An Age-Old Question: Talent or Experience?

SYRACUSE, N.Y. — Today’s East Regional final shapes up as a referendum on what could be the most overrated aspect of the NCAA tournament: experience.

Experience is nice. It can help decent and good teams maximize their potential.

But it isn’t preferable to talent. Especially well-coached talent. Such as the Florida Gators.

The Gators have five sophomores, five freshmen and only one senior.

Oklahoma State’s roster has seven seniors. If experience meant everything, they could just call this thing off. But even Oklahoma State Coach Eddie Sutton had to rate this game a tossup.

Sutton brought his seven seniors to the news conference Saturday afternoon. It almost looked like he was showing off. Such an experienced team is a rarity among top programs in today’s college landscape, increasingly depleted by the departures of underclassmen and high schoolers to the NBA. The sight of seven on one team is rare. It was like a collection of Faberge eggs on display.

Of course, each side is going to tout its advantages. Oklahoma State has experience, Florida has depth. Only the Cowboys seemed to be the ones making more concessions.

“I think having seniors on the ballclub is a big advantage for the simple fact that we’ve all been around each other and we know each other’s strengths, weaknesses and tendencies, and we also know when it comes to crunch time what play to make and not to make a stupid play,” Oklahoma State forward Desmond Mason said.

“Playing against a youthful ballclub like Florida, there’s no advantage or disadvantage. Whoever comes out there and makes the plays is going to win the game. We’re going to fight, they’re going to fight.”

“It should give you a feeling of confidence,” Sutton said. “Just like Desmond said, I think they know each other, they’ve been in the trenches, they’ve been to war together. So from that standpoint I think that our guys understand we work hard to put in a game plan, they understand that this is what we have to do to win.

“I know from that standpoint there’s a real plus. But there’s a real plus to having a group of thoroughbreds like Florida has. They’re real talented.”

So, Sutton was asked, would he rather have experience or thoroughbreds?

“Tough question,” Sutton said. “Tough question.”

He finally gave the only answer he could in his position (“I’ll take my team,” he said), but the fact that it gave him pause speaks volumes.

The experience factor has been a nice way for college coaches to console themselves given the new propensity for players to bolt early for the professional ranks. The common wisdom these days is that it’s better to have a group of good players who will mature and grow together than one or two superstars who will leave early and take a school’s NCAA championship hopes with them.

If you look at some recent tournament winners, however, another trend keeps popping up. No position is more vital than point guard, and Connecticut won the title last year with sophomore Khalid El-Amin and Arizona took the tourney with freshman Mike Bibby in 1997.

There was UCLA sophomore Cameron Dollar filling in for the injured Tyus Edney in the 1995 championship game, and sophomore Bobby Hurley getting it done for Duke in 1991. And we all remember the Fab Five’s back-to-back trip to the championship game in their freshman and sophomore years.

Like Florida, those teams had youth everywhere. And Florida is particularly young at point guard, where Coach Billy Donovan rotates sophomore Teddy Dupay and freshmen Brett Nelson and Justin Hamilton.

And at this stage the Gators aren’t quite novices. The sophomores will play in their seventh NCAA tournament game today. The freshmen have been through tough tournament games against Butler and Duke this month.

Again, how much value is there to senior experience?

“It depends on how you want to classify experience,” Dupay said. “I’d rather have on the court sophomores who have been in every situation than a senior that’s been on the bench three years and he’s getting a shot now. I’m not saying that’s Oklahoma State’s guys; I don’t really know the history of their team. But I’d much rather have guys that have been in the situations and not really worry about the age. There’s not a big difference between myself (20) and somebody that’s 22, 23.

“We’ve been in every situation. All we need now is a big one, obviously.”

Donovan, in his sixth season as a head coach, has already shown he can close the coaching experience gap. His team did a better job of defining the game than Mike Krzyzewski’s did Friday.

Donovan’s team is committed to his defensive philosophy and willing to put forth the effort, just as the Cowboys are for Sutton.

Which can almost make it difficult to tell who is the one who has been coaching for 30 years.

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J.A. Adande can be reached at his e-mail address: [email protected].