Story of the Night.  UCLA’s freshman class.  Last year’s freshman class arguably boasted the best player in the country in Kevin Love, but this year’s version, while lacking in equivalent star power, may more than compensate for Love’s loss with its depth and diversity of skills.  Jrue Holiday was the only rookie starter tonight in UCLA’s win against Prairie View A&M, but his four classmates (Drew Gordon, Malcolm Lee, Jerime Anderson and J’Mison Morgan) each came off the bench and contributed aplenty.  The quintet accounted for 41% of the minutes, 44% of the points, 44% of the rebounds and 43% of the assists tonight in the 82-58 win.  Ok, and 54% of the turnovers, but still, not a bad start for this freshman class of Bruins.  As for the game itself, it appears that UCLA still knows how to rebound (41-18) and the defense is still stingy – Prairie View was held to a mere 23% shooting in the first half; the fact that they shot 42% for the game indicates that either UCLA lost focus in the second half or Prairie View settled down – we’re leaning toward the former as an explanation.  Darren Collison led the way as he hit five threes en route to a 19/3/4 asst night.  The Bruins will play Miami (OH) tomorrow night in the second round of the CvC in a game that should combine for about 50 total pts.  Once again, ESPN isn’t allowing embedded videos so we’ll have to settle for linked highlights. 

Other Games.  S. Illinois 80, UMass 73.  We thought this would be the best game of the night, and it looks like we were right, as S. Illinois got themselves down nine at halftime to UMass before storming back behind nine threes in the second half to pull away in the last few minutes to win another home game.  Bryan Mullins had a huge night for SIU, going for 16/13/4 stls for the home team, but Kevin Dillard’s four threes in the second half didn’t hurt.  UMass was led by Ricky Harris with 24/5, but the stat that jumped off the Minutemen’s page was starting PG Chris Lowe’s TEN turnovers (with zero assists).  Michigan 76, Northeastern 56.  Gotta admit that we thought this game had upset potential, and we couldn’t have been more wrong.  Michigan’s Manny Harris followed up his impressive season debut with nearly a trip-dub (26/10/8 assts), as UM held Northeastern to 29% shooting (17% from three) for the game.  UM Hoops points out that, if Michigan is going to threaten this year, they’ll need to shore up their work on the boards.  Northeastern grabbed twenty offensive rebounds tonight (amazingly, they only had 29 total boards), and with UCLA looming on the horizon next week in MSG (probably), the Wolverines will need to repair that deficiency.  Miami (OH) 70, Weber St. 66.  So in the other half of the Westwood bracket, Miami (OH) won a game on a three by Kenny Hayes (24 pts) with 1.7 seconds left on the clock, despite losing nearly every major statistical category in the game.  The Redhawks were outshot (by 10% FG), outrebounded (by 7), outassisted (by 3), and yet they still prevailed.  How?  Turnovers, kids.  Seven additional TOs by Weber St. gave Miami just enough extra possessions to sneak by.  Miami will play UCLA tomorrow night for the right to play at MSG, and we expect Charlie Coles to have something up his sleeve to make this game interesting for a while. 

On Tap Thursday (all times EST). 

• UCLA (-15) v. Miami (OH) on ESPNU- 11pm

We’re coming to the end of the 2008-09 preseason materials with the release of today’s Blogpoll.  Again, if you’re new to the site or simply drank away your memory in the offseason, RTC, along with a cadre of a dozen or so college hoops bloggers, misfits, rogues and malcontents submits a weekly blogpoll to Gabby at March to Madness, the chief scalawag.  He organizes and tallies everything and sends it back to us so that we can throw it up on our blogs, thereby increasing our post counts and our worthy contributions to the college basketball canon.  Some quick analysis below…

Comments.

El Numero Uno.  UNC was everyone’s #1 team, including ours, and even though we chose Louisville to win it all in our bracket post earlier this week.  Does that make us inconsistent?  Wishy-washy?  A flip-flopper?  Nah.  UNC is the best team in America on paper at the beginning of the season (now).  But they’ll get upset by the second-best team (on our ballot) in America on paper in April.  How’s that for nuance?

