Florida Basketball’s Continuity Stands Out in NIL Era

College basketball has changed so much, especially when you're talking about top 25 teams in the Power 4 conferences. Because most teams are fielding brand new teams this year. There's no continuity. There's nobody coming back in the NIL era. Uh I mean, just look at what's going on with Houston and Ralph Sampson right now. Guy's got two guys from last year's team coming back. Uh he basically lost everybody. And, oh, yeah, by the way, I can promise you no matter right. who he ends up bringing in, most people have probably never heard of any of the people he brought in, but I bet you they can play defense. Uh But the idea that the University of Florida and Todd Golden got 11 guys from the team a year ago to come back, 11 guys. a And that's already your heads and tails above. Any other program right now, I mean, Duke is second God. because Duke does what Duke, they're in that category right now, but most of the other teams that we've, you know, they're all new teams. I mean, for the most part, early on in the college basketball season is totally treacherous, Greg, because you have no idea how these guys are going to gel at all. Coaches are spending right through the holiday until we get into conference play. They're spending all of this time trying to figure out who plays, what combination. That never used to be in college basketball. Never. You would get guys, only the best of the best would be one and done and then guard. Everybody else would return. It's just, it's impossible early in the season to find any team like Florida that has 11 returning players from a year ago. Yeah. You know, usually what I do at the start of every college basketball season is I check out the Ken Palm rankings to see sort of where it is on that website. Cause to me, that was the one through the years that I could kind of count on. But look to your point, the Gators, you know, really, if you just think about the success that they've had last three or four years under Todd Golden, they're just getting a lot of kids to stay and it's, you know, forcing some other kids potentially to take a look at wanting to transfer to UF. I guess whatever they have going on there is seemingly working. Never quite thought that we would get here where the Gators are a basketball school, but with the success that they've had, it's kind of hard to deny. And yeah, they're still bringing back a couple of kids from two years ago. So yeah, look, we'll see how they do. But in the end, it is extremely early. It is the first weekend. November, and I did see an international game, I think, today. Maybe this morning, did I see a game being played somewhere overseas or something like that? I didn't realize that college basketball had that, too. Villanova and Notre Dame, you had to kick it off last night. Yes. Oh, that's horrible. And then you have all... We've had teams overnight that have been playing. High Point was playing it, you know, just after midnight last night. It just... Once college basketball gets rolling... It's out of control. Yeah, 3 a.m. we had games going on. Wow. Sorry I missed that one. That's crazy. Yeah, no, no, I'm shocked you didn't get the DVR out for that there. I thought for sure Tebow would have recorded that for you there, Mitch. Tebow. No, it is a totally different ballgame these days. And listen, it would probably do you a lot better, those of you that are He's still probably very focused on the NFL or college football, rightly so. But a lot of times when it comes to college basketball, I need to see it before I believe it. And because most of these coaches, Greg. They have no idea what they have. There's just not enough time to re-recruit every year and think you have any idea what you've got unless you're in the mid-major conferences where you see a lot more continuity and guys coming back. But even then, the best players from a year ago have now moved on and been recruited by the Louisvilles and the Kentuckys of the world. So it's going to, it's a game changer. I mean, how Michigan's... Best coach in college basketball is now on the sidelines for the Dallas Mavericks. So everything changes year to year. Tread carefully. That's all I'm going to say early on. Look to favorite teams that have familiarity and try to fade those teams that are trying to figure it out.