March Madness Daily: Separating the Men From the Boys
College basketball is getting older ... except Duke.
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Lev: Auburn 🐅 small forward Chad Baker-Mazara is older than the average starter in last night’s NBA game between the Memphis Grizzlies and Oklahoma City Thunder. Baker-Mazara is 25. He spent his freshman year at Duquesne, then transferred to San Diego State, then transferred again to Northwest Florida State College (a JUCO), and then finally transferred to Auburn, where he stayed for his fifth year of eligibility, a rare exception granted to those who played during COVID. Whew!
Ten years ago, not a single Sweet 16 starter was older than 23. In 2025, Baker-Mazara wasn’t even the oldest—that was BYU’s 🐱 26-year-old guard Trevin Knell. Thanks to a two-year Mormon church mission, a medical redshirt year, and that fifth year of eligibility, Knell graduated high school in 2017 and yet was an impact player in 2025 March Madness!
College basketball has gotten older across the board. In 2019, the year before the COVID-19 pandemic, the average age of Sweet 16 starters was 20.8. In 2021, that number had jumped to 21.2, and now it’s all the way up to 21.6. More than three-quarters of the players who started last night or tonight can legally grab a drink after their game 🍻.
No. 1 seed Auburn’s starting five averages 23.2 years old. Five different NBA teams started a lineup this week that were younger than that, including the Washington Wizards at 21.2 on Wednesday. As college sports moves more and more towards a professional model by the day, this is only fitting.
The extra year of eligibility from COVID has driven roster ages higher, but it’s not the main reason for the trend.
The establishment of the transfer portal (in 2018), one-time transfers being allowed to play without sitting out a year (in 2021), and finally multi-time transfers being granted immediate eligibility (in 2024) have upended college basketball. Powerhouse programs now find the majority of their talent from the transfer portal (we can’t stop looking at this brilliant graphic) instead of high school recruits. The meta has changed—recent national championship squads such as 2021 Baylor 🐻 and 2022 Kansas 🐦⬛ were composed nearly entirely of upperclassmen, and UConn’s 🐕 back-to-back title teams thrived off of continuity.
You can also imagine how players may be enticed to stay in college longer, now that they are allowed to move freely between schools and earn NIL money.
As the landscape of college basketball gets older, there’s one big exception: the Duke Blue Devils 🟦😈, whose starters are just 19.4 years old on average. That’s more than a year younger than any of the other Sweet 16 teams, and the exact same average as Duke’s 2015 national championship team (the youngest Sweet 16 lineup in that year as well).
Want to feel old? Cooper Flagg 🏳️ was born in December 2006. He has never lived in a world without Facebook, or been alive when Pluto was a planet.
For the Blue Devils, going young is the norm. In 2019, their starting lineup featuring Zion Williamson, R.J. Barrett and Cam Reddish had an average age of just 18.8. That team was one of the most hyped in recent college basketball memory, but flamed out in the Elite Eight after almost losing to Tacko Fall 🌮📉 in the second round.
This year’s Duke youngsters are attempting to buck the trend that experience and continuity are keys to success in college basketball. And if Duke ends up playing Auburn in the finals, it will be a matchup that quite literally separates the men from the boys.
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