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Court Vision: 11 things to know about 2024-25 NCAA men’s college basketball season before tipoff

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Court Vision: 11 things to know about 2024-25 NCAA men’s college basketball season before tipoff

It’s a long wait from the first weekend in April until the first week of November, but at last, the men’s college basketball season is upon us.

We’ve already shared The Athletic’s preseason conference rankings, full of stats and analysis. We’ve rolled out our preseason All-America teams and Top 25. And there’s plenty more to come. Consider this my first national column, which will regularly cover the week that was and preview the weekend that will be.

So, before the games actually tip off, let’s get you caught up on everything you need to know.

1. UConn’s quest for a three-peat is historic — but not impossible

Last season, Connecticut became just the third program in the modern era to win back-to-back national titles, joining Florida (2006 and 2007) and Duke (1991 and 1992).

But neither the Gators nor the Blue Devils were able to run things back a third time. Which means the only team that’s ever won three straight is still John Wooden’s UCLA dynasty, which won seven consecutive championships from 1967 to ’73 (and 10 over a 12-year span). But Dan Hurley wouldn’t have turned down the Los Angeles Lakers’ head-coaching job this summer if his team didn’t have a realistic shot at cutting down the nets (again) in 2025.

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Beyond the difficulty of winning a single-elimination tournament three years running is that Hurley, 51, keeps losing his best players. After his first title, three starters left for the NBA. After UConn won it all again, Hurley lost four more starters. At least Hurley convinced redshirt junior Alex Karaban to come back … but now he needs the 6-foot-9 forward to go from highly efficient role player to a true All-American.

Karaban will get help from guard Aidan Mahaney (Saint Mary’s) and center Tarris Reed Jr. (Michigan), both top-50 transfers according to The Athletic’s list of best available players, and five-star wing Liam McNeeley was the No. 17 recruit in the nation. Hurley also needs his role players from the past two seasons to take the leap. There’s enough talent here to make another run. And if UConn does? It would cement Hurley not just as the best coach of the modern era, but one of the best the sport has ever seen.

2. The coaching carousel

Who knew that SMU firing Rob Lanier would be so consequential?

But that became the first domino in a wild offseason. SMU, ahead of its move to the ACC, quickly hired Andy Enfield away from USC, which paved the way for Eric Musselman to leave Arkansas for Los Angeles. The Razorbacks responded with a home run swing: luring Hall of Famer John Calipari away from his lifetime contract at Kentucky as his act appeared to be wearing thin in Lexington. (A blue-blood coaching change, for the fourth straight offseason.)

Kentucky settled on BYU coach Mark Pope — a captain on UK’s 1996 championship team — as Calipari’s successor, after its pursuit of Baylor coach Scott Drew came up short. BYU hired former Phoenix Suns assistant Kevin Young, who has seemingly unlocked the Cougars’ name, image and likeness vault.

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Those interconnected dominoes don’t even factor in Michigan winning the sweepstakes for Dusty May, who took Florida Atlantic to its lone Final Four. Louisville, which ended its disastrous two-year Kenny Payne experiment, pivoted to Charleston’s Pat Kelsey.

Tony Bennett’s recent abrupt retirement from Virginia, where he hung the program’s only national championship banner in 2019, left the ACC without a championship-winning coach for the first time since 1981-82. Ron Sanchez (former head coach at Charlotte) was named interim coach and will have every opportunity to win the full-time job. And lastly, tragically, South Florida coach Amir Abdur-Rahim — who led Kennesaw State to its first NCAA Tournament appearance and was a rising star — died last week at age 43 due to complications from a medical procedure. Assistant Ben Fletcher will be the interim.

3. Zach Edey is gone, but there’s still returning star power

Edey — the first two-time Wooden Award winner since Ralph Sampson in the 1980s — is gone to the NBA, but The Athletic’s preseason All-America teams include several accomplished players.

