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3 Head Coaches Make Final Four Debut

In each of the past two years, every head coach in the Final Four had been there, done that. A few of them (Bo Ryan, Jay Wright and Lon Kruger) had only been to the national semifinals once before, but they all had some experience under the brightest lights college basketball has to offer.

This year, though, Roy Williams is the only one who knows exactly what to expect. Dana Altman and Mark Few have a combined 46 years of coaching experience and 1,099 career wins, but neither one has ever come this far. Throw in Frank Martin making his Final Four debut in his 10th season and you have a trifecta of first-timers.

Moreover, even the fans don't know what to expect. It was impressive when Kevin Ollie led Connecticut to the 2014 title in just his second year as a head coach, but there were Huskies on the roster with national championship experience. Between Gonzaga, Oregon and South Carolina, 75 percent of these programs have zero Final Four appearances since World War II began.

Where Have All the Freshmen Gone?

As has been the case for the past decade, we spent this entire season obsessing over one-and-done superstars. Guys like Lonzo Ball, Josh Jackson, Jayson Tatum, Lauri Markkanen, Miles Bridges, Malik Monk, De'Aaron Fox and Bam Adebayo were constantly making headlines in advance of their inevitable decisions to declare for the NBA draft.

But the veterans have taken center stage en route to Phoenix. Provided the coaches don't change their lineups in the next week, the 20 starters in the Final Four will be made up of seven seniors, seven juniors, four sophomores and just two freshmen—Oregon's Payton Pritchard and South Carolina's Maik Kotsar.

In lieu of first-year stars, transfers rule the roost. Gonzaga's Nigel Williams-Goss, Johnathan Williams III and Jordan Mathews and Oregon's Dylan Ennis all began their college careers elsewhere before becoming starters for Final Four teams.

West Coast Basketball Is Back

Over the past eight years, the Final Four has been dominated by teams from the East and Central time zones. No team west of Norman, Oklahoma, has been to the national semifinals since the end of UCLA's back-to-back-to-back stretch in 2008.

But with the Final Four being held west of the Rockies for the first time since 1995, it was the perfect year for multiple West Coast teams to make it.

If Oregon and Gonzaga happen to meet for the national championship, it will become comically apparent which East Coast journalists occasionally stayed up late enough to watch the Ducks and Zags play during the regular season.

Can North Carolina Redeem the ACC?

In 2011, the Big East sent a record 11 teams to the NCAA tournament. Only two made it to the Sweet 16, but that factoid has been lost in the sands of time because 2011 will forever be remembered as the year that Kemba Walker led Connecticut to 11 straight wins in the Big East and NCAA tournaments.

Much of this season was dedicated to asking whether the ACC is the best conference ever, indirectly suggesting it was even better than that Big East bunch from six years ago. But that narrative went up in smoke when eight of the nine ACC teams invited to the dance failed to survive the first weekend.

Or did it?

If North Carolina can win two more games, is anyone going to look back in a few years and immediately remember the ACC falling flat on its face? Probably not. We would remember it as the year South Carolina shocked the world, the year that Gonzaga finally reached the Final Four and the year that Roy Williams cemented his legacy in the pantheon of college basketball coaches.

That's only if North Carolina wins it all, though. If the Tar Heels fall to Oregon in their next game, it might be a decade before we point to the 2017 NCAA tournament without recalling the ACC's struggles.