ESPN’s College Basketball Awards honor this year’s best, and the game is only getting better

“So this the part where I get Tom Izzo to twerk like Serena Williams?”

The piccolo girl has stopped crying, Charles Barkley has finally come back down to Earth and the confetti that rained from NRG Stadium after Kris Jenkins’ buzzer-beater handed Villanova the national championship has finally been swept up. The sprint to the NCAA Tournament’s finish line is over, and ESPN will put a bow on the season with the College Basketball Awards on Friday night.

The show will honor college basketball’s best over the last five months with awards named after Hall of Famers like Jerry West, Julius Erving and Karl Malone handed out for each position group. The prestigious Wooden Award will be announced at the end of the night, with the winner joining a lineage that includes Larry Bird, Michael Jordan, Kevin Durant, Anthony Davis and many more.

Oklahoma’s Buddy Hield, Michigan State’s Denzel Valentine and Kentucky’s Tyler Ulis are just a few of the nominees. ESPN’s GameDay crew will serve as the emcees, and there’s already been talk of getting Tom Izzo to build on his impromptu audition for Dancing With the Stars earlier this week.

In a way, the event is a victory lap for a college basketball season that started as a purported “down year” for talent and ended with one of the most memorable NCAA Tournaments ever. This season was already a big success even before Jenkins’ shot, with the implementation of new rules like a 30-second shot clock making the game more watchable than it’s been in years.

“The rule changes were great, especially for the first year,” said ESPN’s Jay Bilas. “It’s going to be a process, but in the first year we saw nothing but benefit for the game. It showed in scoring, the fact that fouls weren’t up very much and shooting percentages were up while turnovers were not.

“The rules worked out great and they will continue to get better.”

“College basketball is largely dependent on the strength of the freshman class,” Bilas said. “That’s the way the game has gone. We’ve seen that in past years and we’re seen that this year. The next two years the talent is really, really good. I think you’ll see that in more teams having talent that’s ready to contribute right away.”

Bilas believes next year’s freshmen are superior to this season’s group led by Ben Simmons and Brandon Ingram -- and not many people are going to disagree. Duke is the easy pick for preseason No. 1 with Grayson Allen returning to join arguably the country’s top recruiting class, led by superfriends Harry Giles and Jayson Tatum.

It doesn’t stop there. Kentucky adds what should be the country’s most electrifying backcourt with De’Aaron Fox and Malik Monk, UCLA welcomes the Lonzo Ball Show and Izzo might have the best recruiting class he’s ever pulled together, thanks to a little help from Draymond Green.

The future of college basketball is in good hands. But before the calendar can flip to next season, the College Basketball Awards are here to recognize everything that made this season great.

A special group of seniors led by Hield, Valentine, North Carolina’s Brice Johnson and Virginia’s Malcolm Brogdon left an indelible impression on some of the nation’s top programs. Cinderellas like Stephen F. Austin won over the country, while Northern Iowa’s halfcourt buzzer-beater and historic collapse reinforced why there’s nothing like the NCAA Tournament.

This season proved once and for all that there is no such thing as a down year for college basketball, because the rush of a single elimination tournament is still too much to turn away from. For as much fun as this season was, next year’s five-star talent and another year of adjusting to the new rules should mean college basketball is only getting better.