Another year over, a new one soon to begin. And yet: we’re also in the middle of a season. Just like every year.
Still, we have time to reflect. With 2024 soon to be out the door, the moment’s come to rank and reflect on the year that was. My annual men’s college hoops year-in-review is below. Since 2020, I’ve been increasing the number of stories to correspond with the year we’re in, but I’m thinking 2024 will be the last in this motif; moving forward, there will be no set number. As always, I’ve linked stories associated with the headlines in parentheses; click through and hop in the time machine at your leisure.
Good and bad, shocking and sizable, here were the 24 most notable stories of 2024 in men’s college basketball.
24. Jim Larrañaga steps down at Miami (Dec. 26): This story’s not even a day old! A semi-stunner right before the buzzer. The 75-year-old Larrañaga, who went on record frequently in recent years to declare he wasn’t soon to retire (I wrote a big column on this just 19 months ago), tapped out the day after Christmas on account of his inability to keep up with the changing times. Also: Miami started 4-8.
“There’s one thing you’ve got to constantly ask yourself: Are you going to give everything you have, the commitment that it deserves, 100% of yourself physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually?” Larrañaga said Thursday. “Quite frankly, I’ve tried to do that throughout my life and throughout my time here, but I’m exhausted. I’ve tried every which way to keep this going.”
It’s an unwanted end for a one-of-a-kind coaching career: Miami won only nine games in the past 360 days, since 2024 began. Larrañaga won more games than any coach in Miami history (274 in 12.5 seasons) and took the Hurricanes to the 2023 Final Four and 2022 Elite Eight. He’s also the winningest coach in George Mason history, having helped author one of the all-time Final Four runs.
In total, Larrañaga went 744-505. He made the NCAA Tournament 11 times. He’s the only person to win at least 100 conference games at three D-I schools (Bowling Green, GMU, The U). He always did it the hard way. The new way isn’t his way, though, and so he relents.
“You have to begin to ask yourself as a coach, what is this all about?” he said Thursday. “And the answer is it’s become professional.”
23. Wake Forest court-storm prompts scare for Duke‘s Kyle Filipowski (Feb. 24): This story burned hot for about 72 hours before ultimately dispersing into the ether. The Demon Deacons upset No. 8 Duke 83-79 in Joel Coliseum, prompting a flooding of the floor from Wake fans. Amid this, Filipowski had little room or time to avoid the mob. He bumped into students, got his leg wrenched and had to be helped into the tunnel.
“When are we going to ban court-storming?” Duke coach Jon Scheyer said after the game. “Like, when are we going to ban that? How many times does a player have to get into something where they get punched or they get pushed or they get taunted right in their face? It’s a dangerous thing.”
Update: Court-storming still has not been banned by the ACC, nor any other conference. Filipowski wound up not missing a game. Wake Forest wound up not making the NCAAs. But everybody got their takes in and that’s what matters most.
22. NCAA Tournament expansion discussion — and resistance to the idea — percolates (much of 2024): For the third straight year, the topic of whether or not to expand March Madness registers as one of the biggest stories in college basketball. It continues to be a story because a decision has not been rendered. This has been a lingering concern since 2022. In 2025, we will finally get our answer (and this story is guaranteed to rank much higher a year from now) because we learned in the summer that the bracket will either stay at 68, or expand to 72 or 76 teams. Regular readers know I’m a staunch anti-expansionist. I explained why in July. There is no legitimate need to expand, but the internal push from influential conference commissioners appears to be working.
21. Florida coach Todd Golden accused of sexual misconduct in Title IX investigation (Nov. 8): This is an ongoing story, nearly two months old now, with no known timeline for resolution. Florida’s coach has been accused of a variety of disturbing behaviors, with Golden acknowledging the veracity of the reported investigation in a brief independent statement on Nov. 9. The reason the investigation and the allegations are public is due to the journalism of Florida students who work for The Independent Alligator. As we’ve waited for the school’s investigation to finish, Florida has become one of college hoops’ unexpectedly really good teams. The 12-0 Gators are one of four unbeatens remaining, with Golden having been on the sideline and in practice every day throughout.