Teams Overrated by the Bloggers (in our view).  UConn, Pitt, Texas, Oklahoma, Miami (FL), Marquette, Wake Forest.  And no, we don’t hate the Big East, Big 12 or ACC.  Here are our reasons, respectively: no NCAA wins, weak perimeter shooting, no DJ Augustin, Griffin might be expected to do too much, can’t sneak up on folks this year, no inside game whatsoever, waaaay too green for prime time.

Teams Underrated by the Bloggers (in our view).  Gonzaga, Purdue, Davidson, Florida, Baylor.  Reasons:  Heytvelt is healthy again, love Matt Painter, Curry, the locker room incident last year, we just have a thing for Bears.   

Biggest Variance (aka Nobody Knows WTF to Do With These Teams).  Standard Deviation (Std Dev) refers to the amount of variance in the blogpoll votes for a specific team.  If everyone chooses a team at the same spot (i.e., UNC at #1), there is no variance and therefore the Std Dev is 0.00.  If, on the other hand, a team is picked all over the place – Notre Dame, Duke, Purdue and Wake Forest come to mind – the Std Dev will be relatively high.  Each of these teams was ranked as high as the Top 10 on some ballots, and unranked completely on others.  For example, M2M justifies his omission of Duke on his blogpoll post.   

Story of the Night.   Normally this would require its own post, but today was a travel day for us, so we’re going to throw it in tonight’s ATB.  Great news!  Bob Knight will return as an analyst and commentator for ESPN college hoops games this year (h/t TBL).  The analyst part we’re absolutely sure is a great idea (although his title game picks could use some help).  Everyone remembers how entertaining Knight was in the studio during the last few weeks of the regular season last year (he also showed up for the football Gameday at Texas Tech a couple of weeks ago).  Adding him to the Gameday crew for the entire season is a natural fit.  We’re less sure about Knight as an in-game commentator (with Dan Shulman or Brent Musberger on Thursday night games), but the possibility of a profane Knight tirade about a boneheaded player or ref makes us positively giddy at the prospect.

Game of the Night.  Tonight we had more CvC action, with the second night of the Durham, NC, regional and the opening nights at both the Carbondale, IL, and Ann Arbor, MI, regionals.  The only televised games were Duke v. Georgia Southern and the Michigan v. Michigan Tech games on ESPNU, so if you saw either feel free to provide some comments below.  N-Bug sent along a quote from Coach K relating Duke’s offensive output to a pinball game (he’s from a different era, ok), but in looking at the stat sheet of the 97-54 win, it appears that he should have been talking about his defense.  Duke held GSU to 28% from the field and outrebounded the Eagles by 25 boards, which must have made his happier with his team’s overall effort.  Singler again led the way with 19/8.  It’s difficult to nitpick a 43-point win, but Coach K might want to have his team work on FTs during the next week, as his team could have won by 60 had they shot it from the line a little better (25-49).  Duke will play the winner of S. Illinois/UMass in the semis next Thursday at MSG. 

Other Games. 

• Carbondale Regional.  SIU and UMass both played D2 opponents, so we’re not sure how valuable analyzing their wins vs. California (PA) and Arkansas-Monticello are, respectively.  SIU’s Carlton Fay had 16/11 as the Salukis pulled away in the second half to win 66-52.  UMass won its first contest in new coach Derek Kellogg’s debut, as Chris Lowe paced the Minutemen with 18/11 assts.  SIU v. UMass tomorrow night should be a good game, and either team would make for an interesting semifinal matchup with Duke.
• Ann Arbor Regional.  Michigan’s Manny Harris dropped 30/7 on Michigan Tech in the opener for John Beilein’s second team in Ann Arbor.  If anyone else saw this game, we’d be interested in knowing how the Beilein system in Y2 looked.  In the other game, Northeastern handled IUPUI 73-60 in a game that was not as close as the final score indicates.  Michigan should take this Northeastern team seriously – they’ll be fired up and are a substantial upgrade of talent than what the Wolverines faced tonight.  It would not shock us if Northeastern wins tomorrow night’s game. 

