Hey, look who came back

Double-take: What are these guys doing here?

In an era of one-and-done players -- if they bothered to stop by at all -- college basketball has a slightly different look this season, courtesy of the new NBA age limit and unlikely decisions by the stars of Florida’s national championship team to stay in school.

Joakim Noah, a 6-foot-11 forward with every bit the upside you would expect from the son of a French Open champion, is back for his junior season even though he would have been a very early NBA draft choice after the Gators’ NCAA title-game victory over UCLA.

So are Al Horford and Corey Brewer, helping Florida become the first team to bring back a national championship starting five since Arizona after its 1997 title, giving the Gators a reasonable chance to become the first team to repeat since Duke in 1992.

Even Florida Coach Billy Donovan was taken aback by the swift decision to stay in school his stars made last spring -- and then stuck to.

“I started the conversation, to be honest with you, with, ‘Where are you guys at? What do you want to do?’ ” Donovan said. “And they’re like, ‘Coach, we’re coming back. And I said, ‘Are you sure? Did you talk to your [families]?’ And they said, ‘Yes.’ And I just said, ‘I agree with your decision.’ ”

Don’t mark it down as a trend, even though it’s worth noting that Tyler Hansbrough is back at North Carolina despite being the first freshman in Atlantic Coast Conference history to be a unanimous first-team all-ACC choice, and Glen Davis is back at Louisiana State -- minus 20 pounds of “Big Baby” fat since the Final Four.

Consider what happened at Florida an anomaly, partly the result of the bloodlines of Noah, Horford and Taurean Green, the sons of former NBA players.

“I don’t think there’s any question their fathers played a major role in helping them understand what it’s all about, because their dads were professional athletes and really understand money doesn’t buy it,” Donovan said. “It’s really about enjoying what you’re doing and having fun and enjoying your life, and I think that their dads were able to say, ‘Listen, here’s what I’ve experienced by making money, and here’s the opportunity you have. I’m telling you, you’d be better off doing this.’ ”

In a season that will be marked by the countdown to Bob Knight’s breaking Dean Smith’s record for career victories -- Knight got the second of the 11 he needed Monday -- the story isn’t only about who’s back.

It’s also about the players some people never expected to see in college.

Greg Oden, a 7-foot-1 Ohio State freshman pegged as a future No. 1 pick, is expected to make his debut by early January after recovering from wrist surgery. He is emblematic of the wave of players who will spend at least a year in college after the NBA limited the draft to players at least 19 and a year out of high school.

“One thing I know about Greg is he told me from day one he was going to college regardless of the age-limit rule,” Ohio State Coach Thad Matta said. “But when you look at the early entries in recent years, a lot of big guys never got to college. We could be going back to a more post-dominant atmosphere.”

Matta and other coaches doubt Oden and other 7-footers such as Washington’s Spencer Hawes and Stanford’s twin towers, Robin and Brook Lopez -- Brook is recovering from back surgery -- will take the game back to the days of Ralph Sampson, Patrick Ewing and David Robinson. The coaches say the way big men play has changed, and they might not stay very long anyway.

“No one grows up wanting to be a center,” said Memphis Coach John Calipari, who coached Marcus Camby at Massachusetts and later coached in the NBA.

“When I recruited Marcus Camby, I asked him what position he wanted to play, and he said, ‘Shooting guard.’ And I told him, ‘OK, but we post up our two-guards a lot.’

“If a young man is big and can really play, it’ll be amazing if he stays more than two years. I think what the game is coming to -- and I may be wrong -- is a lot of dribble-drive, a lot of court spacing, and I hate to say it, a little European-ish style of basketball.”

No matter how the style is evolving, one thing is certain: Partly because of the NBA rule, this is one of the best groups of freshmen in years.

Besides Oden and the crowd of big men, there are such standouts as Kevin Durant at Texas, Paul Harris at Syracuse, Chase Budinger at Arizona, Thaddeus Young at Georgia Tech and Brandan Wright at North Carolina. And there are surprises such as Oregon’s Tajuan Porter, a 5-6 guard who is averaging 31 points after three games and made 10 of 12 three-point shots against Portland State Sunday.

Maybe the so-called mid-majors should be worried by the migration to elite schools of players who might once have been NBA-bound out of high school. But some believe that genie is out of the bottle, that senior-oriented teams will still thrive against transient all-stars, and there will be more stories such as George Mason’s making the Final Four last season.

“The gap between the so-called major and mid-major has been definitively closed,” said Jerry Wainwright, who is now coaching at DePaul but earlier in his career was the architect of teams at Richmond and North Carolina Wilmington that were able to spring surprises on more prominent teams.

“The longer your kids are in a program -- and I had very good mid-major teams -- sometimes with kids not just there four years, but a couple of kids that were red-shirted. When you get somebody who’s 23 years of age, 22 years of age, who’s been through significant college experience, they’re usually not afraid of anybody. And they’re looking to play, especially on neutral courts, where tournaments provide the opportunity to show that they belong with the so-called names in college basketball.”

Some coaches at those name schools wish the NBA rule would have kept players out of the draft for two years. A few are wary of the one-year player.

Others accept a gift when it is offered, no matter what some think it says about how wide the gap is between the words student and athlete.

Carmelo Anthony spent one year at Syracuse and led his team to the 2003 NCAA title. Last week, the Denver Nuggets star pledged $3 million toward a basketball practice facility he joked could be called the “ ‘Melo Center.”

You don’t hear Coach Jim Boeheim complain he stayed only one year.

robyn.norwood@latimes.com

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Coming up

The nation’s top 10 men’s college basketball teams ranked by the Associated Press with records and who they play next:

1. Florida (1-0) vs. No. Florida, today

2. N. Carolina (0-0) vs. Sacred Heart, today

3. Kansas (1-0) vs. Oral Roberts, Wednesday

4. Pittsburgh (1-0) vs. Delaware St., today

5. Ohio State (3-0) vs. E. Kentucky, Friday

6. UCLA (0-0) vs. BYU, Wednesday

7. Louisiana St. (0-0) vs. Nicholls St., Friday

8. Georgetown (1-0) at Vanderbilt, Wed.

9. Wisconsin (1-0) vs. Wis. G. Bay, Wed.

10. Alabama (1-0) vs. Mid. Tenn. St., Friday