20. Dalton Knecht turns into one of the greatest single-season transfers ever (January-March): A college journey that began in 2019 in Sterling, Colorado at Northeastern Junior College ended with being the No. 17 pick by the Los Angeles Lakers in 2024. In between, Knecht worked his way up to Northern Colorado, then the Tennessee leap for ’23-24. He averaged 21.7 points and not only became the unanimous best transfer in the country last season, Knecht also was a Consensus First Team All-American and rated as the second best player overall to Zach Edey (who ended Knecht’s college career in the Elite Eight).
Every so often there’s a guy who comes from nowhere to pop at a high-major, but Knecht’s trajectory was the first in the modern era to give hope to small-school stars looking for a way to thread the needle and make the NBA. Hundreds — thousands — will try to follow his path over the next 5-10 years, but only a few will come close to doing what Knecht connected on.
19. South Florida coach Amir Abdur-Rahim dies at 43 (Oct. 24): I can’t put it better than what I wrote back in October, trying to write past the shock of it all that night: “Abdur-Rahim had been a rising star in coaching in recent years and built up a tremendous name as a quick-fix wizard. Off the court, his reputation was highly regarded throughout the sport. The Bulls went 25-8 last season, Abdur-Rahim’s first with the program, winning the American Athletic Conference with a 16-2 mark and improving USF’s win total by 11 games from the previous year. The Bulls’ regular-season AAC title was the first in school history; the team’s 25 wins were also a single-season school record.
Thanks to a school-best 15-game home winning streak, USF broke through in the AP Top 25 under Abdur-Rahim during the 2023-24 season, marking the first time in program history the school had notched such an achievement. He quite literally changed broken programs for the better, doing it multiple times in a short window of his rapidly rising track in college basketball.” Abdur-Rahim “was undergoing a medical procedure at a Tampa-area hospital when he passed away due to complications that arose during the procedure,” according to USF’s statement from that day. His death continues to leave a void in college basketball, as many who knew Amir believed it was his destiny to rise to sustained, prolonged prominence in the sport.
18. More All-Americans return year-over-year than we’ve seen in decades (April/May): RJ Davis, Hunter Dickinson, Mark Sears, Johni Broome and Caleb Love all landed on multiple 2023-24 All-America teams. Because the 2024-25 season is the final year for a bonus COVID season for all NCAA athletes (2020-21 was impacted/shortened for just about everyone), these five hoopers took advantage of one last season of eligibility (and wound up collectively being paid much more than $5 million in NIL along the way). The results so far this season are mixed. Broome is the frontrunner for NPOY, while Dickinson, Love and Sears and Davis have all had ups and downs. Truly, only Broome would be a First Team All-American right now if the voting had to be done. Nevertheless, college basketball does benefit when it returns as many known names and faces as possible, so it was a net positive to get these five — plus a dozen more returnees — back this season.
17. Lou Carnesecca dies at 99; Rick Pitino dons a sweater in his honor (Nov. 30, Dec. 7): One of the most important figures in New York sports history, Carnesecca was beloved by all both when he was active and in his decades post-retirement. His passing less than a month ago prompted tributes from across the sports world, but the calendar wound up having St. John’s not playing for almost a full week following his death. Then, on Dec 7, Rick Pitino walked onto the floor at Carnesecca Arena and flashed a reproduction of Looie’s famous, ugly Chevron-patterned sweater. The Johnnies beat Kansas State 88-71, topping off one of the more emotional days we’ve seen in a college arena in some time.
“I don’t think I would have ever forgiven myself if we lost this game,” Pitino said.