North Carolina guard RJ Davis is the only first-team All-American back from last season, but two second-team honorees also return: Alabama guard Mark Sears and Kansas center Hunter Dickinson. (Thank the extra COVID-19 year of eligibility for guys sticking in school long enough to become household names.) Karaban is the face of UConn’s bid for a three-peat, Arizona guard Caleb Love is two seasons removed from ending Mike Krzyzewski’s Hall of Fame career, and Purdue guard Braden Smith is set to step out of Edey’s enormous shadow.

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That’s just a snippet of the talent back. But there’s also …

4. Cooper Flagg, the most hyped high school prospect since …?

Welcome to the year of Flagg. The 6-foot-9 Maine native was the top-ranked recruit in this year’s freshman class, and he’s long been the front-runner to go No. 1 in the 2025 NBA Draft. It’s not hyperbolic to call him the most-anticipated high school recruit since Anthony Davis at Kentucky in 2011-12. And the nine months “The Brow” was on campus turned out pretty well for the Wildcats, no? Duke and third-year coach Jon Scheyer are hoping Flagg leads the Blue Devils to similar national championship heights — and talent-starved NBA fans in Washington, Brooklyn and Detroit are watching just as eagerly.

Flagg’s hype train hit a new gear after his performance this summer at Team USA camp. Despite being the lone college representative on the Select Team — which featured rising NBAers like Brandon Miller and Jalen Suggs — Flagg was, at times, the best player on the court.

Flagg is a better defensive player than offensive one at this point, but he can still pour it in as a scorer. Regardless, Duke’s do-everything centerpiece will have a spotlight trained on him for good reason: He’s the rare talent, even at 17, who can lead a team to a national championship.

5. Experience rules

When the 2020 NCAA Tournament was canceled due to COVID-19, the NCAA granted every player that season an additional year of eligibility. In the final season with those players still active, what is the legacy of that decision? The most experienced era in the recent history of the sport.

According to NCAA data, in 2018-19 — the final full season before the pandemic — the average experience level for DI men’s players was 2.41 years; for this season, it’s up to 2.62. But that data isn’t totally representative because it counts fifth-year players like normal seniors. If it accounted for the additional year, the average is pushed even higher. Take Xavier, the most experienced high-major team in the country this season. The Musketeers’ average experience is 3.35 years, per NCAA data. But if you account for the team’s eight fifth-year players, that figure rises to 3.53.

As for how experience correlates to winning? There have been only two freshman starters in the past two Final Fours combined, both for UConn: Karaban (2023) and Stephon Castle (2024). Duke, or another freshman-heavy team, may reverse that narrative this season. But recent history suggests experience is more valuable than ever.

6. Rutgers has 2 of the nation’s top 3 recruits

The only school in the past decade to land two of the nation’s top three recruits was Duke, until this summer. But by signing forward Ace Bailey (No. 2 nationally, per the 247Sports Composite) and point guard Dylan Harper (No. 3), Rutgers coach Steve Pikiell has accomplished the seemingly impossible in New Jersey. (The wonders that a family legacy — Harper’s older brother, Ron Harper Jr., also played at Rutgers — and a robust NIL pitch can do.)

Both Bailey and Harper are projected top-five picks in next summer’s NBA Draft — and they could even challenge Flagg to go first if they lead the Scarlet Knights to the NCAA Tournament.

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At 6 feet 6 and 215 pounds, Harper has ideal size for a lead guard, and he offers polished three-level scoring ability. Bailey is more raw, but there aren’t many prospects with his athleticism at 6 feet 10. They’ll be asked to carry a heavy load in a Big Ten predicated on physicality and post play.

7. Another transfer portal cycle sees top names find new homes

Where did some of the top names wind up? Former Final Four participants — point guard Jeremy Roach (Duke) and forward Norchad Omier (Miami) — will team up at Baylor this season. The remaining cornerstones from Florida Atlantic’s 2023 Final Four team scattered, as well; center Vlad Goldin followed May to Michigan, guard Johnell Davis went to Arkansas, while guard Alijah Martin stayed in Florida and joined the Gators.

