Yes, it is still football season. Fall weather is officially upon us. However, basketball is right around the corner. In fact, the college basketball season officially tips off in just two weeks. Kentucky fans have already been treated to Big Blue Madness and the Blue-White Event. Now, this week, the ‘Cats will host Kentucky Wesleyan for an exhibition matchup. Additionally there will continue to be more charity exhibition games, scrimmages, and much more across the college basketball landscape.
Then, on Monday, November 4th the real games begin.
In honor of hitting the 14-day-out mark, let’s take a look at five more of the biggest storylines entering the 2024-2025 season. Every five days we will release five more headlines and ultimately reach a total of 25 when the season begins on the 4th of November. As Kentucky Sports Radio’s resident college basketball junkie, I will have plenty of other preview content, including my annual College Basketball Manifesto, over the next few weeks. It is almost here, folks!
As Jon Rothstein would say: And Here. We. Go.
The addition of Name, Image, and Likeness, along with the transfer portal, has made college basketball older than ever. A returning trio of Hunter Dickinson, RJ Davis, and Mark Sears headline the preseason First Team All-American list with nearly 400 combined games under their belt. Getting old and staying old has overtaken the one-and-done philosophy for even some of the top programs. However, young talent is still exciting and there are plenty of freshmen who will make a major impact on the national landscape this winter. The 2024 was class wasn’t overly talented, but there are some high-profile names to know. Here are some of the best freshmen in the country that you’ll want to follow this year.
There are four Top 11 teams in this year’s Maui Invitational including a heavyweight first round matchup between #5 Iowa State and #11 Auburn. Among the unranked teams, Michigan State is expected to be very competitive this season while Memphis never goes long without a storyline. Colorado and Dayton went to the Sweet 16 and Round of 32 respectively last season and certainly won’t be pushovers. As always, this Thanksgiving week tournament will serve as a launching off point for the college basketball season.
Our college basketball community has so many really smart people. Evan Miyakawa is one of the best and brightest when it comes to using analytics and doing fun things with numbers. He ran 10,000 season simulations to determine the various ceilings and floors of every team in the country.
As Evan said himself, teams with new coaching staffs and/or high roster turnover generally will have more variance between their ceiling and floor. That certainly proved to be true with programs such as Arkansas, Baylor, Duke, Kentucky, and Michigan having high levels of uncertainty. Meanwhile, programs like Houston generally stick pretty close to their preseason projection regardless of how many simulations you run.
It was also interesting that across Evan’s 10,000 simulations, only six teams had a ceiling finish of #1 in the country. Alabama, Duke, Gonzaga, Houston, Iowa State, and Kansas were those teams. According to the FanDuel Sportsbook, Gonzaga is the longest shot of those six to win the title with current odds of +2000.
What happens behind closed doors doesn’t necessarily behind closed doors. That is certainly true with the likes of Trilly Donovan out in the universe. Aside from these secret scrimmages there have been several high-profile televised games as well. St. John’s came back in the second half to defeat Rutgers 91-85. North Carolina beat Memphis 84-76 on the back of 33 points from Seth Trimble. Xavier put it to Dayton 98-74. There will be several more exhibition games and charity scrimmages to come this week. Below you can peruse some of the “verified” scrimmage scores curated by Trilly Donovan himself.
***North Texas actually defeated SMU 82-78***
Kentucky fans have faced a rollercoaster of emotions each of the last two weekends. Back on Friday, October 11th Big Blue Madness filled Rupp Arena and had excitement for the season reach a fever pitch. However, then Kentucky Football lost to Vanderbilt at home on Saturday. It was a similar sequence of events this past weekend. The Blue-White Event took place at Memorial Coliseum on Friday night with our first real look at this team in 5-on-5 action. Then, on Saturday, the Wildcats were embarrassed down in The Swamp. In order to forget about football, here are some takeaways from the Blue-White Event.
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