16. Auburn goes 3-0, UConn 0-3 in a memorably stacked 2024 Maui Invitational (Nov. 25-27): It’s been a bumpy 2020s for Maui organizers. Three of the previous four tournaments weren’t held in Lahaina. In 2024 we got what was objectively the most loaded bracket ever at the Lahaina Civic Center. Four top-10 teams (No. 2 UConn, No. 4 Auburn, No. 5 Iowa State, No. 10 UNC), plus three more receiving votes in that week’s polls (Michigan State, Dayton and Memphis). Day 1 was great theater from the jump, with Memphis upsetting Connecticut, followed by UNC rallying from 17 down to beat Dayton and Auburn coming back hard to edge Iowa State. It was the best Day 1 in Maui history in maybe the last great Maui field we’ll ever have. From there, things got even more surprising.
Following close losses (with some controversial whistles) to Memphis and middling Colorado, UConn finished in eighth place after losing 85-67 to Dayton the night before Thanksgiving. But whatever was happening on the island stayed on the island. Connecticut hasn’t lost since, beating the likes of Baylor, Texas, Gonzaga and Xavier en route to a 10-3 marking heading into New Year’s Day. Lesson, as always: Don’t ever count out Hurley’s program, no matter how dramatic things may seem (and they were certainly dramatic in paradise). Speaking of drama, Auburn’s Maui moment came all of two weeks after the team plane had to be turned around on account of a physical alteration on board. That incident led to big headlines, but in Maui it was as if it never happened. Auburn beat North Carolina by 13 and Memphis by 14 to win the bracket and make its claim as the best team in college hoops. As of Dec. 27, the metrics unanimously agree: Tigers are No. 1 in choops.
15. Players Era Festival pays millions in NIL to participating teams (November): Could it be? A multi-team college basketball event that would pay participating schools $1 million apiece for three games of competition? And then even more money on top of that for the teams that won two or three games? That’s what Players Era Festival organizers promised, and despite months of speculation, cynicism and lobbying against making it happen, it did actually come to fruition the week of Thanksgiving in Las Vegas. The eight schools who got the invites were all paid in full less than a week later.
In 2025, the event is promising a minimum of 16 teams (and perhaps more). There’s also a four-team women’s event that will pay the same amount as well. There’s never been anything like this in college sports history, and given the price tag, it’s still a wonder how it could continue to exist in the years to come, when it will take mammoth sponsorship deals just to break even. Regardless, for now, it’s a major disruptor in college basketball scheduling and is the first event to be so up front about existing for the primary purpose to make college basketball players richer.
14. The Pac-12 is saved and gets Gonzaga (Oct. 1): The Pac-12 died in 2023, was revived in 2024 and, thanks to a most important addition, the league should have some viability in the years ahead. Thanks to Washington State and Oregon State not wanting to keep the Pac-12 brand gone for good, those two were able to convince Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, San Diego State and Utah State to leave the Mountain West for a bold new venture. But as I wrote in mid-September, it was obvious what the league’s leadership needed to do: go get Gonzaga. No school mattered more and won more and did more nationally this century than Gonzaga. And so they did. So, come 2026, the Pac-12 will be back and Gonzaga will be the flagship basketball institution. Question is: Will Mark Few still be coaching by then? Regardless, it’s a big story; college sports is better for having the Pac-12, even if the new one won’t be as eminent as the old one.
13. AJ Dybantsa commits to BYU (Dec. 10): It seems we get some piece of evidence every week to prove that modern college sports have moved on from what the old world was like … all of seven years ago (if that). I don’t think any headline defines this reality better than a top-ranked prospect from Massachusetts opting to play for a program with zero Final Fours ever, zero Elite Eights in the past 40-plus years and was only able to upgrade to the Big 12 in the past year. That’s because BYU’s NIL collective is going to pay Dybantsa in the vicinity of $5 million for one year of service and in the process will become one of the must-follow schools over the next year-plus under new coach Kevin Young. Dybantsa’s scoring potential is tantalizing. He could have played for anyone. BYU won. The power dynamics have changed, and that’s probably not such a bad thing for college basketball.
