COVID-19 led to extra college eligibility. Those 5th-year players are set for their last runs

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (AP) — RJ Davis accomplished enough in four years at North Carolina for his jersey to eventually earn a place among the honored numbers in the Smith Center’s rafters for the blueblood program.

Yet he’s still here.

“With five years, I know some people may say, ‘Oh, you need to go get a job now,’” Davis said with a chuckle.

It’s the last ride for Davis — the lone returning Associated Press first-team men’s All-American from last season — and most players who gained an extra year of eligibility amid the COVID-19 pandemic, which largely cycles out of men’s and women’s basketball this season. It has been the most unusual of recent landscape-shifting changes in college sports, one that temporarily replaced a bedrock tenet of athletes having a four-season run with a salve for competing amid empty arenas, campus bubbles and endless nose-swab testing during the 2020-21 season.

Its impact has been massive. Rules arriving concurrently allowed players to move freely between schools through the transfer portal and cash in on fame through name, image and likeness (NIL) activities, a blended enticement to stick around college rather than leaving to chase potential professional careers. That in turn made rosters older, with coaches preferring veteran additions to freshmen after recent examples of how experience wins in March.

Fifth-year players start this year in the spotlight, headlined by Davis with the ninth-ranked Tar Heels and fellow preseason AP All-Americans Hunter Dickinson of top-ranked Kansas, No. 2 Alabama’s Mark Sears, No. 10 Arizona’s Caleb Love — who started his career alongside Davis at UNC — and No. 11 Auburn’s Johni Broome.

Davis is the only one of that group to stay at one school.

“I think we’re in a time now where having experienced players and players coming back for another year has brought college basketball — in my eyes at least — back to life,” Davis said in an AP interview. “It gives more of like a story behind it.

“You have guys that have been one-and-dones, but not a lot of people talk about the guys that stayed for more than two years. I feel like their stories are something that need to be told as well. And I love that.”

Getting older

According to NCAA data, the average experience level for Division I men’s players stood at 2.41 years for 2018-19, the last full season untouched by the pandemic, but has risen to 2.62 years for 2024-25. Yet that data is based on a four-year scale, meaning it doesn't tell the full story on how players in fifth years or beyond would drive that figure even higher.

Consider Louisville, Xavier and Middle Tennessee. The Cardinals, Musketeers and Blue Raiders were among the oldest rosters with a combined average experience level of 3.37 years. But each features roughly a half-dozen fifth-year players (or older, in some cases), and updating the data to more precisely capture that pushes their combined average to 3.78 years.

“This is the way I’ve looked at it recently: you’re really giving somebody — it’s not just adding a year,” Duke coach Jon Scheyer said earlier this year. “You’re adding a year to the best years they have. … It’s a big advantage.”

A look at the recent Final Four lineups backs Scheyer. In 2022, North Carolina and Villanova each had at least one fifth-year starter. San Diego State, Miami and Florida Atlantic did it a year later.

By last April, all four teams had at least one, from Cam Spencer as the No. 2 scorer (14.3) in UConn’s run to a repeat NCAA title to N.C. State having three ( DJ Horne, D.J. Burns Jr., and Casey Morsell) in its surprise run to that program’s first Final Four since 1983.

Conversely, there’s been only one first-year freshman starter in the past two Final Fours: UConn one-and-done guard Stephon Castle last year.

The value of experience weighed on Sears’ mind in returning after the Crimson Tide’s first Final Four run.

“I saw the team that we had and I wanted to be a part of it and bring home Alabama’s first national championship in basketball,” said Sears, who started his career at Ohio.

Turning the page

Still, while Scheyer felt pandemic-impacted players deserved the extra year, he’s ready for it to end. So too is Atlantic Coast Conference commissioner Jim Phillips.

“It’s time to move forward, because what this has caused also is a pushback on freshmen and younger players and opportunities because some of the student-athletes with additional years have been kept in the system,” Phillips told the AP. “And I think the health of college sports remains this opportunity to come in and play four years and then move out, either graduate or move out to the pros.”

Michigan State Hall of Fame coach Tom Izzo went further, calling the extra eligibility year a “good intention” that might have been a “mistake” in hindsight.

“It sounded fair and good, but when you added that with the NIL and the transfer portal, it’s been absolute chaos,” Izzo said.

“I was talking to a guy today whose son, he was developing fine,” Izzo added. “And all of a sudden there was some pressure on the coach. … And they bring in a couple of guys, so now he doesn’t get a chance to develop. You wonder, you always hear it’s good, that players should be able to go and do what they want to do. But they affect other players’ lives. To be honest with you, I still think it’s a mess.”

There’s no doubt that managing rosters and scholarships has gotten trickier. But there's also value in name recognition for fans seeing top talents stick around longer compared to the past focus on the one-and-done NBA talents.

At minimum, it easily lends itself to quips about college players' age, such as LSU coach Matt McMahon facing Auburn’s Broome again after their previous Ohio Valley Conference meetings at Murray State and Morehead State, respectively.

“It seems like it’s been a decade or so coaching against him,” McMahon said.

A record finish?

Davis has seen plenty, too.

The 6-footer arrived in Chapel Hill in fall 2020 for Hall of Famer Roy Williams' final season and took part in the bubbled 2021 NCAA Tournament in Indiana. Then, after Hubert Davis took over for the retiring Williams, the Tar Heels made a wild ride to the 2022 title game only to follow that by becoming the first preseason AP No. 1-ranked team to miss the NCAA tourney in 2023.

But Davis took a huge leap to become the ACC’s scoring leader (21.2), set the 38-year-old Smith Center’s single-game scoring record (42 points against Miami) and won the Jerry West Award as the nation's top shooting guard as the Tar Heels won the ACC regular-season race and earned a No. 1 NCAA seed.

“One thing about me that I’ve learned throughout my time here," he said, “is to accept and adapt to changes.”

And there could be one more big one ahead.

Davis closed his first four seasons ranked fifth on UNC's career scoring list (2,088 points). If he matches last year’s scoring total, he’ll tie program great Tyler Hansbrough (2,872) for the school and ACC career scoring record.

He shrugs off discounting that potential moment because he’ll have had an extra year of production to get there, pointing to the same mantra — “It’s proving myself right rather than listening to other people’s opinions,” he said — that has brought him to this point.

And he's eager to savor this final year, whatever it holds.

“I think it’s embracing the time here, whatever school you’re at,” Davis said. “It’s great. Sometimes four may not be enough.”

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AP Sports Writers Larry Lage in Michigan and John Zenor in Alabama contributed to this report.”

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Aaron Beard, The Associated Press