Just what exactly is this season going to be? It’s a silly question; obviously no one knows. The fog of the future is a part of every college basketball preseason, but never more so than this one, when we’ve gone from not knowing who is going to win the games to not knowing where and when and whether the games are even going to be played. Every day new teams pull back from practicing and hunker down in their dorms; every week more programs pull out of events that were hurriedly set up just a few months ago. When the games are played, they will mostly be done behind closed doors, in mostly empty arenas robbed of the most vital part of the college basketball experience: fans. What are you supposed to expect about that? We know this season’s going to be a mess. That’s pretty much it.
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Oh, well, actually, there is the one other thing: Luka Garza is going to be really good.
This fall, more than any other, there is a special comfort in the star of The Athletic’s 2020-21 preseason All-America teams, as voted by our college basketball staff. Garza was the only player to receive an All-America nod from every one of our voters — a unanimous first-team pick. Garza’s summertime decision to eschew the NBA Draft and stay in the fight (in the “wars and the pain,” as he would put it) immediately locked him into these sorts of awards, presaging a repeat of what was already a POY-worthy performance last season, with all of his key teammates returning.
The theme of Garza’s fellow first-teamers isn’t too hard to spot: It is punctuated by upperclassmen who turned down the NBA for one more shot at college glory, having brutally missed out on it in March. There is reliability here, things you can count on: Illinois’ Ayo Dosunmu making big clutch shots, Baylor’s Jared Butler running circles around defenders, Gonzaga stalwart Corey Kispert elevating the art of the glue guy. The best teams this season are going to be the ones with veteran players and situated rosters, teams who already know each other inside and out.
And then just for good measure is a dash of the fresh, the unknown: Oklahoma State’s Cade Cunningham, possibly the No. 1 pick in the 2021 NBA Draft, a power forward-sized point guard and the near-unanimous pick for national freshman of the year, for whom expectations couldn’t be all that much higher.
That goes for this entire group, of course. Our expectations for the season itself might be all over the place — just get to the tourney, just get to the tourney — but our expectations for these players are uniformly high.
First team
Luka Garza, senior forward, Iowa
We all see Luka Garza coming now. Believe it or not, this wasn’t always the case. Before the 2019-20 season, Garza was a solid but generally unremarkable big man, the kind of stout center who does a job but doesn’t draw the eye. As a freshman, Garza averaged 12.1 points and 6.4 rebounds per game. As a sophomore, he scored 13.1 and grabbed 4.5. He was a nice rotation piece, good but a bit prone to foul trouble, nothing worth writing home to Washington, D.C. about. There was basically no indication of what was about to happen to him, or to Iowa.
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Then Garza showed up for his junior year, and things got totally crazy: He averaged 23.9 points and 9.8 rebounds per game. His per-40 totals put him at 29.9 and 12.3, respectively. His PER was 28.5; he recorded 12.6 win shares; he posted a 117.0 offensive rating despite using 31.2 percent of his team’s possessions and taking 35.4 percent (!) of its shots. He rebounded well on both ends, but especially off his teammates’ misses. He rarely turned the ball over. He drew plenty of fouls. As a 6-foot-11 true center, he even took 109 3s — and made 39. There was nothing on the offensive end of the floor that Garza couldn’t do, and do extremely well. When KenPom.com tallied up its player of the year math, Garza was No. 1.
And here’s the scary thing: There’s every reason to think he can get better.
No, he probably won’t take another leap like the one that set Iowa’s extremely efficient offense alight last season. That seems, um, not possible, unless Luka Garza suddenly becomes Luka Doncic. But Iowa has everyone of note back for another year (including formerly injured pieces Jordan Bohannon and Jack Nunge, alongside last year’s hot-shooting, Joe Wieskamp-led core; coach Fran McCaffery has taken to joking he has “seven starters back”) which means, at minimum, there’s no reason to expect Garza to need to do more on the offensive end, or to regress for any specific personnel-related reason. On the other hand, defense is the one area where the big man still has improvements to make — it might be the area of the floor (both individually, and for his team) that ultimately cost him the Wooden Award a season ago — and remains a place where his ceiling remains surprisingly high.
If Garza can add even average defense to his portfolio, and he’s not far off already, Iowa will have more than its first POY in half a century. It will have a genuine national title contender too. This time we’ll all see it coming.
Ayo Dosunmu, junior guard, Illinois
Hello, Quad Cities. When was the last time the Iowa-Illinois rivalry was this good? When was the last time the Hawkeyes and Illini had a preseason All-American on the same team? When was the last time your author’s beloved home — a modest metro area of 380,000 or so, split by the Mississippi, where both Iowa and Illinois basketball was a constant concern growing up — had this much rivalry grist to chew on?