Tucker DeVries — the two-time Missouri Valley Player of the Year and the No. 1 transfer in The Athletic’s rankings — went with his father, Darian, to West Virginia. New Saint Louis coach Josh Schertz brought his best player, the goggle-wearing Robbie Avila, with him from Indiana State. Forward Great Osobor moved from Utah State to Washington to stay with coach Danny Sprinkle.

Coleman Hawkins (Illinois) picked Kansas State. Rylan Griffen left one Final Four team (Alabama) for another potential one (Kansas). Louisville brought in an entire new roster, headlined by Chucky Hepburn (Louisville), Terrence Edwards Jr. (James Madison) and Kasean Pryor (USF). We could go on.

8. Can the Big Ten end its 25-year national title drought? It looks unlikely

No Big Ten team has won it all since Tom Izzo captured his first (and only) title with Michigan State in 2000.

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Since then, eight Big Ten teams — Indiana (2002), Illinois (2005), Ohio State (2007), Michigan State (2009), Michigan (2013), Wisconsin (2015), Michigan (2018) and Purdue (2024) — have made it to the championship game, but none have finished the job. Eleven coaches surveyed by The Athletic largely agreed that probably speaks more to the randomness of March Madness than any overarching condemnation of one conference but also spoke to style of play.

It seems unlikely the Big Ten snaps its dry spell this season. Purdue is the top-ranked preseason team in the league at No. 14, followed by Indiana (No. 17), UCLA (No. 22) and Rutgers (No. 25). There just doesn’t appear to be one or two clear front-runners. However …

9. Could we see a record for NCAA Tournament teams from one league?

The Big East holds the single-season record for NCAA Tournament bids by one league, when 11 of its 16 teams qualified in 2011. But with conference realignment leading to larger high-major leagues, will the record be broken this season?

Possible, but still improbable. Three leagues seem best-positioned: the SEC, Big Ten or Big 12. The SEC has nine teams ranked in the preseason Top 25 and a 10th (Mississippi State) that received votes in the poll. The Big Ten has seven others who received preseason votes in addition to the four ranked. The Big 12 is top-heavy; six of its teams are ranked, with the potential for more to emerge from its meaty middle class.

Even if it doesn’t happen this season, we expect that 11-bid mark to eventually be topped. It could also fall soon if there is moderate NCAA Tournament expansion, which could be implemented as soon as the 2026 bracket. Over the summer, The Athletic reported that the NCAA had presented proposals for both a 72- and 76-team field to DI conference commissioners. Under both proposals, the First Four would be expanded to include at least four more at-large teams.

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How much of an appetite is there to expand the 68-team field? Enough, although not to a major extent. But multiple high-major conference commissioners — including the SEC’s Greg Sankey and the ACC’s Jim Phillips — have previously expressed an interest in exploring tournament expansion. Talks remain ongoing.

10. Final Four predictions

In our staff survey, 11 teams earned Final Four votes: Gonzaga (8), Alabama (6), UConn (5), Houston (5), Kansas (5), Iowa State (4), Duke (2), Baylor (2), Arizona, Arkansas and Texas A&M.

Of those schools, five were picked as the preseason national champion at least once — but none more than Gonzaga, whom three of our experts picked to deliver Mark Few’s long-awaited first title. (The others? Alabama, Kansas, UConn and Houston.) That group makes up the clear top cluster of teams expected to compete to win it all.

11. Cheers to the schedule-makers for great opening-week games

Here are 10 of the opening-week matchups circled on our calendar, featuring 10 different ranked teams (times ET):

Monday

No. 13 Texas A&M at UCF, 7 p.m.

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Missouri at Memphis, 8 p.m.

No. 19 Texas vs. Ohio State, 10 p.m.

