntlet of single-elimination basketball the first two weekends usually provide, with minimal letoffs against overachieving but outclassed Cinderellas; all of them had to beat a great season’s worth of top teams to make their way. (It has been easy to forget how much of a chaos creation machine this tournament normally is and how little that constant has held this month.) Having all four here now is almost too monumental to comprehend.
It’s to cringe to say this, but: It makes us nervous just to think about. Saturday’s tip is going to induce anxiety for even the most uninvested neutral. The energy is going to be rattling. You almost want to look away.
Emphasis on almost. The greatest Final Four of all time — which it remains for now, in our minds, until the games begin Saturday night, until whatever reality makes of the fantasy — can not be avoided. Together, we must gaze into the glimmering abyss. We must … um, well, talk about the stuff we find particularly interesting about each team and matchup, which is a slightly less dramatic way of finishing this introduction.
Anyway! Here’s what sticks out:
Houston’s old-fashioned ace in the hole
No, not experience. No, not continuity.
The unusually broad range of reporters who cover Final Fours have always included a disproportionate number of people inclined to be implicitly moralistic about the evils of (first) one-and-done freshmen and (now) the transfer portal — about setting up good vs. bad, old vs. new narratives about team-building into their ledes — and so it was no surprise in San Antonio that Kelvin Sampson was asked multiple times about his relatively traditional roster composition. (One question: “How has that affected your enjoyment of the job?”)
Sampson’s response: “I believe in the portal. You’d better.” Milos Uzan was playing at Oklahoma last season, after all; LJ Cryer came over from Baylor a year before that. It’s not that cut and dry.
Nor is experience any guarantee of success. Coaches love it, but most of all they love talent, and the best rosters — including Duke’s, and every other’s in San Antonio — are both extremely talented and varying degrees of experienced.
No, Houston’s ace in the hole is something else.
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