LEXINGTON, Ky. — Over the past decade, it has become accepted wisdom in men’s college basketball that “old is gold” in roster construction if you aspire to win national championships.

Of the past 10 NCAA title teams, not one has started more than one freshman in a Final Four game. Five of the teams that cut down the nets since 2016 — including the past two national champs, Florida (2025) and MIchigan (2026) — have started no frosh.

In terms of experience, UK coach Mark Pope has constructed a 2026-27 Kentucky roster that looks like the teams that have recently been winning it all.

That choice is interesting on two fronts:

— While the sample size is small, there is some recent evidence that the pendulum in men’s college hoops is starting to swing (slightly) back toward younger rosters.

— Former UK coach John Calipari has made the exact-opposite bet from Pope on the composition of his roster for next season at Arkansas.

By one metric, Kentucky in the coming season will field the second-most-experienced roster the Wildcats have boasted over the past 18 seasons.

The players on this coming season’s Wildcats have combined to make 396 career starts in men’s college hoops. Of the 14 players on UK’s 2026-27 team, 10 have previously started games in college.

Iowa State transfer Milan Momcilovic (101 career starts for the Cyclones) and transfer guards Zoom Diallo (51 starts at Washington) and Jerone Morton (combined 51 starts at Morehead State and Washington State) will enter 2026-27 as UK’s most-experienced players measured by career college games started.

Starting in 2009-10, the only Wildcat team that began a season with more cumulative games started by players on its roster was Pope’s first UK squad. Those 2024-25 Cats featured six super-seniors who were using the “free COVID year” the NCAA had awarded to all athletes enrolled during the 2020-21 school year.

As a result, Kentucky entered that season with a whopping 586 cumulative college starts spread across its roster. UK’s grizzled veterans ended that 2024-25 campaign by making Kentucky’s only trip to the NCAA Tournament’s second weekend so far in the 2020s, falling to Tennessee in the Sweet 16.

During UK’s one-and-done-centric Calipari era, the most experienced team was the 2021-22 Cats. That year, Kentucky entered the season with 367 total career starts from the players on its team.

In 2021-22, Kentucky won 26 games and saw junior big man Oscar Tshiebwe earn National Player of the Year honors. UK also lost, as a No. 2 seed, to No. 15 seed Saint Peter’s in the NCAA Tournament round of 64.

Otherwise, of the 15 Kentucky teams Calipari coached, six entered seasons with fewer than 100 starts spread across their rosters. The 2017-18 Cats, who had only 23 combined college starts on their roster, were the least-experienced of Calipari’s youngish UK teams.

Now that the “free COVID year” players have largely progressed out of college sports, Calipari’s roster construction at Arkansas for 2026-27 has returned to his roots. On a team of 15 players, next season’s Razorbacks will boast eight true freshmen plus a redshirt frosh.

Arkansas will have a total of 113 career starts on its 2026-27 roster — all accumulated by three players.

Furman transfer big man Cooper Bowser (a former Paladins teammate of new UK guard Alex Wilkins) has made 59 career starts; Georgia transfer Jeremiah Wilkinson, a guard, has made 35 college starts; and returning Razorbacks forward Billy Richmond III has started 19 games so far in his Arkansas playing career.

There is some evidence from the past two years that teams featuring talented freshmen are starting to fare better in March Madness.

From 2016 through 2024, the total number of freshman starters on the four Final Four teams in any season never numbered more than two out of 20.

However, in 2025, Duke reached the NCAA Tournament national semifinals with a team that started three frosh (Cooper Flagg, Kon Knueppel and Khaman Maluach).

Last year’s Final Four featured six freshman starters — three for Arizona (Koa Peat, Brayden Burries and Ivan Kharchenkov); two for Illinois (Keaton Wagler and David Mirkovic); and one for Connecticut (Braylon Mullins).

Moving forward, the NCAA’s new “five years to play five seasons” eligibility rule is being implemented to produce a younger overall talent pool in college sports. Neither career-extending medical waivers nor the COVID year will be available in the future to prolong the college athletics experiences of players into their middle-20s (or later).

As a result, “old” may not be quite as “gold” in men’s college hoops roster construction in the coming years.

For 2026-27, one of the storylines that will make men’s college basketball in the commonwealth intriguing is that Kentucky and Kentucky’s former coach have chosen such polar-opposite approaches to roster construction.

It is going to be fascinating to see whether UK’s or Calipari’s approach proves superior.

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