No. 8 Baylor at No. 6 Gonzaga, 11:30 p.m.

Friday, Nov. 8

No. 9 North Carolina at No. 1 Kansas, 7 p.m.

Saturday, Nov. 9

No. 12 Tennessee at Louisville, noon

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No. 8 Baylor vs. No. 16 Arkansas, 7:30 p.m.

Northwestern at Dayton, 7:30 p.m.

No. 11 Auburn vs. No. 4 Houston, 9:30 p.m.

Sunday, Nov. 10

Michigan vs. Wake Forest, 1 p.m.

 (Photo of UConn’s Alex Karaban: Brett Wilhelm / NCAA Photos via Getty Images)

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A Poem About Waiting, and Wishing You Had a Drink

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A Poem About Waiting, and Wishing You Had a Drink

If you ever see me at a party, I’ll most likely be standing off to the side, looking slightly lost, staring down into my glass. Perhaps you’re that way too — introverted, awkward, thirsty. Nice to meet you. And since we’re here, may I introduce you to my friend Philip? Or perhaps you’ve already met.

Philip Larkin, circa 1958.

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Rogers/Camera Press, via Redux

The posthumous publication of Larkin’s letters revealed him to be something uglier than a garden-variety curmudgeon. The private expressions of misogyny, antisemitism and xenophobia he shared with friends have dented his reputation in the years since his death.

If he hasn’t been fully canceled, it may be because his gift for self-cancellation makes such censure redundant. Larkin writes from the standpoint of someone who is out of touch, out of step and out of sorts, with himself and everyone around him. He’ll never be the life of the party, and you may wonder why anyone invited him in the first place.

Nonetheless, it’s good to see him there. For one thing, it’s nice to know that someone might be having a worse time than you are. He even has a theory about why some people have a better time than others; in fact, he’s an expert on the subject.

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Misery loves company, and this miserable chap turns out to be just the companion you’re looking for, at least until you can find another drink.

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Emma Hayes struck balance between USWNT celebration and evaluation, winning the October window

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Emma Hayes struck balance between USWNT celebration and evaluation, winning the October window

Center back Naomi Girma stole the show in Louisville as the U.S. women’s national team wrapped up the international window with its third win. But the real story of that October camp is the sheer amount of evaluation head coach Emma Hayes managed in addition to the celebratory nature of the team’s Olympics gold medal victory tour.

“I got out of it what I wanted to get out of it,” Hayes said Wednesday. “A ton of debutants, managed minutes for everyone that’s still in NWSL play, (and) a chance to develop some things that, for us, we set as targets for ourselves on the training pitch.”

Hayes has backed up everything she has said since taking over the job in May, going back to her first media appearances in New York City this spring — specifically: club form matters. While her hands were tied slightly in this window as Olympics celebrations meant she had to call up every healthy member of the squad that went to the Games in France in the summer, she used her remaining roster spots to the fullest. She also maximized rotation, not just in the starting line-ups and her substitute choices, but the 23-player game-day rosters.

All seven uncapped players on the roster, including a mid-camp addition, earned their first USWNT minutes.

Orlando Pride defender Emily Sams and Washington Spirit midfielder Hal Hershfelt were in France as alternates but did not see the field. Racing Louisville forward Emma Sears immediately impressed in her debut as only the fourth player in program history to record a goal and assist in her first cap. Bay FC defender Alyssa Malonson nabbed her first assist in her debut Wednesday against Argentina, playing provider to Girma. Paris Saint-Germain’s Eva Gaetino, Utah Royals’ Mandy Haught and Gotham FC’s Yazmeen Ryan rounded out the new kids.

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There were important returns too. Alyssa Thompson finally scored her first international goal in her return to the national team after missing out on the Olympic roster, and Ashley Sanchez and Hailie Mace picked up minutes against Argentina.

