Frank Mason III talks about his game-winning shot against Duke and how he hopes Kansas can build off the victory. (0:35)

NEW YORK -- It seems like, someone tweeted, Frank Mason III has been at Kansas for 10 years.

Of course it does.

Because Mason is a senior, which is to say he is a senior citizen in college basketball, an aged and decrepit relic from an era long since gone by. The sport is all about freshmen now, the new kids on the block who drop by for a cameo before starring on the bigger stage. They steal the headlines and turn fans and media alike into armchair NBA scouts.

So when will we learn? A year ago Buddy ball stole the season, and Ryan Arcidiacono and Daniel Ochefu combined to lead Villanova to a national championship. A year before that, Quinn Cook rallied Duke's trio of NBA-bound rookies to a title. Before that, it was Shabazz Napier taking UConn by the hand, and all the way back in 2013, it was Peyton Siva guiding Louisville.

None of that seemed to knock any sense into us.

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Maybe this, a Frank Mason winning jumper on the early season big stage of the Champions Classic instead of the end-season elevated stage of the Final Four, will do the trick.

After watching an undermanned Duke team claw all the way back to tie the score with 15.5 seconds left Tuesday night, Kansas coach Bill Self called a timeout. He designed a simple play -- an isolation for Mason.

"That was quite a play we called -- get out of his way and go shoot it," Self joked.

Worked like a charm. With a fairly partisan Madison Square Garden crowd in a frenzy after Duke freshman Frank Jackson tied the score with a 3-pointer, Mason rose from near the foul line and launched.

The ball swished through with 1.8 seconds left to give Kansas the 77-75 win over the top-ranked Blue Devils.

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In the grand scheme of things, it will go down as an exciting win that might or might not have a lasting impact come March. In the smaller picture, it ought to be a palm to the forehead wake-up call to everyone who claims to pay attention to this sport.

Seniors matter. They've always mattered. They still matter this season. They will matter next season. The three guys (Harry Giles, Jayson Tatum and Marques Bolden) sitting on the Duke bench, dressed in their natty Boyz II Men matching suits, will surely make a big impact on the Blue Devils' long-term plans once they are healthy. Josh Jackson will have his say about how the Jayhawks fare.

The good money, though, is on guys like Mason and Duke junior Grayson Allen ultimately dictating how this season goes. The Blue Devils didn't lose to Kansas because it's triumvirate of freshmen was on the bench with injuries. They lost because Allen, a junior, shot just 4-of-15 from the field, 1-of-7 from beyond the arc and, according to his coach, looked too hard for fouls to be called instead of just playing the game. Duke lost because Amile Jefferson, a senior, coughed up the ball seven times.

And Kansas didn't win because Jackson enjoyed a glorious second-half spurt to showcase his skills. It won because of Mason not only hitting a game winner but winning the game from start to finish.

Mike Krzyzewski, who knows a thing or two about this sport, agreed. The Duke coach said he studies faces as much as he watches how a player plays. In the stoicism of Mason, not in the raw talent of Jackson, he saw Kansas' future.

"He has a strong face," Krzyzewski said. "He gives the face of a leader."

In the handshake line at the end of the game, the Duke coach looked that strong face in the eye and said simply, "Big-time shot by a big-time player."

The big-time is stretched across both of Kansas' games now, not just a flash in the pan here in New York. In two games, Mason has 51 points. He practically willed the Jayhawks to overtime against Indiana this past Friday in Honolulu and, despite early foul trouble, essentially did the same here. He shot 8-of-13 from the field, 5-of-7 from the 3-point arc, dished out five assists, swiped two steals and coughed the ball up only twice in 35 minutes of play.

Much has been made about Mason's past, about an early commitment to Towson after he failed to catch the expert eyes of college recruiters early. Along with backcourt mate Devonte Graham, whose college career began at Appalachian State, Mason makes up the best small-major gone big-timer perhaps in the history of the game.

But his story now isn't so much about people who missed on him. It's about who he has grown into. Asked if his younger self could have made such a big shot, Mason smirked.

"I'm not sure I'd be in the game in that situation in my younger days," he said.

Those younger days weren't a decade ago, by the way.

It just seems that way in a world gone too wild over freshmen.