On Tap Wednesday (all times EST).  Several more CvC games…  it figures that the best game (SIU v. UMass) will be broadcast, um, nowhere…

• Miami (OH) (-12.5) v. Weber St. – 7:15pm
• S. Illinois (-4.5) v UMass – 8pm
• Michigan (-5) v. Northeastern (ESPNU) – 8pm
• UCLA (-35) v. Prairie View A&M  (ESPNU) – 10pm

Hello again, everyone.  For those of you who might be new to the site this season, we want to introduce you to a feature that we try to run most nights during the season.  We like to call this feature After the Buzzer (ATB) because it’ll be posted well after the witching hour in the East for your first perusal the next morning (make RTC your home page!  you won’t be disappointed…).  The format will change depending on what happened that night, but we’ll typically try to give some brief wrapups of the night’s biggest games and stories of interest with some commentary thrown in.  If we’re feeling particularly frisky, we may also take a look ahead to the next night’s games.  Note that we said most nights; there will inevitably be nights where the games that night were simply unwatchable, or we’re down at the Savoy because some Duke scrub hit a late three to cover the spread, or our better half threw the tv and/or computer out the window.  In any case, like Olbermann and O’Reilly, we’ll be there as many nights as we can muster, annoying the hell out of you with our smug banter. 

Game of the Night.  There was no Game of the Night because there really is no “Opening Night,” and this really irritates us.  Seriously, how stupid is the NCAA when it comes to how it starts the season?  MLB, the NFL, the NBA and even NCAA football have an opening day/night with significant fanfare – it’s something that fans and the media alike can get excited about.  Instead of a showcase night of several good ‘opening’ games, we get Duke vs. Presbyterian on ESPNU (was Methodist unavailable?  how about Baptist?).  Instead of Vitale/Bilas/Digger, we get the painfully monotonous Beth Mowins.  Instead of college basketball nation all at once reaching an orgasmic climax because hoops is finally back in action, we get a game that is hidden away on the least-watched channel in the ESPN suite of programming.  It’s ridiculous.  We’ll say that ESPN is at least thinking the right way with its 24 hour bonanza of coverage next week (Nov. 18), but the NCAA and ESPN need to work a deal out next year so that this happens on a true “opening night.” 

Other Games.  The only games tonight were in the Coaches vs. Cancer Tournament in the Durham, NC, regional.  The first game wasn’t televised, but Georgia Southern pulled off a mild upset (6-pt dog) in defeating CUSA’s Houston Cougars 65-63.  Sleeper schmeeper.  Trumaine Pearson led GSU with 19/11, as the Eagles withstood a late three attempt that was off the mark.  Georgia Southern will now play host Duke, as the Devils got out to a large halftime lead against Presbyterian (24 pts) before mostly coasting in the second stanza to win 80-49.  We actually saw most of this game – here are some quick thoughts.

• Presbyterian is nicknamed the Blue Hose – someone needs to explain this to us.
• Coach K wasn’t very happy with his team’s performance, and with good reason.  The Devils committed 21 turnovers and only shot 3-11 (27%) from long range. 
• Kyle Singler (19/10) and Nolan Smith (15/3 stls) looked solid, if not spectacular, but what was alarmingly apparent was how Coach K’s recruiting in recent years has led to lineups in the Duke lineup that look way too much like the SEC and ACC in the mid-50s.  A Duke ‘whiteout’ will not be an uncommon occurrence again this year.
• Time and time again the Presbyterian offense was able dribble penetrate into the paint for decent looks at the rim.  They rarely finished these forays because they were often too small and intimidated by the Duke ‘bigs,’ but this is going to be a serious problem again for the Devils this year.  Incumbent center Brian Zoubek fouled out in seven minutes of play.  Against.  Presbyterian.  The other option, freshman 6’10 F/C Miles Plumlee had 0/2 in thirteen minutes.  Why can’t Coach K get big man studs anymore?
• ESPN isn’t allowing embedded video on this game yet, so here is the link to the highlights.

On Tap Tuesday (all times EST).  Several more CvC games, but only a few of interest.

• Northeastern (-6) v. IUPUI – 4pm
• Michigan v. Michigan Tech (ESPNU) – 7pm
• Duke (-25) v. Georgia Southern (ESPNU) – 9pm

For those of your who haven’t been spending as much time on Rush the Court the past few months as you should (looking at myself in the mirror), we thought we would offer you a quick guide to what we have been working on over the past few months.

