Senior classes are obsolete

Not a single senior made the All-America team.

SAN ANTONIO (AP) — When Dave Odom came to the Alamodome last week to coach a college All-Star game, he started practice with a pep talk. But first he had a senior moment of sorts.

Not because Odom is 65 and just retired as South Carolina coach, but because the game was for seniors only.

“I congratulated them for staying in school, pursuing their degrees and making a difference,” Odom said.

There are fewer and fewer of those senior moments in college basketball anymore.

These days, the place they’re usually making a difference is the NBA.

Check the rosters of the teams that made this year’s Final Four — or the entire NCAA tournament, really. There’s not much left of the Class of 2008. Those players are long gone to the pros.

Derrick Rose and Kevin Love, both freshmen, drew the most attention in San Antonio. A matchup between newcomers Michael Beasley and O.J. Mayo created the biggest buzz in the first round.

Hardly a significant senior on the floor. For the first time, in fact, not a single one made the All-America team.

“The landscape has changed,” Louisville coach Rick Pitino said.

Rose figured to end his brief college career Monday night when he led Memphis into the championship game. Big man Joey Dorsey was the lone Tigers senior to take on Kansas.

UCLA and North Carolina, the other two teams that reached the semifinals, did not start a senior.

Kansas is a huge exception in today’s hoops world. The Jayhawks have five seniors, including starters Russell Robinson and Darnell Jackson and key reserve Sasha Kaun.

There have been early defections to the pros for 30 years, but it started in earnest with Syracuse in 2003. Carmelo Anthony spent one year on campus, long enough to lead the Orange to their lone championship.

Greg Oden took Ohio State to the title game last year as a freshman and Kevin Durant did well in his only season at Texas.

Since 2001, only one senior has been a top-five pick. That was Shelden Williams of Duke, taken fifth overall by Atlanta in 2006.

UCLA’s Love and Kansas State’s Beasley earned All-America status and are expected to turn pro. So are Rose and Mayo, the Southern California star, and Indiana’s Eric Gordon.

“It’s all based on the NBA. When the NBA started drafting players directly out of high school, you had 10th graders, their whole mindset was, ‘I’m going straight to the NBA,’ ” Calipari said.

The NBA and its union changed the rules for the 2006 draft. To be eligible, players must turn at least 19 in the calendar year they’re picked and be one full year past their high school graduation.

In his perfect world, NBA commissioner David Stern would wait longer.

“Would I like 20 more than 19? Sure, I would,” Stern said Monday in San Antonio. “But we made the judgment that we’d take what we could get.”