Men's Basketball Season Preview

Time to preview Men’s basketball!! While it’s not March Madness….yet, you can still get excited for all the action coming up this season. So with that, look at the preseason top 25 according to ESPN/USA Today:

1.) North Carolina

2.) UCLA

3.) Memphis

4.) Kansas

5.) Georgetown

Breaking this down Georgetown lost Jeff Green to the NBA draft, if he returned without a doubt they would be the #1 team in the land seeing as how they beat North Carolina in the elite 8 last year. Roy Hibbert, is easily the best upper classman in men’s college basketball. So look for one of these five teams to really go deep in the post season. Kansas still lacks post-season results so they probably will be 4^th or 5^th out of these five teams at year’s end. Georgetown, North Carolina, and UCLA are the most likely teams to make the sweet 16 and probably the elite 8. Georgetown will be returning to the glory days of John Thompson, under his son John Thompson III. Georgetown made the Final Four last year look to do the same this year and have arguably the best recruiting class in the country which features the best player in this year’s recruiting class. Now to the rest of the poll:

6.) Louisville

7.) Tennessee

8.) Michigan State

9.) Indiana

10.) Washington State

11.) Duke

12.) Marquette

13.) Oregon

14.) Gonzaga

15.) Texas A&M

16.) Texas

17.) Arizona

18.) USC

19.) Arkansas

20.) Pittsburgh

21.) Stanford

22.) Kentucky

23.) Southern Illinois

24.) North Carolina State

25.) Villanova

The first thing to notice, Florida and Ohio State the two teams that played in the National Title game last year are not ranked. Ohio State brought in a recruiting class that planned on having Oden and Conley leave after one year. The team is young again, just like last year. However, there is plenty of talent on this team. Florida put together another solid recruiting class, not quite as good as Ohio State’s but still very good.

The surprise team that is not ranked that will have an impact will be Alabama. They will look to win the SEC East this year and surprise a lot of people like they have done the last two years just in a very quite fashion.

Syracuse and UCONN, bad news, both play in the Big East that deserves 8-10 teams in the NCAA tournament every year. The “Beast” that is the Big East is a Super Conference better than the next two conferences combined. Both have bright futures but the gauntlet run that is the Big East will take its toll on the team and if they come out still fighting they will be very tough teams when the tournament rolls around.

And after all the parody we’ve seen in college basketball the past few years there is some respect for the Missouri Valley Conference and Colonial Athletic Association. The MVC has Southern Illinois ranked in the preseason top 25. The CAA has three teams receiving votes in the poll. Both will make a big splash in the tournament. The CAA should get 3 teams in the post season tournament and the MVC could get as many as 6. The problem is the Valley is so deep that the teams beat up on each other and some will get knocked out of contention.

Time to get excited, the season will start slow but will be very exciting and of course there will be upsets in March.