Welcome to the latest edition of Talking Hoops With Ted Sarandis. Having spent a lot of time talking about off-court matters of late, we now make the change to look on the court with this podcast, although we start with an administrative matter.
The college basketball season has been starting earlier and earlier all the time. This season, it will once again be on the first Tuesday in November, and that’s simply too early. What’s more, it will coincide with Election Day just like last year, and that may well be the case going forward, which will be a disaster in presidential election years like next year.
As we go over the many issues surrounding college basketball, one that comes up is transfers. That brought to mind this very interesting tweet from a former college head coach:
It has come to my attention there are 150 former basketball players still in the transfer portal with nowhere to go. 150 kids who were so unhappy, impatient or received bad advice and now are in limbo. Think about that.
— Seth Greenberg (@SethOnHoops) September 20, 2019
The next subject as we look ahead to the season is the top contenders for the national championship. Michigan State appears to be close to, if not the consensus preseason number one, but they are hardly prohibitive favorites. Meanwhile, you can easily make cases for and against most of the challengers. Similarly, the race for National Player of the Year looks to be wide open, and again with a Spartan as the early favorite. Cassius Winston makes perfect sense as a preseason pick there, but lots of other players could be in the discussion as well.
We go on to talk about teams that are being undersold and oversold in the off-season conversation. It was easier to find a few teams in the former category than the latter, but there are a couple of teams I’m not sold on as much as it seems everyone else is.
We hope you enjoy the podcast and share it with your fellow college basketball fans. Be sure to join us again in a few weeks as we look ahead to the upcoming college basketball season just days before it gets going.
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