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The last time Illinois played Iowa, a 78-76 Illini win at State Farm Arena, after yet another game-defining, final-minute bucket, Ayo Dosunmu chalked up the renewed state of the border rivalry this way: “We don’t like each other. Simple as that.”
While we’re asking questions: Has anyone done more to revive Illinois-related basketball enthusiasm than Dosunmu? His commitment was a coup in the first place; his decision to stay after leading the team in scoring as a freshman made him a hero to Illinois fans. Now here he is, in Year 3, after a season spent as one of the best clutch shot-makers and combo scoring guards in the Big Ten, ready to take on Garza and Iowa and anyone else who wants it. Illinois fans love him as much as any player since that unforgettable 2005 season, and understandably so. Our staff, meanwhile, thinks he’s due for an even bigger junior year, the outcome of which most likely will hinge on better shooting off the catch and deep perimeter shooting, aspects of his game, which, if improved, should add player of the year honors to the many things Iowa and Illinois will quarrel over in 2020-21.
Jared Butler, junior guard, Baylor
Remember when you were a kid playing basketball — at whatever level, even gym class — and you drew the assignment of guarding the other team’s best player? Remember the terror? The concern that you might get embarrassed? The conservatism with which you approached the entire exchange? That more or less is what it is like to play against Baylor guard Jared Butler, arguably the Big 12’s most difficult offensive assignment.
Few if any players in the country play with Butler’s level of smoothness on the offensive end. He has every move and countermove, and he rattles them off with the casual precision of a sushi master. A quick step-back dribble into a 3? A wrong-foot Euro-step in transition? Over-the-shoulder passes to freeze a wing defender and get a roller an open layup? A spin move from the top of the key? Everything looks easy, simple, like you should be able to defend it, but of course you can’t. Baylor is one of those stacked veteran teams this season, perhaps the national title favorite, and Butler’s silky offensive game — and how it balances out the rest of a rough-and-tumble Big 12-borne outfit — is a huge reason why.
Cade Cunningham, freshman guard, Oklahoma State
Here’s the bad news: You will not get to watch Cade Cunningham in the NCAA Tournament. Oklahoma State is serving a one-year postseason ban for recruiting violations to do with the FBI’s years-long college hoops investigation (the nitty-gritty details of which are not really worth getting into, except to say the consensus is Oklahoma State’s punishment was pretty harsh). That is a bummer. It is also a testament to Cunningham’s loyalty, to the type of kid he is, that he will be playing at Oklahoma State this season anyway.
A 6-foot-8 point guard with the skills to match, Cunningham is widely considered the favorite to be the first pick in the 2021 NBA Draft. After learning of OSU’s punishment, he could have told coach Mike Boynton he wanted to play somewhere else, and all of the top schools in the country would have been giddy for another chance to recruit him. Boynton told him he’d help him figure it out. Instead, Cunningham stuck in. “There’s not a lot of coaches that would say, ‘Do what you want to do, I’m going to help you if you want to leave,'” he said in July.
Here’s the good news: We get to watch Cade Cunningham, period. Just one voter nominated another freshman of the year candidate (USC’s Evan Mobley), so we’re hearing all the same things from coaches, which is that dude can really, really play. Even better, we get to watch him in the Big 12, almost certainly the best league in the country this season, where great coaches with brutal defenses will scheme to stop him on a twice-weekly basis. Top recruits choosing rebuilding programs don’t always work out for the best (see: Simmons, Ben), but there’s very little Cunningham can’t do with the ball in his hands, and seeing him figure it out on the fly against Baylor and Kansas and Texas Tech is going to be more than worth the price of (sigh, figurative) admission.
Corey Kispert, senior wing, Gonzaga
All hail the glue guys. Every good Gonzaga team has a Corey Kispert: a wing with length who can shoot the ball, play defense and make everybody else better. But no one has ever played the Corey Kispert role better than Corey Kispert. It takes some doing, being an All-American in that role, but what Kispert does has become increasingly well-understood in the past half-decade or so. There is real value to making, in his case, 44 percent of 178 3-point attempts, real value to doing almost everything you do efficiently, even if you don’t have the opportunity of high volume.
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In 2015-16 Gonzaga was a No. 11 seed. Since then the Zags have been a No. 1 seed three times (if you count last season’s locked-in No. 1 prior to lockdown). Every year Mark Few loses star players, and every year Gonzaga not only keeps winning but also keeps getting better, keeps getting more and more likely to win a national title. Corey Kisperts are the secret sauce, and no one is better at it than Corey Kispert.
