October 23, 2026<\/a><\/p>\nMeanwhile, the defending national champions will officially take the court later that day at a more conventional hour. Seven months ago, the Michigan Wolverines were power-washed by confetti in Indianapolis, but now must rebuild after an off-season tsunami. The top recruit was lost to a knee injury, nearly all the starters are gone and so is the head coach, Dusty May having abruptly left for the NBA and the Dallas Mavericks.<\/p>\n
Funny thing about that: May\u2019s last win as a Michigan coach was the national championship game in Lucas Oil Stadium; his first win as an NBA coach was six blocks away at Gainbridge Fieldhouse when Dallas visited the Indiana Pacers.<\/p>\n
So the 54th and newest coach to win a title left the college stage on a vapor trail. If it\u2019s longevity in coaching you want, consider the preseason AP Top 25, where Michigan State will begin the season at No. 6, Tennessee at No. 8, Houston at No. 10 and St. John\u2019s at No. 13. That\u2019s quite the collection of ranked septuagenarians with Tom Izzo 71, Rick Barnes 72, Kelvin Sampson 71 and Rick Pitino 74.<\/p>\n
And while it is reasonable to begin every season wondering when we will see their last bows, none seem in a hurry to leave. \u201cI\u2019ll be here,\u201d Izzo said the other day, \u201cuntil I die or something.\u201d<\/p>\n
The real retirement watch as the season begins is in Lawrence, where Bill Self might be only 63 but has had to endure ongoing health issues. He\u2019s back for another run, even if the modern world of college basketball comes with new-age headaches. Three of his potential players approached opening day still waiting for legal word about their eligibility. A sign of the times, by the way, as eligibility issues had starting lineups being written only in pencil coast to coast. The 2026-27 season will roll with a cast of dozens of maybes.<\/p>\n
Florida will begin as the No. 1 team. Not that that means a lot. It\u2019s been 17 years since the No. 1 team in the preseason ended up the national champion. Too many potholes out there. Then again, that was North Carolina in 2009, the last time the Final Four was in Detroit.<\/p>\n
Right behind the Gators is Duke, and while it\u2019s hardly unusual to see the Blue Devils hanging around the poll penthouse, what might be new in Durham is the uneasy feeling of being haunted by the ghosts of tournaments past \u2013 the buzzer stunner by Connecticut last March and the wasted 17-point lead against Houston at the 2024 Final Four.<\/p>\n
Gonzaga will begin the season in its customary spot, the pick to win its conference. Only now the conference is the rebooted Pac-12. So the countdown is on for that traditional league showdown, Gonzaga at Texas State.<\/p>\n
The conference formerly known as the WAC now goes by the United Athletic Conference, which is probably just as well. WAC stood for Western Athletic Conference and one of its members is now West Georgia, whose Carrolton, GA campus is west of Atlanta but not many other places.<\/p>\n
The mass migration of athletes from one zip code to another continues to the doorstep of opening day. The entire Sun Belt returns only five players who started at least 20 games last season. The big fish have had portal rush hours, too. Milan Momcilovic was an Iowa State Cyclone for three years and the nation\u2019s premier 3-point shooter, but now will be putting up bombs for Kentucky. John Blackwell was a reliable scorer for three seasons for Wisconsin, but you\u2019ll find him now at Duke. In two years at Kansas, Flory Bidunga missed 149 shots but blocked 145, and now he\u2019s protecting the rims in Louisville. Trey Kaufman-Renn played 147 games for Purdue, had his named called in the NBA draft, but if the courts say OK, he\u2019ll be back in college as a Kansas Jayhawk.<\/p>\n
So dawn beckons in college basketball with new faces, new rosters, new landscapes, new trends… and dunks going on down the street from the Sistine Chapel. The journey now starts, bound for March, where another sea change awaits. An NCAA tournament with 76 vacancies. This season is unlike any other and it hasn\u2019t even started yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Four … three … two … hold it. Before we get to the blastoff of the college basketball…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":945642,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,13503,85],"class_list":["post-945641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-homepage","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/945641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=945641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/945641\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/945642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=945641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=945641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=945641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}