12. March Madness’ biggest upset: Oakland stuns Kentucky (March 21): John Calipari’s Wildcats underwent something of a X-and-O rebirth in 2023-24. Thanks to dazzling freshmen Reed Sheppard (the national freshman of the year and eventual No. 3 pick) and Rob Dillingham, in addition to key veteran wing Antonio Reeves, UK was fun to watch on offense for the first time in years. It got UK a No. 3 seed. It wasn’t perfect, but it was better. And then the 14th-seeded Oakland Grizzlies showed up with a dude named Jack Gohlke. The 24-year-old grad transfer looked old enough to be on his second job in the banking industry. Gohlke went legend, sinking 10 (!) 3-pointers, tying an NCAA tourney record, and lifting Oakland to an 80-76 first round win. This game, this result, this scenario, proved why the tournament shouldn’t be touched. It also proved to be the trembler that gave reason for Calipari to hightail it out of Lexington. (That one’s further down the list.)
11. Craziest coaching carousel ever (January-May): College basketball had never undergone more coaching changes in one year — at the high-major level and overall — than this year (68 moves in all). It started with Tony Stubblefield’s firing at DePaul in the middle of January and didn’t resolve until more than four months later, when Doug Gottlieb was hired at Green Bay. In between, there was the butterfly-effect chain of SMU firing Rob Lanier, which enabled Andy Enfield to seek a way out of USC, which opened up a hatch for Eric Musselman to depart Arkansas, which gave vacancy for John Calipari to stun the sport (that one gets it own section below), which beget Mark Pope to get the Kentucky job, and then that move bringing aboard Kevin Young from the NBA ranks to land at BYU. And that doesn’t even cover Dusty May spurning Louisville and Vanderbilt for Michigan, Louisville pivoting to Pat Kelsey, plus Holtmann’s surprising decision to take on the DePaul mess. A medley of coaching moves that will change the contours of the sport through the rest of the 2020s, and I don’t think we’ll see something like it again.
Must-read 2024 features
Norlander longform worth reading if you missed it the first time around:
» On beloved Oakland coach Greg Kampe — just days before the Grizzlies upset Kentucky
» Norlander’s all-access with UConn at the Maui Invitational
» Simone Biles takes her place among greatest athletes in history
» Her name, her game: How Reed Sheppard was made in his mother’s image
» March Madness Mixtape: 68 coaches share their favorite musical artists
» How a brotherly bond and brutal injury turned Cody Williams into a mystery NBA prospect
10. Portal and NIL frenzy approaches a tipping point in most expensive cycle yet (spring): Ever since NIL legislation was approved at the NCAA level in 2021, the opportunities for college players to earn money has gone up every year, if not every fiscal quarter. Naively, many college coaches thought the market hit its apex in the spring of 2023. Turns out, it was small potatoes compared to 2024, when asking prices hit comical levels. There were high-major backups seeking $300K paydays and low-major bench guys thinking they could get NIL after averaging fewer than five points. The question was, how high could it go? (The answer, we now know, is well over $5 million if your name is AJ Dybantsa.)
But in the portal, two players maximized their value: Utah State transfer Great Osobor agreed to reportedly nearly $2 million when he committed to follow his college coach, Danny Sprinkle, to Washington. That was soon usurped by Illinois transfer Coleman Hawkins, who agreed to even more than that to play for Jerome Tang at K-State. From mid-April until mid-June, the running story in college basketball was about the players in the portal who could command the most attention and possibly land the biggest “NIL” deals. The House case settlement is supposed to change the dynamics of this come the fall of 2025 (with all NIL collective deals needing approval at the NCAA level), but we’ll wait and see how that system actually works.
9. The 2024-25 SEC gets off to historically dominant start (Nov./Dec.): The biggest story of the season so far is how insanely dominant the SEC has been. As of this story, the league is 170-22 in nonconference play, which comes out to an .885 win percentage. Its teams have more than 20 wins vs. ranked opponents, which is easily a record in non-con play. Auburn, Tennessee, Alabama and Florida look like national title contenders, with Kentucky not that far behind. The widespread domination is so good, it’s a foregone conclusion that the SEC, at a minimum, will tie the 2011 Big East for most NCAA bids (11), but it’s probable that at least 12, if not 13, SEC clubs wind up getting a March Madness invite. A parade of dominance that will continue as soon as the calendar flips to January.
