Taking it one year at a time

In the now-you-see-them, now-you-don't world of college basketball, it's time to reset the clock, meet the new freshman stars and hold on tight until the first Monday of April in San Antonio.

That's when UCLA Bruins freshman Kevin Love might be battling it out with North Carolina bruiser Tyler Hansbrough in the paint as the Bruins make yet another Final Four appearance, with Darren Collison and the Tar Heels' Ty Lawson locked in a duel of speedsters at the point.

At least the Bruins probably won't have to see that Florida bunch again.

The players from last year's championship game were gone in a poof after the Gators completed their championship encore with a second NCAA title, and Ohio State's freshman duo of Greg Oden and Mike Conley said it was a blast, so long.

The also-rans in Atlanta -- semifinal losers UCLA and Georgetown -- each have a chance to return to the Final Four. The Bruins lost Arron Afflalo early but kept Collison, and the Hoyas lost Jeff Green but kept 7-foot-2 Roy Hibbert.

Among other Final Four contenders: Memphis, with freshman point guard Derrick Rose joining a team led by forward Chris Douglas-Roberts, and Kansas, with forward Brandon Rush expected to return from knee surgery in December.

Naturally, the main thing you need to know about the season is which phenomenal freshmen might be one and done, and well, we don't have to look far, do we?

Besides USC's O.J. Mayo and the Bruins' Kevin Love, the crop includes Rose, forward Michael Beasley at Kansas State and shooting guard Eric Gordon at Indiana.

We could go on. There might not be a one-two combination as dominant as Greg Oden, the No. 1 NBA draft pick, and No. 2 Kevin Durant, the national player of the year as a Texas freshman. But the mock draft at the website nbadraft.net ranks seven freshmen among its 14 projected lottery picks. (Kevin Love checks in at No. 17. Maybe UCLA fans can hope for a return such as Chase Budinger's for a second year at Arizona.)

Not everyone leaves in such a hurry. But you have to wonder about Stanford 7-footer Brook Lopez, who would have been a first-round pick but returned to school, only to forget about the school part. He is academically ineligible for the fall quarter.

Then there's Florida Coach Billy Donovan, who left for the NBA then came back, reneging on a five-year, $27.5-million contract with the Orlando Magic to take a raise to $3.5 million a year and stay at Florida.

After an onslaught of jabs -- Billy the Kidder and Billy Bail-Out, they called him -- Donovan is coaching a team whose top returning player is guard Walter Hodge, who averaged 5.7 points. It's not quite like having Dwight Howard and Rashard Lewis with the Magic.

"We're at such an infant stage with our team," said Donovan, comparing it to the situation when he first took the job at Florida and at his previous stop, Marshall.

Even so, shortly after taking the Orlando job, he said he soon realized he wanted to try again at Florida.

"I think really it was more just the way I felt. I think when you take on a position like that, you should be excited, motivated, enthusiastic, and I didn't have any of those feelings," he told reporters as he prepared for the season.

"I didn't think that was right, to sit there and just kind of say, 'Well, I'm going to go with the flow and collect a lot of money, and you know what, I'll go resurface somewhere else in college.' I thought that was wrong.

"Really more than anything else, my heart and my passion's at the University of Florida to try to rebuild here again. . . . It was me. It was what was internally inside of me, that I felt like I'd be walking around and eventually it was going to surface and I was going to have to address it, sooner or later."

At Ohio State, Coach Thad Matta isn't quite back to square one -- senior guard Jamar Butler is back and there is another good recruiting class, but he has endured two off-season back surgeries, and he's certainly no longer able to demonstrate post defense himself.

Someone asked Matta if he liked the challenge of regrouping having lost three freshmen to the NBA after the Buckeyes' Final Four run.

"I do," he said, pausing. "I'm not going to lie to you. . . . I liked the other challenge better."

A host of coaches have found new challenges by moving. Billy Gillispie went from Texas A&M to the pressure cooker in Lexington, Ky., after Tubby Smith had enough and left Kentucky for Minnesota.

Think they like their hoops in Lexington? Some 23,300 showed up to watch Gillispie's first practice.

Closer to home, Dan Monson, one of the architects of the Gonzaga program -- he still ribs USC Coach Tim Floyd about telling him he had to get out because it was impossible to sustain success at Gonzaga -- is the new Long Beach State coach after being unable to overcome the effects of the NCAA probation he inherited at Minnesota.

Bob Huggins, the former Cincinnati coach who spent one season at Kansas State, returned to his alma mater at West Virginia after John Beilein left for Michigan.

And in a move that USC fans can probably stomach better because of the success Floyd has brought to USC, Rick Majerus, who reneged on a deal to coach the Trojans in 2004, has returned to the bench in St. Louis.

Other than which team will win the NCAA title, there might be no bigger question than this: Can another freshman on a whistle-stop trip to the NBA become the national player of the year?

He probably would have to leap such players as Tyler Hansbrough, Hibbert, Budinger, Tennessee's Chris Lofton and Kansas' Rush to do it.

But Kevin Durant proved it can be done, and things change quickly in the college game now.

Remember, it was only 2003 that UCLA finished 10-19 in Steve Lavin's final year, and the Bruins won only one more game than that in Ben Howland's first season. Now they've played in consecutive Final Fours and are odds-on for a third.

It has been the same story at North Carolina, which finished 8-20 in 2002 under Matt Doherty, but already has won a national championship under Roy Williams, in 2005.

Whoever lifts the trophy in San Antonio, take a long look.

Florida's band of brothers might be the last bunch for a long time willing to give us a second glance.

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