It’s hard to disagree with Hayes’ approach to club form after a successful window because she achieved all of her objectives and captured three multi-goal wins. As a bonus, she also finally saw the team down a goal, forced into mounting a comeback against Iceland in Nashville on Sunday. It was the first time the USWNT had fallen behind in a game managed by Hayes.

The challenge now is figuring out how much these matches actually matter in the long run. While the friendlies were fun to watch — no one will complain about a Girma brace either — with so much focus on rotation and evaluation, it feels more like one of the first pieces to the larger puzzle. One that won’t be completed for a few more years.

The back half of 2024 has generally felt like a period for recovery and big-picture thinking at the senior team level.

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While the next and final window of the year in late November and early December involves two high-profile European opponents on the road, the friendlies against England and the Netherlands will likely be an outlier from this period. Higher-profile opponents mean higher stakes, but it’s fair to expect Hayes to again use the full depth of her roster with an eye on evaluation and development.

Hayes has already shown she’s not afraid of big moments and prioritized using the depth of her roster to bring Jaedyn Shaw, Croix Bethune and others to their first major tournament this summer. While the starting XI against England on November 30 is sure to be the strongest possible, Hayes has another chance to ensure that players who will be crucial to the team’s success two or three years down the line experience an environment like Wembley Stadium as well.

The true sign of things to come will be January’s Futures Camp, which Hayes promised to run concurrently with the full senior team camp in Los Angeles. The USWNT hasn’t run a talent and identification camp since 2019, shortly after Vlatko Andonovski took over the team, but it was the only one to occur during his four-year tenure.

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Hayes has promised to cast a wide net, especially following semifinal appearances from the under-20 and under-17 teams in their respective World Cups this year. But for all the angst over the past few years about generational change, the runway has finally been fully cleared.

The Olympics were the most obvious symbolic gesture of the end of one USWNT era, with Alex Morgan not named to the roster. It was a surprise sunsetting of a generational player but was also a testament to the team she helped build.

GO DEEPER

Alex Morgan has designed her own USWNT exit by setting the next generation up for success

There are more options than ever before in every position. Making the U.S. roster seems harder than it’s been in the past, but doing so is also more clearly tied to form and thus more transparent than ever. Hayes has finally truly buried that “emergency surgery” line she came in with and led the team to Olympic gold, and as promised, the larger work is now underway.

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These three games provided a good start, but were just a start nonetheless.

The first 270 minutes of the cycle leading to the 2027 World Cup in Brazil and home-turf Los Angeles-hosted Olympics a year later are in the bag. There’s still so much more to come.

(Top photo: Scott Wachter / Imagn Images)

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How a hockey goalie mask designer helped make Hannibal Lecter an all-time villain — and Halloween costume

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How a hockey goalie mask designer helped make Hannibal Lecter an all-time villain — and Halloween costume

Ed Cubberly had never heard of Anthony Hopkins when he received a phone call from Kathleen Gerlach, the assistant costume designer on a movie he knew nothing about. It was 1989, and the film version of “The Silence of the Lambs” was two years from becoming a critical and commercial sensation.

Cubberly, a full-time nurse at the time, living in Bayonne, New Jersey, had a side business making masks for NHL goalies from 1988 to 2000. Mike Richter, Frank Pietrangelo and Mark Fitzpatrick were among the players who wore his products.

So how did he get drawn in to help create one of film’s all-time villains?

At one point in the late 1980s, Cubberly left a business card at Gerry Cosby & Co. Sporting Goods in Manhattan. Not long after, members of the “The Silence of the Lambs” prop department went to the shop looking for a mask. They walked away with Cubberly’s contact information.

Gerlach reached out to Cubberly about making a mask — not for hockey but for what would become a classic scene in the movie. And thus began Cubberly’s lone foray into film and his connection to Anthony Hopkins’ portrayal of Hannibal Lecter, whom the American Film Institute ranks as the No. 1 movie villain of all time.

