The college basketball season has officially arrived, headlined by exciting matchups between the Texas Longhorns and Ohio State Buckeyes, Missouri Tigers and Memphis Tigers, and then a post-Monday Night Football bout between the Baylor Bears and Gonzaga Bulldogs to cap it off.
The new season gives us a first look at the multitude of changes across the sport, including conference realignment moves that will shake up the SEC, Big Ten, and Big 12 in particular, as well as an unbelievably wild coaching carousel that includes new coaches at Kentucky, Arkansas, Louisville, USC, Michigan, Ohio State, BYU, and SMU.
College hoops is also flooded with talent this season, with a combination of elite returners who are using COVID eligibility – like RJ Davis, Mark Sears, Ryan Kalkbrenner, and Caleb Love – as well as one of the deepest and most exciting freshman classes of the last decade, headlined by Cooper Flagg, VJ Edgecombe, and a pair of Rutgers stars in Dylan Harper and Ace Bailey.
How will all those new coaches, new conferences, new talent, and veteran returners mix? That’s what we can’t wait to find out, but it certainly makes creating a preseason top 25 a notably difficult endeavor.
Below is College Sports Wire’s first stab at a preseason top 25, which will be updated weekly throughout the college basketball season: