Despite massive influx of transfers, freshmen star on college basketball’s Opening Night

On a night when Seton Hall coach Shaheen Holloway started five transfers, it was a freshman who stole the show.

Najai Hines, the 6-foot-10, 265-pound mountain masquerading as a man, wowed fans with a 12-point, 9-rebound, 6-block performance as the new-look Pirates dominated Holloway’s old team, Saint Peter’s, 77-50, at Prudential Center.

The highlight of the night came when a teammate deflected a ball into Hines’ hands near the Seton Hall basket and the big fella immediately passed to point guard Adam “Budd” Clark, the highly touted Merrimack transfer. Hines then raced upcourt stride-for-stride with the 5-10 Clark before the guard dished to the big man for a one-handed dunk on the other end as the crowd went wild.

“With that play, it was just a connection with me and Budd,” Hines, a local kid who played at Plainfield High School and with the NY Rens Nike EYBL team, said post-game. “He was going up the floor, he knows I run the floor, we work on it in practice…so just called it out. He threw it and it just happened.”

What about the crowd reaction to the play?

“It definitely got me hyped,” the charismatic big man said with a smile. “You know, great feeling, first college game.”

The performance by Hines was just one of several special showings by freshmen on the opening night of the 2025-26 college basketball season.

**In Las Vegas, Arizona freshman Koa Peat went for 30 points, 7 rebounds and 5 assists – including a massive one-handed dunk over a defender – as the No. 13 Wildcats upset defending NCAA champion and No. 3 Florida, 93-87. In that same game, fellow Arizona freshman Ivan Kharchenkov, who has played for FC Bayern Munich since he was 12, went for 12 points and 10 boards.

**Also in Las Vegas, BYU freshman sensation AJ Dybantsa, a candidate for the No. 1 overall pick in next summer’s NBA Draft, put up 21 points, 6 rebounds and 3 assists on 9-of-18 shooting in an exciting 71-66 win over former Seton Hall coach Kevin Willard and his new-look Villanova squad. More than 60 NBA scouts were in attendance for the game.

“He’s one of the best high school players I’ve seen come out in a long time,” Willard told reporters. “… He’s the real deal.”

**In Lawrence, Kansas, yet another freshman, Darryn Peterson, the No. 1 recruit in the Class of 2025, tallied 21 points, 4 rebounds and 3 assists in 22 minutes as No. 19 Kansas dominated Green Bay, 94-51.

**At Tennessee, five-star Nate Ament, a projected lottery pick, went for 18 points and 9 boards in a 76-61 win over Mercer.

**In Houston, five-star freshman forward Chris Cenac tallied 12 points and 10 boards as the No. 2 Cougars overwhelmed Lehigh, 75-57.

**In Chapel Hill, N.C., five-star freshman Caleb Wilson went for 22 points on 8-of-10 shooting with 4 rebounds as the No. 25 Tar Hills dominated Central Arkansas, 94-54.

**The Arkansas duo of Darius Acuff Jr. (22 points) and Meleek Thomas (21) combined for 43 points in a 109-77 destruction of Southern.

**At Syracuse, Kiyan Anthony, the son of NBA legend Carmelo Anthony, went for 15 points, 3 assists and 3 rebounds in an 85-47 rout of Binghamton.

**On Tuesday night, Duke freshman sensation Cam Boozer will make his season debut for the No. 6 Blue Devils against Texas at Spectrum Center in Charlotte, N.C. Boozer put up a 33-point, 12-rebound, 4-assist performance against UCF in his preseason debut and followed that with a 24-points, 23-rebound, 6-assist outing in an exhibition win over Tennessee.

These performances come after nearly 2,700 players hit the transfer portal last spring and amid a climate where coaches are increasingly placing a priority on age and experience over youth and potential.

“The bottom line is that a 21-year-old has got a lot of advantages in experience and ability, size, toughness and so forth,” former Auburn coach Bruce Pearl told The Associated Press ahead of last season. “Rather than me bringing in three or four high school players in each class and maybe a transfer, we’ll bring in one or two high school players and then fill the roster up with transfers.”

But Pearl is now retired and was in the TNT studio Monday night watching the 6-9 Dybantsa look like a young Kevin Durant in BYU’s win over Villanova.

Dybantsa was asked about the performance of the freshmen class – specifically himself and Arizona’s Peat.

“I’m just proud, I think we have one of the better freshmen classes,” he said on TNT. “I’m just going to stand on that because I’m in that class as well. But I think we’re all going to do tremendous things, go big, go far.”

Back in Newark, Holloway, who once was named MVP of the McDonald’s All-American Game over Kobe Bryant, was asked by NJ Advance Media how freshmen like Hines, Dybantsa, Peat and the others are able to make an impact at a time when so much emphasis is placed on adding transfers.

“It’s a good question,” Holloway said. “I think if you could play, you could play, right? I think some of the freshmen that’s in college right now [are] really good. They can play and there’s a bunch of guys that’s really good. I think we got a good one, and the thing I like about him is he’s just going to get better and better.”

In the one-and-done era, only two teams that relied heavily on freshmen — Kentucky in 2012 with Anthony Davis and New Jersey native Michael Kidd-Gilchrist and Duke in 2015 with Jahlil Okafor, Justice Winslow and Tyus Jones — have cut down the nets.

Last year, Cooper Flagg and fellow freshmen Kon Knueppel and Khaman Maluach led Duke to the Final Four where they appeared well on their way to playing in the NCAA championship game before blowing a double-digit lead in the final minutes against Houston.

Yet since 2007, a whole slew of other so-called “generational” talents have gone to college without even reaching a Final Four. That list, as the Hartford Courant pointed out, includes Durant at Texas in 2007, O.J. Mayo at USC in 2008, DeMarcus Cousins and John Wall at Kentucky in 2010, Kyrie Irving at Duke in 2011, Jayson Tatum at Duke and Lonzo Ball at UCLA in 2017.

In 2019, Duke’s class featured three of the top five recruits on the board — No. 1 R.J. Barrett, No. 2 Cam Reddish and No. 5 Zion Williamson. They lost in the Elite Eight before all three left for the NBA Draft.

A year ago, Rutgers had two of the top five picks in the NBA Draft in Dylan Harper and Ace Bailey and didn’t even make the NCAA Tournament because the rest of the roster wasn’t strong enough.

Teams that have won NCAA championships in recent years — Florida, UConn, Kansas, Baylor, Virginia, Villanova, North Carolina — have tended to be older teams that didn’t rely heavily on star freshmen.

Yet here comes another wave of talented first-year players, maybe the strongest class in recent memory.

Only time will tell how deep the freshmen can lead their teams.

For now, Holloway is just taking it one day at a time.

“I thought Najai had a good first game,” Holloway said. “But let’s keep it like that. Let’s don’t get too high or too low on him. Let’s make sure that he understands that it’s a lot of work to be done.”

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