Super Seniors Are All Over the Men’s Final Four—and Making All the Difference

Given the opportunity for the rare five-year career, players like Brady Manek, Collin Gillespie and Remy Martin are playing a unique role this March.

Brady Manek wasn’t quite ready to grow up yet.

Confronted with a decision hundreds of seniors across college basketball had to make in spring 2021, Manek chose one more year of college instead of the real world. And as he embarks on his final weekend (for real this time) as a college basketball player, he couldn’t be happier to have prolonged his amateur career.

In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, the NCAA announced in October 2020 that athletes who competed during the ’20–21 season would get an additional year of eligibility, protecting players worried that a COVID-19-impacted season wouldn’t be worth playing in. The most immediate impact was for seniors, who suddenly had a decision to make: stay for a bonus year of college or move on, whether that be to professional basketball or corporate America.

Manek has helped his new team, North Carolina, reach the Final Four.

Bill Streicher/USA TODAY Sports

In all, 430 seniors on the men’s side elected to come back for another year, though just 30 of those stayed at the same school while 400 elected to transfer for their final season. They ranged from small contributors at mid-major schools taking advantage of a chance for a tuition-free master’s degree to fringe NBA players looking to improve their chances of making a pro roster. Nine of those 430 are headed to New Orleans as members of one of the four teams still standing. All four have gotten significant mileage out of their “super seniors,” and college basketball’s old head are redefining a term once reserved for the local straggler who partied so much he needed an extra year to graduate.

Kansas has four “super seniors” on its roster: three added last spring from the transfer portal and returner Mitch Lightfoot, who is wrapping up his sixth year in Lawrence. Duke has utilized a pair of seniors taking their extra year in Theo John (Marquette) and Bates Jones (Davidson) to bolster its frontcourt depth. North Carolina added Manek, who has held down the starting power forward spot for much of the season. And perhaps no team in men’s college basketball benefited more from the extra year than Villanova, which got back star point guard Collin Gillespie and starting forward Jermaine Samuels for one more season.

“When you’re playing great teams in big-time atmospheres like this, there is a lot of pressure there,” Jay Wright said earlier in the tournament. “When that team makes the run, if you haven’t been there before and know that you can withstand that. … If you haven't done it, it’s hard, you can panic. But all these guys have been there.”

Even before the extra year, college basketball was getting older. As ESPN’s John Gasaway pointed out on his personal website in February, last year’s men’s national champions from Baylor were the oldest champs in at least the past decade, with an average age of over 22 years old. A big reason for that has been an increased reliance by even elite teams on transfers rather than the one-and-done freshmen Duke and Kentucky built programs around in the 2010s. Adding an extra year to the mix has only poured fuel onto that fire. In fact, based on average years spent in college, this year’s Final Four teams’ rotations are the oldest from at least the last 10 tournaments, and maybe more. If we define a team’s playing rotation as anyone that plays over 10 minutes per game, Kansas’s and Villanova’s rotations are, on average, in their fourth year of college. And Kansas’s number may even be an undercount when you consider that “super senior” Jalen Coleman-Lands is in his seventh year of school but didn’t meet the “10 minutes per game” qualification. Either way, both KU and Villanova would be the oldest champs based on college experience in at least the last 10 tourneys, and likely far longer.

To help conceptualize this, consider that Manek entered college at Oklahoma in 2017 alongside Trae Young. Young is now a multi-time NBA All-Star on his fourth season in the league, has signed a $173 million contract and is a global celebrity. Manek, meanwhile, still walks around a college campus all day, bouncing from class to practice like any other collegiate athlete.

“It’s crazy to think that, in a weird world, [Trae] could still be in college,” Manek says. “That feels like a long time ago.”

Manek spent four years at Oklahoma before transferring to North Carolina for his extra year, going from a clean-shaven, buzz-cut-donning freshman who was mostly a catch-and-shoot guy to the mountain man you see today—a guy who gets to the free throw line more, defends his position better and is still capable of getting hot from three. He entered the portal last spring to keep his options open: He could return to OU for one more year and stay close to his family, transfer and experience something new, or head to the pros. In the end, his decision came down to playing professionally overseas or coming to North Carolina, where Hubert Davis had made him a priority after landing the coaching job in Chapel Hill. Eventually, the decision became clear: stay in college for one more year, where he’s enrolled in a postgraduate non-degree program that allows him to stay eligible.