General Overview: Some top quality writing/prognosticating to get you in the spirit for the run from today until the early morning hours of April 7th, 2009.
– Finally, It’s Here: New RTC feature columnist John Stevens offers his thoughts about the upcoming season.
– A Little Preseason Bracketology: RTC co-editor (Do we even have titles?) rtmsf does his best Joe Lunardi impression and makes a surprising pick for his national champion. I’m smelling an attempt to make the RTC preseason bracketology championship the new Madden cover.
– Vegas Odds – Preseason Check-In: For the degenerate gamblers out there, RTC co-founder rtmsf offers an analysis of the Las Vegas odds for the 2009 NCAA champions for pure academic purposes. . .
– Preseason Polls Released: The surprisingly employed (I’m running out of titles here) rtmsf analyzes the AP and Coaches polls going into the season with a deeper look at unanimous #1 UNC’s early schedule.
– ESPN Full Court: 562 Games of Gooey, Delicious Goodness*: Once again, rtmsf comes through with the entire ESPN Full Court schedule with a Steve Nash-style assist from Patrick Marshall of Bluejay Basketball.

Big Early Season News: While there are several big stories going into this season, there were 2 major stories that have come out recently that you should know about before you start watching games.
– Tyler Hansbrough Out Indefinitely: Who? Oh yeah, that guy. Everybody’s favorite for national POY and NBA Draft Day snub (get ready for the annual Dick Vitale rant) Psycho T will be out for a while, but we think the Tar Heels will be ok by March.
– Jai Lucas Leaving Florida: In a story that isn’t getting nearly the attention that the Psycho T story has (for good reason), Billy Donovan has lost last season’s starting point guard on the eve of the new season. While it appears that Lucas was probably heading towards a role as a backup point guard on the Gators, the timing of this announcement is surprising. It will be interesting to see what the Gators will do if freshman guard Erving Walker struggles in adjusting to SEC basketball.

Conference Primers: As part of our attempt to make a new-and-improved RTC, we hired the finest journalists in America to make our site more all-inclusive of the little people in the college basketball landscape. To that end we put together 31 conference previews (31 automatic bids to the Big Dance means 31 previews from RTC) with the help of the aforementioned correspondents.
– ACC
– America East
– Atlantic 10
– Atlantic Sun
– Big 12
– Big East
– Big Sky
– Big South
– Big Ten
– Big West
– Colonial
– Conference USA
– Horizon
– Ivy League
– MAAC
– MAC
– MEAC
– Missouri Valley
– Mountain West
– Northeast
– Ohio Valley Conference
– Pac-10
– Patriot League
– SEC
– Southern
– Southland
– Summit
– Sun Belt
– SWAC
– WAC
– West Coast Conference

As the season progresses, we will have more features and content including updates from all 31 conferences. We hope all of you are looking forward to the new season as much as we are and even if your team looks like it will struggle to make it to the NIT, remember the words of Kevin Garnett, who incidentally didn’t play a minute of college basketball (that’s another post), “Anything is possible!”

So if you haven’t heard, tonight is the beginning of college basketball regular season games.  What we’re really talking about, though, is two games from Durham as part of the Coaches v. Cancer Tournament (only one televised on ESPNU).  In fact, the first game (Houston v. Georgia Southern) starts in about forty minutes. 

So we wanted to throw up the brackets again just to remind ourselves of who was playing in this thing, and what we might expect to see in a week or so.  Some predictions below the bracket.

Duke Regional.  Obviously, Duke will be heavily favored in both games, but Houston is a slight sleeper here.  The Cougars won 24 games last season, defeated Kentucky, and played Memphis tough in both of their CUSA contests.  They lost their top two players from last year, but return their next four, and Coach Tom Penders’ teams play hard and typically can score with anybody. 

SIU Regional.  Two easy first round game for S. Illinois and UMass, but that matchup presents an interesting contrast in styles – SIU with their methodical pace and UMass with its breakneck pace (#4 nationally in possessions/game last year).  We’d expect SIU to win because they simply don’t lose many nonconference games at home, but it could be an interesting game.

UCLA Regional.   Ho-hum.  UCLA will have no problem with anyone in this region, but we’d recommend bringing your iced double latte if the Bruins play Miami (OH) in the second round.  That game won’t break 100 pts total. 

Michigan Regional.  It wouldn’t shock us if Michigan lost a second-round matchup with Northeastern here.  In fact, this is probably the most likely shot at an upset in the four regionals.  Northeastern returns its entire starting lineup from a team that some expect to make some noise in the CAA this year.  And while we love John Beilein, he’s probably a couple years away from fully implementing his system in Ann Arbor. 

