The Athletic has live coverage of the second round of 2026 Men’s March Madness.
SAN DIEGO — After St. John’s win Friday night, in the moments before Kansas took the court, Red Storm guard Oziyah Sellers ran into an old pal outside the locker rooms. It was just a quick pass-by and a cordial handshake with Kansas guard Tre White.
It was friendly, but not super personal. That can wait.
Sellers and White were in the same freshman class at USC, two guards leaning on each other as close friends, beginning their collegiate basketball journeys together in 2022.
Four years and seven combined stops later, one will end the other’s college career. It will be a full-circle matchup, and one that embodies the current transfer chaos of the modern-day landscape. Sellers is a senior starter for St. John’s, White a star guard for Kansas. Both are in their final years of eligibility.
And so, while there will be time to reflect on that after the game, beforehand has been “a business trip.”
“Yeah, that’s my brother,” White said on Saturday, a smile creeping across his face. “Both committing to colleges as freshmen, and experiencing everything together … Everything was like a movie.”
Oziyah Sellers is averaging 10.7 points in his senior season at St. John’s. (Wendell Cruz / Imagn Images)
And playing near Hollywood, it certainly felt like it. But like many players in college basketball these days, Sellers and White were not in one location for long. White has been something of a star for hire, transferring from USC to Louisville to Illinois to Kansas. Four schools and three time zones.
Sellers spent two seasons at USC, leaving after head coach Andy Enfield bolted for SMU. He ended up at Stanford for the 2024-25 season and then moved cross-country to St. John’s to finish his career after temporarily declaring for the NBA Draft.
Both speak fondly of their time together, but their story represents one of the unintended consequences of the current climate. Those meaningful bonds, or brotherhoods, are constantly at risk of being curtailed.
“It definitely could be tough,” Sellers said. “When you’re with somebody for that long, you’re bound to make a friendship. But you’re guaranteed at least 10 months with them. So over time, practicing with them every day, it makes a better friendship.”
Coaches at the NCAA Tournament have preached about the importance of togetherness and culture. But in this landscape, where teams are essentially starting from scratch every year, that can be very difficult to attain.
Tommy Lloyd, the coach at Arizona, said, “We work hard on our culture, and it’s a daily thing you gotta fight for.”
St. John’s coach Rick Pitino said that he interviews transfer portal candidates on culture before offering scholarships. Beyond talent, it’s the primary focus of their recruiting strategy.
“This year we just went after culture guys,” Pitino said. “Guys that we felt were … not worried about stats or making it somewhere else. Just totally bought in. We spent so much time interviewing and researching every individual.”
Building culture has become an almost artificial process with coaches trying to create cohesion with a cast of new characters. In the past, it was done organically, with players starting at the school together, growing up within a program as the familiarity manifested on the court.
Sellers and White started that way. They lived next door to each other. They had the same classes, got food together and walked to and from practice. Sellers joked that he often had to ask White to keep the music down in his room.
“Tre is like a brother to me,” Sellers said. “It’ll be fun playing against him.”
Despite their obviously fondness for one another, it’s been difficult to maintain the friendship. They’ve kept in touch over the years, Sellers said, though he noted it’s mostly been through comments on social media, complimenting each other’s highlight clips.
White had a more prominent role on the 2022-23 USC team, which reached the NCAA Tournament but lost in the first round as a 10-seed to Michigan State. He averaged 9.0 points and 5.1 rebounds per game. Sellers played in just 25 games, averaging 5.2 minutes.
Still, it was Sellers who stayed and grew his role, while White left for Louisville. And the two haven’t faced each other since.
This game will be the marquee matchup of the second round. It’s the blue-blood powerhouse of Kansas against the upstart Johnnies, who have awoken a sleeping giant in New York City, selling out Madison Square Garden as if it were the 1980s.
It’s Pitino vs. Bill Self, two Hall of Famers who are somehow coaching against each other for just the second time. And most importantly, it’s two teams with championship dreams and a legitimate chance to make a deep run.
But it’ll also be two old friends who started this journey together — and now are doing everything they can to end it for the other.
“It’s a fun, full-circle moment,” White said. “I’m happy for him. That’s my guy. I’ll definitely talk to him after the game.”
