Final Four's only good vibes

Good morning from San Antonio! It’s a great day for basketball.

Let's dive into what to know for tonight.

1. A loaded Final Four’s loaded with continuity

The best thing about the “greatest Final Four” that awaits tonight? It made for a relaxed, fun environment for pretty much everyone involved on Friday. Players joked around and played video games. Coaches were jovial and didn’t seem stressed.

That’s how it goes when every team’s in the midst of an historically good season. A loss here? You can’t feel too badly about it.

Put another way, the vibes were high on Friday.

“We are a tight-knit group, we hang out with everybody,” Auburn guard Miles Kelly said. “All the stuff we’ve been through this season, it’s been paying off in ways that we wanted to as a team.”

Having talent also helps. But perhaps the underrated aspect of everyone’s success is the continuity and the home-grown talent for each program. In the transfer portal era, that sure stands out as a critical part of success.

“It is to us,” Houston coach Kelvin Sampson said. “The strength of our program is maybe not recruiting the 5-star guys that a lot of schools here do. But we develop guys into 5 stars. We take a lot of pride in that.”

Houston has five players that Sampson recruited and turned into studs. Per Mike DeCourcy of The Sporting News, 59 percent of the Final Four rotation players signed with their teams out of high school.

Florida did the same thing under third-year coach Todd Golden. The Gators’ backcourt features three transfers in Walter Clayton Jr, Will Richard and Alijah Martin. But the the frontcourt is mostly players who the Gators ID’d, recruited, and developed. And now they’re essential to their success.

“We were finally in a position after our second year where we had a lot of really talented players in our program that we felt like we could build around the. That was not the case after year one,” Golden said. “We were able to bring in talented young guys, specifically Alex (Condon), Tommy (Haugh) and Denzel (Aberdeen) as guys that have grown without our program.”

Haugh and Condon are both sophomores. They’ve developed so quickly that they’re on the NBA radar ahead of schedule. That’s not great for Florida’s future outlook, but will be a benefit when it comes to pitching players on the Gators.

And while Duke features three freshmen in its starting lineup (there wasn’t a lot of development work for them), it is a team that was mostly recruited by coach Jon Scheyer and his staff. The players just won’t be around long enough to have multiple seasons.

“Actually I recruited even more my first year hoping those guys could turn into veteran players in our program. But the reality is the college basketball landscape just blew up at the same time, where that became harder to do,” Scheyer told TSN. “But for us, I think it's foolish to say you have one way of recruiting and always doing that. I think there needs to be some agility, also understanding we're relying heavily on freshmen players. They better be ready to go right away.”

I think they’re ready. So’s everyone else. Can’t wait.

2. Essential reading ahead of the Final Four

There’s no shortage of stories that preview Saturday’s games, which start at 6:09 pm ET on CBS. Here’s what caught my eye on Friday:

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