College Basketball Preview 2013-14: Thoughts and Notes for Upcoming Season

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College basketball season is inching closer and closer to becoming meaningful again. Conferences are announcing their preseason team rankings, player of the year frontrunners and hosting their media days. What has been mere speculation since April will soon transform befor our eyes.

HoopsHabit has already announced their preseason top 25, All-America teams and projected conference winners (major conferences; mid-majors). Our bases are covered, but now it’s time to dive a little bit deeper into some wider aspects of the college basketball preview.

Here I will be giving some further insight to specific teams and players before we head into the season. It’s just a way to give some more details on some topics I find most interesting, frustrating, exciting, etc.

With that, let’s begin.

Let’s cool it with the hype around Andrew Wiggins and other freshman.

First, the hot-button issue that isn’t necessarily a hot-button issue depending on who you talk to. For most, incoming freshmen are the most exciting aspect of college basketball because you never really know what to expect from them. However, that excitement in these freshmen is often ballooned into over hyping of these players.

Case in point: Andrew Wiggins. Wiggins has been hyped up to be the greatest thing to happen to basketball since the invention of the game by Dr. James Naismith. It’s gotten to that sort of point. It’s a bit ridiculous just how much hype is surrounding Wiggins. NBA teams are already preparing to tank their seasons (although they will never tell you that themselves) in order to draft the Kansas Jayhawk freshman.

Now I understand the excitement around a young talent such as Wiggins, who has been touted as the best prospect out of high school since LeBron James. Players such as James come around maybe once a generation and if you have the type of skills to be compared to him, you may have a right to the hype. Unfortunately, for every LeBron James out of high school there is a Kwame Brown.

Don’t get me wrong here, I am in no way discrediting Wiggins’ abilities. He has what it takes to be a phenomenal player. Unfortunately, the same type of hype was surrounding Shabazz Muhammad last season when he went to UCLA.  Muhammad was expected to not only be the top pick in the 2013 NBA Draft, but he was also expected to resurrect a dying, legendary Bruins program. Neither of those things were accomplished.

Again, this is not a comparison of Muhammad and Wiggins, it is merely a cautionary tale of the overhyped college freshman. Also, while Wiggins is presumed to be the top prize in this year’s recruiting class and next year’s NBA draft class, Kentucky’s Julius Randle has also been touted as “the next LeBron James. Duke’s Jabari Parker made the cover of Sports Illustrated while still in high school, something only James can also say.  So, in all, there have been at least three freshman highlighted as the next big thing coming out of high school.

The hype over Wiggins and the rest of the freshman can exist, but I will wait to see how they perform before I jump on their bandwagons.

Despite the loss of BracketBusters, mid-majors should still have your attention.

In 2003, a phenomenal concept known as BracketBusters was brought into the lives of college basketball fans across the country. The event was put on by ESPN in an effort to highlight the lesser-known teams from the lesser-known conferences in Division I basketball. The mid-majors finally had their own weekend for college basketball fans to watch them play.

Now, BracketBusters has ended. It had a great 10-year run, but it’s nothing but a memory now. With all the conference realignment the Missouri Valley Conference, which spearheaded the origin of the BracketBusters concept, couldn’t commit to participating in the years to come.

While this is very unfortunate, it does not mean that mid-majors should fall by the wayside. In fact, if recent history is any indication, mid-majors should be watched equally as much as major conferences such as the ACC, Big Ten and SEC are. Butler (twice), Wichita State, VCU and George Mason have all reached the Final Four since 2006. All are written off as Cinderellas, but what most don’t understand is that they could’ve competed in any conference and been successful. They are success stories if only for the small media attention they receive during the regular season, which is why they become such great stories during the NCAA Tournament.

Without mid-majors and upsets, college basketball wouldn’t be where it is today in terms of popularity and excitement. These smaller schools and conferences deserve your attention as fans of good basketball. Some of the best teams and players in the country come from mid-majors.

The ACC will be the most exciting and compelling conference race in the country.

This is more of a prediction of sorts, but the ACC has three of the best teams in the country, both in the modern day and historically speaking. Duke, North Carolina and Syracuse, each backed by legendary Hall of Fame coaches, are going to have great battles throughout the season.

What makes this so much more interesting is that none of these teams have that star power they are accustomed to. Each program is rebuilding from last season and will be relying heavily on freshmen to lead the charge with the returning players they have to offer. It’s going to be a three-team race throughout the entire season and the historical value of these three teams, plus the added bonus of new rivalries with Syracuse now entering the ACC from the Big East, brings so much added excitement for this season.

Disagree with any of these thoughts or notes? Feel free to let me know (respectfully, of course) @NathanGiese

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