8. Bill Walton dies (May 27): One thought stuck with me in the days after Walton’s surprising death: He surely seemed to be the most widely beloved person in basketball history. It’s still weird to think about how one of the most affable people and imaginative minds to ever be associated with the college game is no longer in our world. Bill is floating through the cosmos right now, and we miss him so.
The fact he’d been battling cancer wasn’t widely known, making his passing all the more shocking. Walton unquestionably rates as one of the three best college players ever; his time at UCLA was essential to John Wooden setting a record that will never be broken (10 D-1 men’s NCAA titles for one coach). But his time as a commentator, and how he embedded himself with West Coast ball, proudly homering for the Pac-10/12, only endeared him more to the true hoopheads. (Do read what Kareem Abdul-Jabbar wrote about Walton.) He was merely stopping by on a larger ethereal journey. May his mirthful spirit hover over all of us moving forward.
7. Dan Hurley contemplates leaving UConn for the Lakers (June 10): More UConn to come further down, of course (and this list doesn’t even include the Big 12 exploring adding the Huskies over the summer) but this is a story unto itself. Less than two months after winning back-to-back titles, and with no hint whatsoever the possibility was even on the table, Hurley became the top target for the biggest basketball brand in the world. What a doozy. For about 48 hours, I talked myself into Hurley leaving college basketball behind.
Can you imagine him coaching the Lakers NOW? How would that be going? Fascinating alternate timeline. Hurley called me the day he decided to stay at UConn and we talked through one of the most surreal weeks of his life; you can read that lengthy Q & A here, which has some interesting perspective given the Huskies’ momentum push into 2025.
6. Tony Bennett retires (Oct. 17): There were murmurs in late winter and early spring about the possibility of this, but when that didn’t happen and then when Bennett signed a contract extension in June, it seemed to put the issue on the back-burner. Then the greatest coach in Virginia history took a preseason weekend getaway with his wife, only to have a crisis of conscience and decide he couldn’t keep on in the current climate.
Few men in the profession were as respected as Bennett. His decision to retire, under circumstances he obviously controlled but at the same time could not fight, reverberated around the profession. I think it impacted Jim Larrañaga’s timeline and it’s probably playing a role in some other coaches’ minds as they privately weigh whether or not to walk away in the next three months. On a personal note, I’ll never get the when-and-where of this one. I was at Duke practice when it broke, just as practice was wrapping up, and couldn’t believe it. A few minutes later, I was talking to Jon Scheyer about it, and I was able to drive overnight to Charlottesville. After his goodbye presser, I talked for nearly 30 minutes with Bennett, which produced this story.
5. Cooper Flagg hype arrives in full (October-November): This story ranking is about the collective volume contained therein. Flagg is yet to have a single game/moment/event that singularizes his presence and significance in college hoops, but he remains a Very Big Deal and is a plot line unto himself due to the abnormal buzz that accompanied his journey to Duke. Let me be clear, though: He has been nearly as good as advertised, and at this point, ranks as the best freshman through the first two months of the season. (And he’s pacing as a First Team All-American, too).
We’ll see if his role and impact changes, but Flagg (16.3 ppg, 8.3 rpg, 3.5 apg) is both the centerpiece and the glue guy of Duke this season, occupying a role within a team’s framework I can seldom recall from a freshman. However you feel about the coverage, it’s going to ratchet up another couple of notches once college football season is over.
4. NC State makes shocking Final Four run, DJ Burns becomes immortal March Madness character (March-April): The Wolfpack finished the regular season on a four-game losing streak and entered the ACC Tournament at 17-14. They trailed pitiful Louisville at halftime on a Tuesday ACC Tournament game that essentially nobody cared about. In that moment, State was a mediocre team on the brink of finishing out a mediocre season. And then the most unlikely Final Four run in history began.
