If you're trying to understand why Tom Crean would leave the strong program he built at Marquette to take the coaching job at scandal-rocked Indiana, look no further than the Final Four.

When the NCAA men's basketball tournament concludes this weekend, it will be a battle of heavyweights. Only blue-bloods will be allowed inside the velvet rope in San Antonio.

For the first time since the NCAA began seeding the event in 1979, the Final Four has four No. 1 seeds.

Not only that, but North Carolina, UCLA, Kansas and Memphis were the top four teams in the preseason polls. Davidson's captivating NCAA run aside, never has a season gone more according to form that this one.

That tells us that college basketball is changing, that it's good to be a traditional power, that talent rules more than ever.

In the two years since the NBA ruled that prep players must spend at least one year in college, the tournament has played out like a selection committee's dream.

Last year, the Final Four had two No. 1s and two No. 2s. This year, it's all No. 1s.

Last year, defending champion Florida and Ohio State met in a final matching No. 1 seeds. No matter what happens Saturday, two No. 1s will meet again in Monday's final.

With NBA-bound freshmen such as UCLA's Kevin Love and Memphis' Derrick Rose playing major roles and no great senior-dominated teams in sight, experience has been trumped by talent.

Of the dozen or so future NBA players in the Final Four, none is a senior. Indeed, the one-and-done player has altered the college basketball landscape in just two years.

It made the sport more volatile (look at how far Ohio State fell without one-and-done stars Greg Oden and Mike Conley Jr.) while at the same time giving schools that regularly recruit from the A-list a good shot to win it all.

In fact, they might be the only schools that have a shot to win it all these days.

Good, solid programs that aren't capable of recruiting multiple NBA lottery picks seemingly are frozen out of the Final Four.

Which is why Crean left a comfortable situation at Marquette for the job at Indiana. He's going for it.

Indiana hasn't been a top 10 program lately, but it has two things Marquette could never give Crean: Strong institutional recruiting power and a chance to win a national title. In the end, those are things most coaches want.

In an era where recruiting has become more important than ever, Crean couldn't refuse an opportunity to coach at one of the five to 10 schools that have a clear-cut natural recruiting advantage.

Whether that edge is due to tradition, location, facilities or something else, it is very real.

Indiana is the No. 1 school in the eyes of recruits in its basketball-mad home state. Most good Indiana players want to play for the Hoosiers.

Crean didn't have that advantage at Marquette. When it came to recruiting Wisconsin players, he often had to settle for leftovers from the University of Wisconsin.

Now Crean will be coaching the No. 1 attraction in his state. In a climate where talent increasingly rules, that makes Indiana more attractive than Marquette, and most other schools in the Upper Midwest.