Disagree. In the NFL the season is only 16 game so every game matters so so much. College football literally has its regular season as a playoff as 1 or 2 losses and you possibly have no shot to win a championship. MLB only 1 wild card spot if you don't win your division. The regular season actually matters. In College basketball you can have a crappy 3 week stretch but if you still win 20 games most likely you make the field and are in the Big Dance. Literally for "most" of the big schools (Kentucky, Duke, Kansas, UNC,..etc) the regular season is a glorified exhibition these days to get ready for March.
There used to be a day when if you won your conference tournament you would hang a banner in your arena to celebrate that, those days are long over! Because nobody cares anymore about a conference tournament championship.
And honestly the "positioning yourself for March" is also something the NCAA has changed and ruined. In the past they would seed you based on record and such. Now, in an effort to sell tickets and get people in the arenas they seed and try to place you to a closer site in "hope" you the school will travel fans to the Round 1 and 2 games to pack the place. So you might technically be a 5 seed but if we move you to the 3rd seed we can then place you in city X and you are closer to your home city and you will travel fans to the game and make us money and have more people in the arena, so yeah even that has been screwed up by the NCAA with how they host/seed the Round 1 and Round 2 games. So there is no positioning yourself for March anymore because the seeding is, well "Rigged."
The sport of college basketball is broken and nobody is trying to fix it. And it has nothing to do with kids jumping to the NBA at all. Shorten the season, limit the number of schools one conference can send to the NCAA Tournament at like 5 or 6...and then, AND ONLY THEN will you make the regular season matter again!