We are just 29 days away from the start of the 2019-20 college basketball season. Last year college basketball ended with Virginia proving everybody wrong and winning the national championship. Majority of the college basketball fans thought it’d be Duke. With Zion Williamson, RJ Barrett, Cam Reddish, Tre Jones, and Marques Bolden as your starting five, most people would think they’d win a national championship. But Duke was knocked off by an experienced Michigan State team in the Elite 8. Heading into this season, Duke is ranked 6th in the NBC Sports Preseason Top 25. Michigan State is ranked 1st by NBC Sports. Michigan State is followed by Kansas, who is always a top 5 team in the preseason rankings. Heading into this season there are a few teams in the preseason Top 10, who have not been there for a few years. Maryland is ranked 8th and people are expecting big thing out of them this season with them losing just one starter from last year. Louisville is ranked 4th and are bringing back their two leading scorers with a good recruiting class coming in. Florida is ranked 7th and landed Kerry Blackshear Jr. who is expected to help lead them to an NCAA Tournament run. Penny Hardaway has the number one recruiting class in the nation coming in at Memphis, who didn’t even make the NCAA Tournament last year. Although Duke was not able to win a national championship with a team led by freshman, Memphis will look to do that. On the first night of college basketball, there will be tests for 4 teams in the top ten rankings in college basketball. Kansas travels to Durham to take on the Duke Blue Devils at 7:00 PM EST on ESPN. Michigan State will travel to Lexington to take on the Kentucky Wildcats at 9:30 PM EST on ESPN as well.
Over the next few weeks, be looking out for our conference previews. We will be posting one for each conference and talk a little bit about each team in the conference.