The Picks to go to MSG.  Duke, S. Illinois, UCLA, Northeastern.

As part of our attempt to improve Rush the Court and make it the premier college basketball blog, we’re introducing a series of new features. Some will be daily (we’re bringing back our recaps on nightly action called After the Buzzer), weekly, and others will be a little more random (the Brandon Jennings Watch or the long-awaited RTC Prestige rankings). One of these features will be the RTC “Set Your Tivos” feature previewing the week ahead and giving our loyal readers a heads-up as they plan their lives around college basketball (all times EST). Without further ado, your Week 1 Set Your Tivos. . .

Normally, I would be going through a more extensive analysis of the day’s offerings, but this week the pickings are pretty slim so you’re essentially getting every game that I know is on TV.

Monday, November 10, 2008 – Presbyterian at #5 Duke, 7 PM (ESPNU): College basketball officially gets underway with a cupcake. While it will be interesting to see if Coach K has brought any new wrinkles into the Duke offense from Beijing, I don’t think he’ll be revealing it against Presbyterian. If you want to see if Duke has regrouped from its poor performance last March (barely beating Belmont and getting thumped by Joe Alexander and West Virginia), you’ll have to wait until Friday because this is going to be a beatdown.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008 – Michigan Tech at Michigan, 7 PM (ESPNU): The Wolverines are looking to bounce back from a disappointing 2007-08 campaign under former Mountaineer coach John Beilein. What is it with Michigan’s athletic department poaching all the coaching talent in Morgantown? If they have any shot of returning to respectability they should crush Michigan Tech. They should be able to do the latter, but I doubt they will be respectable this season unless you consider battling for a NIT bid respectable.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008 – Prairie View A&M at #4 UCLA, 10 PM (ESPNU): The big question for Ben Howland will be if he can guide the Bruins to Detroit for their 4th consecutive Final 4 (the last 3 ended with losses). This game will not answer any of the questions the Bruins have. Are you sensing a pattern here? So Bruins fans, enjoy the exhibition against a school that is most well-known for its incompetence on the football field.

Thursday, November 13, 2008 – Nothing. Catch up on the rest of your life since you’ll be busy until early in the morning on April 7, 2009.

Friday, November 14, 2008 – Toledo at #19 Florida, 6 PM (ESPNU): After a rebuilding campaign following their back-to-back national titles, Billy Donovan’s Gators look to rebound and make a run in March. Tonight will be a big first step in showing the nation they can do that even with the recent departure of last season’s starting PG Jai Lucas.

– Fairleigh Dickinson at #6 Pittsburgh, 7 PM (CBS College Sports All-Access): Our first look at one of the Big East powers, this won’t necessarily give us a good indication of how strong the Panthers will be this year, but it could be a potential 1 vs. 16 or 2 vs. 15 match-up in March.

– North Carolina Central at #24 Wake Forest, 7 PM (None): This may be the most interesting of the games tonight as Wake is a team with “tremendous upside potential” (see Brown, Hubie). Dino Gaudio managed to bring in the best recruiting class in the ACC (h/t to the late Skip Prosser) and will be poised to put a scare into some of the top teams in the country later in the year. This game may just give us a glimpse of how scary the Demon Deacons could be.

– Western Carolina at #2 UConn, 7:30 PM (ESPN360): The Big East favorites open up with a cupcake. Not much to see here. The Huskies won’t be at full-strength yet, but it shouldn’t matter. We’ll be interested to see if Hasheem Thabeet has progressed any since last season.

– Stetson at #8 Texas, 8 PM (ESPN Full Court & ESPN360): The Longhorns return 4 of 5 starters from last season’s Elite 8 team, but will have a big hole at the 1 with D.J. Augustin’s early entry into the draft. Rick Barnes will have to find a way to replace Augustin (last seen getting punked by Derrick Rose) in much the same way as he built last year’s team after the early entry of Kevin Durant (last seen leaving the city of Seattle in tears). If Barnes is able to pull that off, the Longhorns should have a good shot at a #1 or #2 seed. By the way, this game won’t give us any indication if that is the case.

