And so it begins — the time of year when we hear familiar voices on the television, see the faces on the floor, and our favorite teams again playing games that count in the standings. It is a beautiful time, indeed. With a large slate of games commencing this evening, we officially unveil RTC’s 2014-15 Preseason Top 25. This poll will hold for about 10 days, but starting November 24, you can expect our weekly poll to come out every Monday morning throughout the rest of the season. Along with the rankings will be the usual quick and dirty analysis that dives deeper into how the teams shake out from top to bottom. To see how we did last year, check out our 2013-14 preseason poll — we nailed some (Louisville, Michigan, Florida, Kansas), and missed on others (Oklahoma State, Marquette, Notre Dame, Georgetown). We promise to do better this time around.

Quick n’ Dirty Thoughts.

• A Strong Majority Like Kentucky – Six of our seven pollsters were in agreement that Kentucky is the top team in the country, while the lone dissenter went with #2 Arizona. It is very difficult to argue with either selection, but Kentucky reigned supreme with John Calipari bringing another star-studded recruiting class (Tyler Ulis, Devin Booker, Trey Lyles and Karl-Anthony Towns) to play alongside a formidable returning unit (Aaron Harrison, Andrew Harrison, Alex Poythress, Marcus Lee, Dakari Johnson, and Willie Cauley-Stein). Calipari has so much talent at his disposal that he is planning on starting the season with two separate “platoons” of six players that will roughly play the same number of minutes. Will this strategy work? That certainly remains to be seen, but it will be an interesting narrative to follow. After advancing to the Elite Eight last spring, Arizona is once again loaded with talent. T.J. McConnell, Brandon Ashley, Kaleb Tarczewski, and Rondae Hollis-Jefferson all return, and the other Wildcats are joined by much-balleyhooed freshman Stanley Johnson.
• After The Top Four, Everything Is Fairly Close – Kentucky, Arizona, Wisconsin, and Duke are well-established by our pollsters as the four top teams in the country. After that, there was not a ton of agreement on the remaining 21 teams. For example, #7 North Carolina was voted as high as #5 by three pollsters, but the Tar Heels also drew two votes at #12. This much uncertainty regarding the placement of the #5 through #25 teams in the country should make for a fun early season stretch where some teams will undoubtedly distinguish themselves as bona fide contenders while others will fade out of the RTC25.

• Wichita State Will Be A Force To Be Reckoned With Once Again – The Shockers took the college basketball world by storm last season, as Gregg Marshall’s squad went undefeated in the regular season and rose all the way up to #2 in the national rankings. While standout forward Cleanthony Early is now a member of the New York Knicks, Wichita State returns Fred VanVleet, Ron Baker, Tekele Cotton, and Darius Carter to make up what should be another excellent unit. Wichita State has been to the Final Four and earned a #1 seed in the NCAA Tournament in the past two seasons, so it will definitely be intriguing to see what the Shockers will do for another encore.
• The Big Ten Should Be Strong – #3 Wisconsin, #19 Ohio State, #20 Michigan State, #21 Michigan, #22 Nebraska, and #24 Iowa are all members of the RTC Preseason Top 25. The inclusion of six teams from the Big Ten indicates that our pollsters believe that the league will once again be as tough as any in the country. While Ohio State, Michigan State, Michigan, and Iowa suffered notable personnel losses from last season, they all brought in good recruiting classes that should gel well with solid returning cores. You can always expect several things to change from season-to-season, but the strength of the Big Ten does not figure to be among those things.

Game of the Week – #1 Kentucky vs. #5 Kansas. Quite possibly the most anticipated game of the 2014-15 regular season takes place in its opening week as the Wildcats and Jayhawks will do battle at the Champions Classic in Indianapolis Tuesday night. While both teams return a plethora of solid contributors, the match-up to watch in this one will be Kentucky’s vaunted recruiting class taking on Kansas’ strong freshmen group highlighted by McDonald’s All-Americans Cliff Alexander and Kelly Oubre. This game will be a must-watch for all college basketball fans.

Other Key Top 25 Games.

• #11 Gonzaga vs. #22 SMU – Monday, November 17.
• #4 Duke vs. #19 Michigan State – Tuesday, November 18.
• #10 Texas vs. #24 Iowa – Thursday, November 20.

Keep Tabs On – #6 Louisville vs. Minnesota; #14 VCU vs. Tennessee; #9 Florida vs. Miami (FL); #8 Wichita State vs. Memphis; #20 Ohio State vs. Marquette; #4 Duke vs. Temple.

Conference Call – Big Ten (6), ACC (5), Big 12 (4), AAC (2), SEC (2), Pac-12 (1), Big East (1), Missouri Valley (1), WCC (1), Atlantic 10 (1), Mountain West (1).

WCarey (318 Posts)

This entry was posted on Friday, November 14th, 2014 at 11:35 am by Walker Carey and is filed under 2014-15 Season Preview, blogpoll, Regular Features. Tagged: arizona, duke, feature, gonzaga, iowa, kentucky, michigan, michigan state, nebraska, ohio state, smu, texas, wichita state, wisconsin. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.