The freshmen that play in the NCAA today are changing college basketball.

This has become more evident in this year’s NCAA tournament.

The stellar play of freshman T.J. Leaf and Lonzo Ball has turned around an entire program. The UCLA Bruins finished 15-17 and tenth in the Pac 12 last year without the two in the program.

This year they finished 28-3 and third in the Pac 12. Leaf led the team in scoring while Ball led not only the team, but the whole nation in assists.

The team most known for benefiting from freshman talent is the Kentucky Wildcats. The head coach of the Wildcats, John Calipari, has been criticized for using the “one and done system.” meaning that he will bring in a freshman for one year and that freshman will be gone for the NBA the next season.

The Wildcats’ top three scorers this year are all freshman. All likely to go in to the NBA draft: De’Aaron Fox, Bam Adebayo, and Malik Monk.

The Wildcats will be prepared, however. They have the no. 1 recruiting class in the nation for 2017.

The surge of reliability for freshmen is new for the NCAA. The rule used to be that if a player was good enough, then he was able to go to the NBA straight after high school, being able to completely skip college.

Stars such as LeBron James and Kobe Bryant took that path. If they were forced to go to college for at least one year, like today, then the history books of the NCAA would be changed.

Many other stars other than James and Bryant also took that path straight out of high school.

The best freshmen at the time were already in the NBA and the freshmen coming in were not as good as the ones we see today.

Today, there are freshmen who are bound for the NBA but are detoured for one year of college. Many argue that this is completely unnecessary for them to only go for one year.

But the players today are even more prepared for the NBA than the ones who went to the pros straight out of high school.

The freshmen will be getting even more prepared for college and professional basketball when they are younger and will only get better from here on.