Second team
Marcus Zegarowski, junior guard, Creighton
If you’re a betting person, and you’re interested in a long-term college basketball awards bet, you could do far worse than laying a unit or two on Marcus Zegarowski. Simply put, the dude is going to score. Creighton coach Greg McDermott always puts together elite offenses, filled with floor-spacing shooters. This one will be no different, and with Ty-Shon Alexander gone, Zegarowski — who shot 42 percent from 3 and 54 percent from 2, and will be even more efficient if he curtails the turnovers just slightly — will probably soak up much more volume this time around. Don’t be surprised if he’s a player of the year candidate come March.
Collin Gillespie, senior guard, Villanova
Late last year, in the wake of Villanova’s win over top-ranked Kansas, the great Dana O’Neil reflected on Collin Gillespie and on the strange conundrum Gillespie has faced since he arrived at Villanova four years ago: “Since he got to campus, Gillespie has been viewed as some sort of Ryan Arch 2.0. Suburban Philly kid, good outside shooter, clean-cut, polite. He’s a near reincarnation. It’s a compliment, to be certain, but it’s also got to be tiresome after a while. No one wants to be viewed merely as someone else’s replacement.” Is it safe to say Gillespie is now out of that shadow? Gillespie was a freshman when Jalen Brunson led the Wildcats to their second national title in three seasons; now he is the point man and undisputed leader of a team hoping to make it three in six.
Marcus Garrett, junior guard, Kansas
Marcus Garrett is already one of the best defenders in college basketball. He was that a season ago, the type of player not only good at locking up multiple positions but also able to explain in remarkable galaxy-brained detail exactly why he was able to do so. At 6-foot-5 with a long reach and active hands and intuitive defensive savvy, he can affect games in ways that aren’t always obvious until you see Kansas’s defensive efficiency numbers at the end of a game.
As much as we at The Athletic pride ourselves on understanding the less obvious metrics in this sport, this vote is undoubtedly driven in part by what else Garrett can bring to the table. He has been a solid offensive player, but now he will have the chance to run the show at a program where point guards are not just servicable but usually some of the very best in the country. Garrett was already a good passer; if he adds even more to his game, he’s going to be terrifying.
Sam Hauser, senior wing, Virginia
Defensively the 2019-20 Virginia Cavaliers were something to behold. You know how good Tony Bennett’s defenses usually are? That, and then some. It might have been his best defensive team ever, which is no faint praise … and the whole thing was nearly derailed by easily the worst offensive team Bennett has ever put on the floor. Virginia finished 23-7, which remains a marvel. The whole thing was a grind.
Enter Sam Hauser, and enter better offensive days. The former three-year Marquette star was persuaded to join Virginia right around the time the 2018-19 Cavaliers were cutting down the nets in Minneapolis; now Hauser is seen as the key to returning to some semblance of that team’s balance. There are few better shooters in college basketball — Hauser is 246-of-553 from 3 in three years of high-major shotmaking — and at 6-foot-8 he promises to open up the floor in the same way DeAndre Hunter managed two seasons ago. Hauser isn’t that kind of defender, and Virginia might not lock people down on that end to the same degree this season, but Virginia is never bad defensively. With Hauser in the blend, the offense should be back.
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Garrison Brooks, senior forward, North Carolina
When Cole Anthony was drafted Tuesday night, he wept, telling the ESPN cameras that last year, his one and only with North Carolina, was the most difficult year of his life. Surely everyone at UNC would agree, not least of all Roy Williams, whose postgame quotes got progressively more manfully sad throughout the season, in a way that just made you want to give him a hug. Garrison Brooks is determined not to live it again. Carolina has reloaded, but Brooks, a true lane-running Tar Heels big, is the lone holdover to have done himself justice a year ago, to the point where he is now expected to anchor a team that can compete with Virginia, Duke and Florida State for the top spot in the ACC. Brooks will harbor expectations every bit as high as the outside world’s. We’ll see.
Honorable mention: Remy Martin, Arizona State; Trayce Jackson-Davis, Indiana; Brandon Boston Jr., Kentucky; Evan Mobley, USC; Jalen Crutcher, Dayton; Terry Taylor, Austin Peay
Also receiving votes: Olivier Sarr, Kentucky; Jeremiah Robinson-Earl, Villanova; Chris Smith, UCLA; Matthew Hurt, Duke; Kofi Cockburn, Illinois; Caleb Mills, Houston; Joe Wieskamp, Iowa; Yves Pons, Tennessee; Drew Timme, Gonzaga; Oscar Tshiebwe, West Virginia
(Illustration: Wes McCabe / The Athletic)