College Basketball Tournament Excitement

With everybody focused on the start of the basketball season I'd be remiss if we didn't mention all the great college basketball coming up in the next month through the various early season tournaments.  From the College Basketball Experience Classic in Kansas City, to New York and the NIT, or Great Alaska Shootout in Anchorage, the Maui Invitational in Lahaina, or the Paradise Jam in the Virgin Islands there is plenty of action to watch.  While an early season loss doesn't preclude a college team from having a great run in the NCAA tournament, most coaches know that a good start is the best way to get momentum heading into their league competitions and eventually making the Tournament.  Check out our Basketball Highway events calendar for dates and information links.

While coaches of the power programs schedule carefully to get enough power teams to keep their RPI up during the season, tournaments don't always produce the intended match-ups and a team might come through with 2 or even 3 losses with a pretty good team.  The key as a basketball fan is to watch which teams grow as the season progresses.  There are the obvious powerhouses such as North Carolina, UCLA, Duke, Connecticut, Louisville, Texas, Pitt at the start of this season and most likely a National Champion will come out of this group.  However from a fans perspective I think it's most interesting to see how some of the sleepers do each year.  Will Gonzaga be able to break through one of these years to a Final Four.  Can a great traditional program like Purdue continue to rise and surprise this year as Matt Painter continues to harvest recruits.  How does John Calipari reload this year at Memphis after losing Rose and Douglas-Roberts and Bill Self at Kansas .  Then there are the personal stories like Connecticut's Jim Calhoun who is battling cancer, and Rick Majerus one of the great basketball minds trying to build a tradition at St. Louis.  The great part of college basketball is there are no givens, and every season produces a Creighton, or Keno Davis story somewhere.  I for one as excited to watch tonight as the 2008 Basketball tips off.  We hope you'll hang around the Basketball Highway throughout the year and grow your game.