As the college basketball regular season winds down, three teams – Duke, Michigan and Arizona – emerged as likely 1-seeds in the NCAA Tournament. But there are other contenders who can emerge ahead of March Madness without a true “runaway” favorite.

The NIL and transfer portal era meant talent is beginning to spread out across the sport. But St. John’s coach Rick Pitino pointed out another factor that’s improving the on-court product: European players.

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International players have become increasingly more prominent in college basketball in recent years, especially now that revenue-sharing has arrived thanks to the landmark House settlement. Programs such as Duke, Illinois, Tennessee and North Carolina added notable international players this season.

Combine that with NIL opportunities, and Pitino said the sport is even stronger. It’s not just colleges benefiting, though. The NBA has also seen a surge in international talent. Of course, Pitino also got to see the overseas talent first-hand during his time coaching in Greece.

“First, the foreign influence is with the NBA as well as college,” Pitino said on The Herd. “I coached in Greece at Panathinaikos in the Euro League, and if you’re a basketball player aspiring to go to the Euro League because the NBA is not right in your reach as a foreign player, you’d rather go to college. It almost pays twice more than the Euro League.

“Unless you are the first or second-best player on a Euro League team, the rest of the roster, you can go to college and get paid a lot more money. So college basketball has elevated to a level of great play right now.”

Rick Pitino: ‘I’ve never seen college basketball … this strong’

With conference tournaments and Selection Sunday on the horizon, Rick Pitino pointed out the likely top three seeds in the NCAA Tournament: Duke, Arizona and Michigan. They all have the high-level talent necessary to win a title, in his eyes.

But Pitino said other teams, such as UConn and Illinois, have the coaching success to potentially reach the mountaintop. That’s why he had to go back to even before his coaching career to find a comparison to the talent surplus in the modern game.

“You look at Duke, you look at Arizona, you look at Michigan. Those are three basketball teams I look at that can win a national championship because of their incredible talent,” Pitino said. “Then, you have the Connecticuts, the Illinois’ and people like that that are very deep, very well coached and they can win a national championship.

“It’s a lot of fun. I’ve never seen college basketball in the last two years this strong – I’ve been coaching 50-some-odd years, but I would have to go back to the Kareem [Abdul-Jabbar] days, the [Bill] Walton days, where everyone stayed in school.”