In their respective bids to grab the last spot in the Final Four, Xavier started three seniors and Duke started one. Yet each had a kid in the lineup whose road had started, improbably enough, in Africa.

And when they met on the court Sunday at the Georgia Dome, you couldn’t ask for a better snapshot of how the landscape of college basketball has been changed, probably forever, by the successive waves of young talent washing up on the shores of the NBA.

At the end, even though the faces were a little fresher than coach Mike Krzyzewski might like, his Blue Devils looked like they always have: like champions. And the defeated Musketeers, who caught just about everyone else by surprise, looked exactly like the team Krzyzewski predicted five years ago would be standing in his path.

That was in 1999, not long after Connecticut beat Duke for the national championship, and just before Krzyzewski lost his first underclassman, a sophomore by the name of Elton Brand, to the pros. The same thing had already taken place at just about every other elite program around Coach K by then, and more and more promising kids followed the leads of Kevin Garnett and Kobe Bryant by attending their high school prom and skipping college altogether.

When someone asked at the time what that trend would mean for the college game, Krzyzewski wasn’t thinking just in terms of his own program.

“Some year soon,” he said, “you’re going to see a mid-major team led by seniors who took the time to develop together to win a national championship.”

Duke’s late-developing 66-63 win made sure it didn’t happen this year, but chances are Krzyzewski’s prediction isn’t off by much. The Blue Devils didn’t put a dent in Xavier until center Anthony Myles, one of those seniors, fouled out with 121/2 minutes to go. They couldn’t knock the Musketeers off their feet until the final three minutes, when they capitalized on Myles’ absence underneath the basket to grab two big offensive rebounds and turn them into baskets.

“Only one team goes,” Krzyzewski said afterward. “We’re fortunate to be that team.”

The difference between the traditional “haves” like Duke and “have-nots” like Xavier had been narrowing for some time, but the pace of the last few years has been downright dizzying. Scholarship limits leveled the playing field some by making it impossible for even elite programs like Duke to stockpile talent. But even more telling has been the steady stream of teenagers opting for a seven-figure pro paycheck instead of first-semester math.

Everybody remembers LeBron James could have been a freshman this year, and that Carmelo Anthony, his competition for NBA rookie of the year, would have been a sophomore at Syracuse. But how many remember the other 10 high schoolers who went in the first round of the draft last year, or know that a dozen others are likely to follow them this year?

Even Krzyzewski’s considerable powers of persuasion won’t work on those kids, but he continues to get his pick of the best that are available. Xavier coach Thad Matta still can’t compete for those recruits, but he learned that years ago, when he was working at Butler. And like a lot of smart guys with some experience running mid-major programs – think Phil Martelli and this year’s Saint Joseph’s team – he came up with a scheme that works almost as well.

He finds projects like Myles, who was toiling in obscurity at a junior college in eastern Illinois, and Romain Sato, a native of the Central African Republic who moved in with a couple in Dayton, Ohio, to attend high school, and waits for them to develop. Patience is probably a luxury Matta would rather not have. But he also knows waiting a few seasons for a real shot at winning it all is better than never getting even one.

Krzyzewski doesn’t have a choice. His past success practically dictates that Duke had better be around at the end of every season, and the talent drought has forced a shift in his attitude about how he finds the players to make it possible.

The day before the Xavier game, this is how he answered the question of whether he’d rather recruit a blue-chipper he knows will stay at Duke only one season, or someone less talented who might stay for all four.

“I’ll take both. We do take both. … I don’t put a limit on how long you should stay,” Krzyzewski said. “I put a criteria on how they stay. I’m not going to have someone come in and not be a Duke player.”

One of those kids, freshman Luol Deng, was born in Sudan, raised in Egypt and London, and played his prep basketball in New Jersey. He may not be a typical Blue Devils recruit; there are fewer and fewer of those out there. Like Sato, Deng represents a growing number of foreign-born hoopsters being scouted and recruited to fill the slots that, until recently, were claimed almost exclusively by Americans.

In that sense, the rush of youngsters to the NBA has forced Krzyzewski and the rest of the elite coaches to be every bit as creative as Matta and the rest of the mid-major crowd. So while this year’s four finalists suggest the “haves” may still be winning the race, the pack is definitely gaining on them.

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Jim Litke is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at jlitkeap.org

AP-ES-03-29-04 1546EST