– American University at #14 Oklahoma, 8 PM (ESPN Full Court & ESPN360): The Sooners are loaded this year and some are even picking them to win the Big 12. Blake Griffin will be leading the way, but will need solid support from diaper dandy Willie Warren and UCLA transfer Ryan Wright if they are going to challenge Texas. While Jeff Capel still has some work to do to match his predecessor’s level of success, we’re pretty sure he will be slightly less controversial. I’d watch this game more to see how good Capel’s new recruit and transfer are rather than using it as a gauge of how good his team is.

– Albany at #25 Villanova, 8 PM (Nova Nation All-Access):  A first look at Jay Wright’s team against a solid program from the Am East.  Will Wright go with the four-guard set that’s been rumored?  A lineup of 6’2 Scottie Reynolds, 6’1 Corey Fisher, 6’0 Malcolm Grant and 6’5 Corey Stokes wouldn’t get many rebouds, but would cause quickness mismatches all over the court.  Should be fun to watch. 

– Houston Baptist at #17 Marquette, 8:30 PM (Time Warner Cable Sports 32 locally in Wisconsin):  The seventh-year trio of Wesley Matthews, Dominic James and Jerel McNeal all return for the Warriors Golden Eagles, but Tom Crean doesn’t.  New coach and former assistant Buzz Williams has a talented, experienced team returning that probably should have made the Sweet Sixteen last year (but for the Lopez Roll).  In other words, he’s in a much better position than his predecessor will be this season several hours south down in Bloomington. 

– Detroit at #10 Purdue, 9 PM (ESPN360):  Purdue shouldn’t have much trouble with the team picked by RTC to finish dead last in the Horizon.  E’Twaun Moore and Robbie Hummell are worth sitting at home watching your computer on a Friday night, trust us. 

– Mississippi Valley State at #15 Arizona State, 10 PM (Fox Sports Arizona & Fox College Sports Pacific):  MVSU should be one of the better teams in the SWAC this year, but that doesn’t mean this will be a good game.  The more we think about ASU, the more we believe that they’re in for a big season.  James Harden is just that good, and Sendek has had enough time to get buy-in from his players for his system (which generally works). 

*h/t to Patrick Marshall (see below)

John Stevens is a featured columnist for RTC.  His columns will appear on Tuesdays throughout the season.

We can stop now.

No need to continue going to YouTube to relive highlights of last season.

We can stop reading (and re-reading) those strange single-issue pre-season magazines.

We don’t have to keep checking the listings at ESPN Classic or the Big Ten Network for a stray college basketball replay.

Somewhere in Florida, Dick Vitale has been taken out of a moth-ball-filled crate (or out of his tasty Tampa Bay Rays box seats) and has had his big bald pumpkin dusted off.  He is drinking hot tea to prepare his voice.  He knows that the weekly Mike-and-Mike appearances are not enough, now.  He knows it’s time to go to work.

Somewhere in New England, the always delightful and informative Tom Brennan is shopping for blazers.  Hopefully with his wife’s help.

At this moment, Digger Phelps is in a Staples, eyeballing the highliter section with genuine concern, holding up ties next to them to insure proper color-coordination.  Jay Bilas and the Davises (Rece and Hubert) are watching replays of the Tim Tebow pep talk and laughing like Charley Steiner. 

They’re polishing the floors at Pauley and Cameron Indoor.  Oh yes, they’re setting up chairs at Rupp and O’Connell.  If you listen hard enough, you can hear that blessed sound, that sweet, echoing collision between basketball leather and hardwood, coming from Louisville and Lawrence, Spokane and Storrs.

And we know why.  It’s back.

God, it’s always been this way for me.  Ever since I can remember, the middle of October has meant – political rhetoric aside — well, a feeling of new hope.  Not just for the prospect of a great season for my favorite team(s), but for the fact that there WAS a season; that for the next five months, my favorite sport was going to take over everything – the TV, the radio, the conversations between me and my friends – and man, how sweet it was going to be. 

