2010-11 College Basketball: No Expectations

In preparation for this college basketball season, I planned it all out. I was going to do full fledged conference previews, with analysis for each team. I was going to include sections on preseason games to watch for, rank the conferences, teams, create a pre-season bubble watch and bracket. I was going all out this year.

Then life happened. I am not prepared for this season.

But in realizing this, I think this is a better mindset to enter the season with than I have in previous years. We tend to over-analyze everything in sports nowadays. Every win and loss is magnified to the point where we lose perspective. We immediately assume one win or loss means the difference between a championship and last place. We forget that teams change over the course of the season. Some teams mature and grow; others fall apart. Some teams are figured out and begin to stumble as a result; others catch fire at opportune times and ride it through the tournament. The way a team looks in mid-November is usually different from the way a team looks in March.

That last sentence was never more true than last year. Duke and Butler certainly were not the two best teams in the country last fall. But they both ended up in the championship game because they came together at just the right time (and had a few breaks go their way). That's how most seasons end up. Rarely is there a year where a great team or teams run wire-to-wire and win it all, especially now with the abundance of quality basketball programs and TV coverage. The talent is much more spread out and as a result, there is significantly more parity. That makes it difficult to predict who will be the best team in November, much less come March.

As a result, I will not be making preseason predictions this year. No conference rankings. No brackets. No Final Four or National Champion predictions. I'm going to go into this season with an open mind. I'm going to watch as many games as I can, starting with this week and the college basketball marathon coming up on Tuesday. I'll hype up games, post impressions, discuss teams I like and teams I don't like, do everything I used to. Only this time, there will be no expectations.