None of the No. 1 seeds were ever going to win the NCAA men's tourney this year. Here's why.

College basketball roster construction is all about building a culture.

Although the transfer portal has made rosters more fluid than ever in the NCAA, there is still tremendous value in familiarity. It helps to have players who have played with each other before. This provides stability, rhythm, and a sense of buying into one another.

But the reverse is true, too, and it is often costly. This is perhaps one of the reasons fans should not have been surprised when all of the No. 1 seeds in the NCAA men’s tournament (Purdue, Kansas, Alabama, and Houston) were all eliminated before the Elite Eight.

Each of those teams lacked roster continuity, and the numbers back it up. KenPom tracks what percentage of a team’s minutes are played by the same player from the season prior to the current season. Let’s use two No. 9 seeds as our case studies.

Illinois, the No. 9 seed in the West region, had the lowest year-over-year continuity rating (14.5 percent) of any team that made the tournament. They were eliminated in the first round.

Florida Atlantic ranked in the top 10 in continuity rating (66.2) among teams that made the tournament and will now play in the Final Four for a chance to represent their school in the national championship this weekend.

Since KenPom began tracking the data in 2007, all but one of the teams that have won the men’s tournament have had a continuity rating of at least 40.0 percent. The average continuity rating of a winner in the men’s tournament is 59.9 percent.

Purdue (37.1 percent), Kansas (36.9 percent), and Alabama (25.8 percent) all would have had the lowest continuity percentage of any team on the record to ever win a men’s championship.

Houston (39.5 percent) would have had the second-lowest continuity rating, ahead of only Duke Blue Devils (38.1 percent) in 2015.

So while it maybe shouldn’t be so shocking that these teams all lost, what does that mean for the other teams still left in the Big Dance?

Well, it’s relatively good news for the two mid-major schools, Florida Atlantic and San Diego State. Both have even more experience than the average championship winner.

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Miami is a bit below average on this metric. They would have the fourth-lowest continuity rating from a men’s tournament since 2008.

Meanwhile, UConn (-125) projects as the early favorite to win the NCAA men’s championship.

But if they do cut down the nets and become champions, they would have the lowest continuity percentage on the record of any men’s tournament winner.

So what should we make of this for next year and beyond?

It is no secret that teams that returned a lot of minutes like Gonzaga (67.0), Xavier (59.1), Creighton (53.9), Michigan State (51.1), Tennessee (50.3), and Texas (46.7) all made the Sweet 16.

Some teams with low continuity like Duke (15.8 percent), West Virginia (17.0), and Providence (25.8) were all bounced within the first two rounds.

But that doesn’t mean schools should stop targeting five-star recruits and transfers. Ken Pomeroy provided his thoughts (via The Athletic):

“It is also common sense that young talented players will beat experienced scrubs every time. The most likely path to building a contender is to have a roster of players with prior experience with their team. But every coach’s goal is to put together the best team possible. It’s been proven repeatedly over the past decade that getting the nation’s best freshmen is one path to this goal. And more recently, quality teams have been assembled by signing numerous transfers.”

Several of the most important players in the Final Four are transfers.

The star for FAU this weekend (Vlad Goldin) was a transfer.

The hero for San Diego State today (Darrion Trammell) was a transfer.

The leading scorers for both teams in this game were transfers (Jordan Miller and Marcus Carr).

— Kendall Baker (@kendallbaker) March 26, 2023

Jordan Miller (George Mason), Nijel Pack (Kansas State), and Norchad Omier (Arkansas State) transferred to Miami. Tristen Newton (ECU), Nahiem Alleyne (Virginia Tech), Joey Calcaterra (San Diego), and Hassan Diarra (Texas A&M) transferred to UConn.

Darrion Trammell (Seattle), Matt Beadley (Cal), Micah Parrish (Oakland), and Jaedon LeDee (Ohio State and TCU) transferred to San Diego State. Bryan Greenlee (Minnesota), Jalen Gaffney (UConn), and Vladislav Goldin (Texas Tech) transferred to FAU.

There is no problem at all with adding as much talent to your roster as possible. But in the tournament, it may help to also anchor those transfers with a core group of players who have stayed in the trenches with the same team, too.

That’s something Purdue, Kansas, Alabama, and Houston all lacked.