SAN DIEGO – No other freshman class in America has scored more points this season than the five active freshmen on the Arizona men’s basketball team. They have combined for 1,461 points, which leads the nation heading into the NCAA Tournament this week, according to data provided by USA TODAY Sports by Stats Perform.
Which is pretty darn remarkable for two big reasons:
1. This team is on fire. The Wildcats (32-2) have won nine consecutive games and will start the tournament here as a No. 1 seed against Long Island University on Friday, March 20.
2. This kind of youth movement goes against conventional wisdom these days. Isn’t older supposed to be better in the era of wide-open player transfers?
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Wildcats coach Tommy Lloyd instead took a different approach than many others last year, veering away from the transfer portal, where more experienced players typically seek to earn more money from their names, images and likenesses (NIL).
“We were able to get involved with some freshmen that we felt could be just big-time impact players in college basketball, no matter what year or what class they were,” Lloyd told USA TODAY Sports on Thursday.
He had a strategy for it, as he explained Thursday.
Why Arizona built its roster this way
One reason Lloyd built his roster this way was because didn’t think there were going to be many “quality” transfers available in the portal.
Money was a factor, too.
“I thought it was going to be overpriced,” Lloyd said.
Then there was the Duke factor. Duke beat Arizona twice last year with several freshman players, including future No. 1 NBA draft pick Cooper Flagg. Duke even started three freshmen in the Final Four last year while other Final Four teams started mostly seniors. Lloyd noticed.
By the end of the season, Lloyd said the Blue Devils didn’t seem young.
“I just thought they were really good.”
The risks of a freshman-heavy roster at Arizona
Arizona lists seven total freshman players on its roster of 16, including Bryce James, son of LeBron, who is redshirting this year but still drums up interest in his team by having the fourth-biggest social-media following in Division I basketball as of this month, according to Opendorse.
It’s the kind of roster construction that is reminiscent of a bygone era in college sports — recruiting big freshman classes, developing those players and sometimes even redshirting some of them. The problem for Lloyd is that it comes with risk.
The good ones will leave for the NBA after a year. Others might even transfer away in pursuit of more money.
Such freshman-heavy teams also often don’t work out this well, unless they include superstar NBA prospects like Duke freshman forward Cameron Boozer or Arkansas freshman guard Darius Acuff.
Consider the 13 teams that invested eight roster spots or more in freshman players this season, all more than Arizona, according to Stats Perform. Only two of those 13 earned a bid to the NCAA Tournament — SMU and Queens University. New Haven listed the most freshmen on its roster this season with 11 but finished with a 14-17 record.
But there are outliers.
“Age don’t matter,” 19-year-old Arizona freshman guard Dwayne Aristode told USA TODAY Sports. “If you’re good, you’re good.”
How Tommy Lloyd built this roster
Lloyd searches for top players overseas and has eight players from other countries, including freshman forward Ivan Kharchenkov from Germany, Aristode from The Netherlands and 6-11 freshman forward Sidi Gueye from Senegal.
Lloyd also has five transfer players, including senior guard Jaden Bradley, who came to Arizona from Alabama in 2023.
But 49.9% of the team’s scoring has come from five freshmen, who were part of a recruiting class that ranked No. 2 nationally behind fellow No. 1-seed Duke. These Arizona freshmen have scored even more than the four freshman contributors at Duke, which ranked second nationally in freshman scoring before the tournament with 1,417 points, more than half of which comes from Boozer.
The difference is Arizona’s freshmen aren’t projected to be high-lottery NBA draft prospects like Boozer. The Wildcats instead spread it around more between freshman guard Brayden Burries (15.9 points per game), freshman forward Koa Peat (13.6) and Kharchenkov (10.1).
Now comes the NCAA Tournament.
How will freshmen handle this environment?
Arizona senior forward Tobe Awaka had simple answer for this.
“Don't try and reinvent the wheel,” he said Thursday at Viejas Arena in San Diego.
Lloyd doesn’t see a problem.
“I haven't sensed that our freshmen don't know what this is about,” Lloyd said. “And I told our freshmen, 'Hey, you guys won a state championship?' Yeah. Then let's go win another state championship. And the way you win a state championship, you win a state championship game by game. This just happens to have the word 'national' in front of it. But it's no different approach.
Ranking college basketball teams with most points by freshmen in 2025-26
As of March 17 in Division I, according to Stats Perform:
- Arizona 1461
- Duke 1417
- Arkansas 1334
- Central Arkansas 1326
- New Mexico 1275
- Fairfield 1270
- North Carolina-Greensboro 1149
- Colorado 1138
- Air Force 1123
- Houston 1119
Follow reporter Brent Schrotenboer @Schrotenboer. Email: bschrotenb@usatoday.com
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Arizona basketball enters March Madness with roster led by freshmen