“Take over” is the correct term, there.  Seriously, some of my earliest memories of childhood were sitting with my basketball-coach father in front of a TV as he taught me why you have to “overload” a zone, or the best way to break a 2-2-1 full court press, or how, by looking at your defender’s feet, to tell the exact moment to go on a dribble-drive.  On random weekdays in grade school and junior high, my friends and I would be bleary-eyed having stayed up to catch the end of, say, Seton Hall at UC-Santa Barbara, or Loyola Marymount at Gonzaga, because if you were in our crowd you had better be able to discuss it.  Especially during the season, we’d be fired up to play HORSE, 21, or 5-on-5 on any playground we could find.  Rain or snow?  Didn’t matter, makes it more interesting.  3am and the cops showed up?  Who cares, we’ll find another court.  Yeah, we were geeks, at least about college basketball.  We didn’t care.  We still are.

I’m willing to bet that if you’re reading a college basketball blog, you probably share my excitement, and you probably have similar memories to the ones I’ve recounted above.  Maybe you have a specific moment in college hoops’ glorious history that made you an immediate lifelong fan.  Perhaps you can recall the exact details of where you were for the Bryce Drew Miracle.  Or Tyus Edney coast-to-coast.  Or Gabe Lewullis in 1996.  Well take heart, friends.  November has arrived.  It ain’t March, but it’s still pretty damn good.

And the upcoming season is already intriguing in so many ways.  So many questions are waiting to be answered.  For the first time in a while, we have a true Goliath to start a season, this time in the form of the 2008-09 edition of the North Carolina Tarheels.  Can they live up to the already-churning hype machine and take their place as one of the greatest squads ever assembled?  Can Ol’ Roy live up to the challenge and complete this task?  What absolute sickness does Stephen Curry have in store for us this year?  Will this new three-point line redefine the position of the 2-guard?  Will the traditional center re-emerge as the premier position on the floor because of it?  Will it bring back the lost of art of the mid-range jumper?  Is Duke over- or undervalued this year?  Is Davidson the new Gonzaga?  Speaking of the Zags, is Austin Daye as special a player as he seems?  Will Billy Gillispie’s second season in Lexington be as impressive as his second seasons at UTEP and Texas A&M (therefore catapulting him to deity status)?  And what is it going to be like to look over at the Arizona sideline and NOT see Lute Olson?  Jeez, you might as well make the baskets 26 feet high and make the court triangular, because it will seem like a different game.

I can’t wait to have them all answered.  So serve it up, let’s light this candle.  With everything that’s gone on in this country (sports and otherwise) in the last seven months, it seems like a million years ago that we crowned Bill Self and his Jayhawks as champions.  So give me Big Monday.  Love him or loathe him, give me Dickie V having one of his on-air seizures of hoops happiness.  Give me Gus Johnson on the mic with a last-second shot in the air.  Bring on Bracketology and let’s have some mid-majors.  It’s time for Rick Pitino’s white suit and the Fox Sunday night game. 

Because finally…it’s here.  Rejoice, college hoops fans.  Our game is back.

As you know, over the course of the last month and with the invaluable assistance of our correspondent brigade, we’ve rolled out 31 conference primers.  For each conference primer, we made a conscious attempt to provide a postseason seed for each and every NCAA team.  Now that we’ve finished, we thought it would be interesting to slot each team into a bracket taking into consideration the standard rules of seeding that the NCAA uses, and taking it one step further, play out the games as we would currently pick them.  Our results are below, so here is the first annual RTC Preseason Bracket.  (sorry for the small size, but if you click the image, you can see our predictions)

Just some brief additional information on conference affiliation (avg. seed):

• Big East – 9 teams  (4.8)
• Big 12 – 7 teams  (6.3)
• SEC – 6 teams  (7.2)
• ACC – 5 teams  (5.4)
• Big 10 – 4 teams  (6.3) 
• Pac-10 – 4 teams (5.8)
• A10, CUSA, Mtn West, Missouri Valley, WCC – 2 teams each  (7.9)
• All Other Conferences (20) – 1 team each  (13.8)

Tell us how stupid we are below in the comments.  (trust us, we know this bracket isn’t perfect)

Shamelessly cribbing from last spring’s very clever NBA catch phrase, we here at RTC will present to you the Thirty Reasons We Love College Basketball as we gear up toward the start of the season a little over a month from now.  We’ll be bringing you players to watch for this season and moments to remember from last season, courtesy of the series of dump trucks, wires and effluvia known as YouTube. 

#1 – Where Pure, Unadulterated Bedlam Happens

(yeah, it’s good enough to see twice)