No. 10 FAU kept its Final Four team together. The Owls hope that leads to a bigger prize

BOCA RATON, Fla. — It was logical to think when Florida Atlantic’s season ended in the Final Four last spring that everything would change.

Dusty May surely would be going to a bigger coaching job and getting a much larger paycheck. The Owls’ best players would either be going to the NBA or to higher-profile schools, moves that would have likely come with richer sponsorship opportunities.

Only none of it happened.

May is still in Boca Raton. All his players, except one who graduated and exhausted his eligibility, are still in Boca Raton. A couple of guys briefly dipped a toe into the NBA draft waters, but nobody entered the transfer portal.

So, when No. 10 FAU — which has its highest ranking and loftiest expectations ever — opens its season Wednesday at Loyola Chicago, the Owls from the Final Four last season will be the Owls in the first game this season. And the reasons seem very clear.

“It’s their commitment to each other,” May said.

“We’re family, and we mean it,” guard Alijah Martin said.

“It’s the culture of this program and this university,” forward Giancarlo Rosado said.

Commitment, family, culture, all good reasons. There’s another as well: unfinished business. The Final Four banner from last season now hangs over FAU’s home court, and the goal for this season is for the Owls to hang another one — maybe even one showing a bigger prize — next to it.

Nothing is guaranteed and the Owls, the preseason favorites in the American Athletic Conference, know it. They had to hold off Middle Tennessee State in the final seconds of last season’s Conference USA semifinals to win 68-65; had that outcome gone the other way, the Owls surely wouldn’t have been a No. 9 seed in the NCAA Tournament and maybe been knocked off the…