If you think that’s an overstatement, consider: they needed to win nine consecutive do-or-die games to make the Final Four. More than any other Final Four team ever. Five in a row in the ACC tourney, including wins over Duke, a mini miracle OT escape vs. Virginia, then North Carolina in the title game. Then it was Texas Tech, an OT win over Oakland, an upset of Marquette and another toppling of Duke in the Elite Eight. Amid all this, DJ Burns became a classic March Madness star. State’s light-footed big man made timely buckets and timely passes and was the embodiment of that unique NCAA Tournament spirit. Nobody saw it coming, which made it all the more memorable and probably makes the story unrepeatable.
3. Zach Edey leads Purdue redemption arc while winning back-to-back NPOY honors (April): Rare is the player who is an obvious preseason POY choice who goes on to fulfill the forecast. Edey was the easy pick to be college basketball’s best player more than a year ago, and he was even better than we thought he’d be. The 7-4 Edey led the nation in scoring (25.2) and put up a career-best in rebounding (12.2) plus 2.2 blocks per game. To put it simply: He was the most unstoppable big man college basketball had seen since Ralph Sampson. And as Purdue cruised to a Big Ten title and a second straight No. 1 seed, there was the lingering disappointment of falling to No. 16 Fairleigh Dickinson in 2023.
This time, there would be no letdowns. With Edey as the central force, Matt Painter’s team won its five NCAA tourney games by an average of 19.6 points. The Boilermakers lost in the championship to UConn, but by making it that far (Purdue’s first title game in history), Edey and his teammates entirely atoned for the 2023 letdown, and in the process, Edey cemented his college legacy as one of the best players in history.
2. Changing of the guard at Kentucky: John Calipari leaves for Arkansas, is replaced by Mark Pope (April 7, April 12): More than two weeks after Kentucky was booted out of the bracket by Oakland, Calipari found himself in a hotel room with Arkansas athletic director Hunter Yurachek. The AD had tried a few names but failed, and at this point, with both men in Phoenix for a couple of days for the Final Four, Yurachek wanted to suss out a few more names with Calipari. Eventually, he asked Calipari: Why not you for the job? And with that, one of the more unexpected intra-conference coaching flips came about. For about a decade, Calipari was the right coach at probably the toughest job in college basketball. But his time at Kentucky had expired. He was unhappy privately and looking for a way out. Arkansas was a moonshot of an opportunity, and now we’re all still getting used to seeing him in Hog red.
With Kentucky opening up, that created another wild cycle of anticipation and speculation. For the first time in program history, Kentucky was turned down by multiple high-profile active coaches already working in the sport. Scott Drew said no and decided to stick at Baylor. Dan Hurley’s agent was contacted, but that never gained traction. All the while, Pope was on the list to have an interview. And when it became known he was the guy, there was an online meltdown in the hours following. Within two days, Pope had flipped the whole thing and rallied the fan base in one of the more uplifting introductory press conferences I’ve ever seen.
1. UConn wins back-to-back national titles (April 8): A year ago I closed my best-of-2023 story with these words: “It’s good enough to be in the conversation to repeat. A gigantic task, but if it were to happen in 2024, it’s hard to see how any story next year could top that.”
There is no doubt here. The UConn Huskies under Dan Hurley are a modern dynasty in college sports. A 12-0 run in the NCAAs in 2023 and 2024, with every win by double-digits. The 2023-24 Huskies were even BETTER than the 2022-23 ones, which seemed near-unthinkable to start the year. By the time they got to the Elite Eight, Hurley’s group pulled off a 30-0 on Illinois. I was there and saw it with my own eyes and I don’t think we’ll ever see something like that again. Tristen Newton is a Huskies legend. Donovan Clingan and Alex Karaban: two-time champs. Cam Spencer: a perfect transfer and the spark plug that made it possible. Oh, and Steph Castle was a top-five pick and a lethal perimeter defender. An honor and privilege to get to document this team’s run up close for a month-long stretch.
This kind of domination comes once in a generation, if that, and to get it in the NIL/portal era makes it even more astounding. Certain teams get even better with age, and that’s going to be the case for UConn and its two-year run. When we check back in 10, 15, 20 years from now, what happened here is only going to look more impressive.