“If you go to Carolina, it will be awesome, you’ll have an awesome time, you’ll get to experience new places, a new fan base—and if all else fails, a year from now you’ll be in the same position you’re in now and you’ll be going overseas,” Manek says of his decision-making process. “So why not take that extra year and try to enjoy another year of college at a different place? Eleven months later, I was going to be in the same position no matter what, so I might as well take it.”

On the other side was Samuels, a multiyear contributor for Villanova who wasn’t quite ready to move on after the Wildcats got bounced in the Sweet 16 of last year’s tournament. Samuels and Gillespie were freshmen when Villanova won a national championship back in 2018, though Samuels played just 11 total minutes during that tourney. Unlike Manek, Samuels was locked in on staying with Villanova if he was going to come back to school instead of playing professionally, but in the days after the ’20–21 season ended, he and Gillespie had a decision to make.

“As soon as we came back from Indiana after the tournament, I looked at him and I was like ‘Sooo, like, what are we thinking?’ and he was like ‘I don’t know man, I gotta talk to my family, you know how it goes … but I could probably stay.’” Samuels recalls. “I was like, ‘If you say anything that sounds like you’re staying, I’m staying.’ It was not a question. We came in together; I was going out with him.”

So Gillespie and Samuels decided to run it back for one more year in a Villanova uniform, with a goal of finishing the way they started their careers: as national champions.

“You join a team, you stay with that team: good, bad or indifferent,” Gillespie’s father Jim tells Sports Illustrated’s Greg Bishop. “We used to call them jacket chasers, you’d see these kids jumping off from team to team, to go try to win a jacket for another team, make these super teams, but you know what, you put the effort in you, that’s your team, you stick by him. It's all about loyalty.”

Gillespie (left) and Samuels are hoping their career ends full circle, with another national title.

David J. Phillip/AP

Even with pro options on the table, the loyalty to the Villanova program developed over years of playing under Jay Wright held strong for both Gillespie and Samuels.

“I just said to myself, I only have one chance in my life to put on this jersey in a four- or five-year span, and I’ll never get a chance to do it again,” Samuels says. “I wanted to be able to say that I had another chance to play with my brothers.”

The impact these super seniors have made during this tournament has been immense. Manek is averaging 21.5 points and 8.0 rebounds and shooting nearly 50% from three during the Heels’ run. Samuels has tallied 15 or more points in all four Wildcats games, while Gillespie is arguably the sport’s best point guard. Kansas wouldn’t be in New Orleans right now without Remy Martin, who has recovered from a midseason knee injury to make a huge difference during the Big Dance after scoring 20-plus points in tight wins over Creighton and Providence. They’re making the most of their final chance on the sport’s biggest stage, doing so using the experience of playing more college basketball than almost anyone else ever has. Manek, John, Lightfoot, Coleman-Lands and Gillespie are among the super seniors who’ve tallied more than 150 career games, while Martin has laced ’em up 146 times. For context: Prior to this season just 15 players in men’s college basketball history had played 150 or more collegiate games.

All that game experience is incredibly valuable, especially in March. These super seniors play vastly different roles for their respective teams, but all are different players than they were when they showed up to campus five (or six, or seven) years ago.

“When I came in, I thought I knew what I was doing and I had no idea,” Samuels says. “I paid the price for that, just thinking I could show up and play. Just watching the 2018 [championship] team, watching how great they were, how many plays they made for each other, you think as a sophomore, as a junior it will just happen automatically and you forget all the work those guys put in and how much time and energy you have to put in, and it shows over time.”

In a different world, players like Samuels and Manek would be overseas or in the NBA G League right now, embarking on their professional futures. Instead, they’re making the most of their last chance at college hoops glory and soaking up every second in the process. Saturday, they’ll suit up in front of more than 70,000 fans for one last go-round as the big men on campus. But even if it hadn’t ended in storybook fashion, neither Manek nor Samuels has any regrets about running it back in college.

“[The Final Four] is just a cherry on top of this whole experience because the experience itself has been more than I ever expected,” Manek says. “It was the fans walking around on Franklin Street here on campus, taking pictures on the way to class. I’m blown away by how important basketball is here.”

“All of these accomplishments we’ve had in the postseason and late in the season have just been icing on the cake.”