Your Home For College Hoops
Tuesday, November 5, 2024
With the ancient Great Alaska Shootout at its end with its 40th and final edition later this week, the Maui Invitational soon will move to a role in college basketball as not just the sport’s best in-season tournament, but also its oldest among eight-team tourneys.
The Champions Classic gave us all we could hope for in a great doubleheader. Plus more opening night ideas, a freshman is finally eligible, and how long two Yellow Jackets are not eligible is now known.
If Friday’s open of the college basketball season was a celebration (even if an unsatisfying one, with its smorgasbord of lousy guarantee games and non-Division I opponents), then Saturday must’ve been the hangover. At the least, the second day of the season is a reality check. It’s a reminder of not only how poorly college hoops starts its year, but also how a current attempt to address it gets it all wrong.
The season is here, and opening night provided us with a range of outcomes to think about.
The season is almost here, and we take a look at some of what to expect this coming season. We have preseason polls, conference changes, a look at some conferences and some matchups to start the season.
We conclude our look at our favorite games for every day of the season from November through February, our ultimate dream road trip through an entire college basketball season.
Of the many questions one can conjure up entering a season (Who’s the national title favorite? Why is Team XYZ only a 7 seed and not a 6 in someone’s preseason bracketology? How much more hideous can court designs get?), all of them take on a trivial quality this year, even more than they ever might have in the past.
We’re a day closer to the start, and look at several more conferences, including one that has been ruled by a powerhouse program for over a decade now. An injury, academic suspensions, an early transfer and internal investigation are all in the news as well.
We continue Hoopville’s preseason quick look at all 32 NCAA Division I conferences with the Big East, Big Sky, Big South and Big Ten. Plus: exhibition news.
A Thanksgiving college basketball tradition will come to a close after this season with the end of the Great Alaska Shootout. And the sport will lose a little bit of its flavor because of it.
