NEW YORK - Even though the flood of underclassmen leaving school early has made college basketball the sport of what could have been, success is still synonymous with seniors.

This year's Final Four teams each advanced to the weekend at the Meadowlands with seniors playing a key role.

There's top-ranked Massachusetts with bookend forwards Donta Bright and Dana Dingle; Kentucky with its outside-inside duo of Tony Delk and Walter McCarty; Mississippi State with 3-point specialist Darryl Wilson and rugged power forward Russell Walters; an d Syracuse with point guard Lazarus Sims and star forward John Wallace.

People can reel off the names of the underclassmen who opted for the NBA draft after last season - sophomores Jerry Stackhouse and Rasheed Wallace of North Carolina, Joe Smith of Maryland and Antonio McDyess of Alabama. Then there were Arkansas juniors Co rliss Williamson and Scotty Thurman, and the rebuilding began after consecutive title game appearances.

But last year's national champion, UCLA, couldn't have won the school's 11th title without the senior trio of Ed O'Bannon, Tyus Edney and George Zidek.

''To win on the road, you have to be a good team, but I believe you have to be a senior-oriented team to win an NCAA tournament,'' said John Calipari, whose Massachusetts Minutemen (35-1) play Kentucky (32-2) in the second semifinal after Syracuse (28-8) and Mississippi State (26-7) open Saturday's doubleheader. ''I think when you talk about teams that are going to win championships, you better see teams dominated at some point by seniors. You have to have senior leadership.''

Calipari has that in Bright and Dingle, two undersized forwards who have been overshadowed by All-American center Marcus Camby, who is weighing whether to stick around for his senior year, and the backcourt tandem of Edgar Padilla and Carmelo Travieso.

Delk made the move from point guard to shooting guard for the Wildcats after their first loss of the season, in November to Massachusetts. It's rare that a player good enough to be a second-team All-America is willing to sacrifice minutes for wins.

''It's not just him,'' Calipari said. ''I think you have to understand what they did is they all stepped back, each player stepped back so they could take three steps forward. In our game, when it got a little crazy, they tried to do their own thing. Now they're not doing that.''

Syracuse came close to being another of those schools that lost a star early, but Wallace pulled his name out of the draft and returned for a very successful senior season that saw him selected a second-team All-America.

''I hope it encourages them to stay,'' coach Jim Boeheim said of Wallace's decision. ''I think I've long been an advocate that if you're really ready physically and mentally to go, there's nothing wrong with going. For the most part, most guys need to sta y and work on their games and get better because the NBA needs you to be ready.''

Wallace made the baseball pass that led to the tying basket at the close of regulation against Georgia in the regional semifinals and then made the winning 3-pointer with 2.8 seconds to go in overtime.

Wilson was the hero of the Bulldogs' regional semifinal victory over top-seeded Connecticut when he made seven 3-pointers and finished with 27 points. It was his outside shooting that opened things up all season for center Erick Dampier, a junior who may leap to the NBA.

''Darryl Wilson has been steady in his play throughout his career. He's just a great, great outside shooter,'' Mississippi State coach Richard Williams said. ''He has improved as a defensive player, and that's been the thing he has improved the most this season.''

While the players who draw the most attention this weekend will be the underclassmen who will spend the next month weighing pro options, the success for any of the teams will most probably be riding with the sport's endangered species, seniors.