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“My 15 minutes of fame,” Cubberly says now. “I guess it turned out OK.”

Midway through “Silence of the Lambs,” Lecter speaks to a senator while strapped to a gurney. He is a serial killer notorious for eating his victims, but he’s also a brilliant psychiatrist with information that could help catch another serial killer, Buffalo Bill. As he speaks to the senator, whose daughter has been kidnapped by Buffalo Bill, he wears a straight jacket and a fiberglass mask that covers his nose and the lower half of his face.

There’s an opening over his mouth covered by three metal bars — a measure against a potential cannibalistic outburst.

That was Cubberly’s finished product: the most famous mask he ever made, with all due respect to the Statue of Liberty mask that New York Rangers goalie Mike Richter wore in the 1994 Stanley Cup Final.


Mike Richter’s Statue of Liberty mask was designed but not painted by Ed Cubberly. (Al Bello / Getty Images)

“It was kind of devious and scary looking,” says Cubberly, now 67. “It fit the scene perfectly.”

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When enlisting Cubberly’s help, Gerlach gave him a description of the scene. Cubberly came up with the concept in only a few minutes, using a Sharpie to draw the design on a picture of one of his old masks. He interpreted Gerlach’s instructions as instructions to give Lecter a muzzle, which led to the mouth covering. He also added a pair of holes over the nostrils.

Cubberly was in contact with Gerlach and future Academy Award-winning costume designer Colleen Atwood throughout the process. At one point, they asked what he was thinking for the mask’s color. Cubberly suggested keeping the fiberglass’s greenish-tan shade. It would look like something that could have been made in jail, he told them. Director Jonathan Demme loved the idea, Cubberly recalls.

“I was just trying to get out of painting the thing,” he says with a chuckle.

Cubberly never met Hopkins, who won an Oscar for his performance. The film’s prop crew mailed him a plaster mold of the actor’s face, which he still has. Cubberly sculpted clay over the mold, then built the fiberglass mask over the clay. The process took only a couple of days.

The costume department had Hopkins try out different types of masks before filming. One looked like a beekeeper’s mask. Others were more cage-like. Cubberly’s design proved most effective.

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“It looked nothing like any of the other masks,” he says.

The scene is similarly unique — and tense. Dramatic string music plays as Lecter is wheeled forward, and Hopkins makes piercing eye contact with the senator as he toys with her throughout the conversation.

Cubberly doesn’t watch many movies, but he and his wife went to “The Silence of the Lambs” when it came out in theaters. He didn’t know exactly when his mask would make an appearance. The second it did, he jumped from his seat and let out a cheer.

The other patrons hissed at him to sit down.

“I made that mask for the movie!” he told them.

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No one in the theater believed him. Why would they think the mask came from New Jersey?

Cubberly, who now lives in Frenchtown, New Jersey, received $400 in payment for the mask. He also maintains copyright over the design. That’s gotten him some extra cash over the years. He’s signed contracts with Halloween costume companies allowing them to reproduce the mask.

Billy Crystal wore the original while hosting the Oscars in 1992, making a joke that he looked like the goalie from the Screen Actors Guild hockey team.

Cubberly hasn’t seen the original in person since he shipped it from New Jersey to Pittsburgh, where most of the movie was filmed.

 

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“It’s a question I get all the time,” he says. “I have no idea where it is.”

He does, however, have a gift from the man who wore it. After making the mask, he asked the film’s prop crew if he could get something signed by Hopkins. They granted the request, mailing him a photo of Hopkins wearing the mask. He keeps the photo framed on his wall.

“To Eddie,” Hopkins scrawled at the bottom of the picture, “All good wishes — and be very careful on dark nights, Eddie, because I’ll be waiting and watching.”

Hopkins signed the picture twice: once with his own name and once with the name of the character Cubberly helped give his iconic look: Dr. Lecter.

(Top photo: Rodin Eckenroth / Getty Images)

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