College basketball is back, but this season looks different

Four ... three ... two ... hold it. Before we get to the blastoff of the college basketball season, shouldn’t notice be taken of how 2026-27 already looks a little ... different?

Look at how it’ll start, for instance. The road to the Final Four in Detroit will begin 4,600 miles away in a different hemisphere. If renowned Catholic outposts Notre Dame and Villanova are going to play the first game of the season, why not on a Sunday in Rome — 9:30 a.m. EST — six miles from Vatican City, where Pope Leo XIV is a Villanova alum?

“They tell me that the people coming to the match, 90 percent are Villanova and 10 percent,” Leo told reporters last month. “So the voice of the people of God will be very strong on the Villanova side.”

Good luck shaking down the thunder from the sky against that, Irish.

Irish in Italy 🇮🇹 #GoIrish https://t.co/m1ULGntY9e

Then there’s how things will begin on this continent. Calling all insomniacs. The first game of the season on U.S. soil will be 12:01 a.m. Monday between High Point and Liberty in Rock Hill, SC at the Field of 68 Opening Day Marathon. When last seen, High Point was sideswiping Wisconsin out of the NCAA tournament and pushing Arkansas to the wire. These Panthers look so good, they’re not only the strong favorite in the Big South but account for four of the 10 players on the preseason first and second all-conference teams.

Coach Flynn Clayman was planning on no special preparation for a midnight tip. “We’re just trying to stick to a normal sleep schedule leading up to it, and we think the excitement of the game will be enough to get them through a midnight game,” he said. “I know that our students are super excited about it. We booked out six buses of students within an hour of opening that up. We know the college kids would probably be up partying or doing whatever late anyway. Let’s go down and play a fun game.”

There’s a lot of buzz around High Point as maybe the most dangerous mid-major threat on the block. “We focus on our process and on the next opponent in front of us,” Clayman said. “We don’t look too far down the line. And that’s how you make the magic happen.” Only this time, Cinderella will come to life after the clock strikes midnight.

That game will be followed by Grambling and Northern Illinois at 3 a.m., then Appalachian State and Merrimack at 6 o’clock. Opening day will nearly be three games old before the sun comes up.

“I don’t want to overthink this,” Northern Illinois coach Matt Majkrzak was saying about any strategy for a 3 a.m. tip. But he is having a bed check for his players this weekend at 4 a.m. It might be the first time in history, he mentioned, that there’s been a 4 a.m. bed check to make sure all the players were awake. 

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Meanwhile, 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.

Funny thing about that: May’s 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.

So the 54th and newest coach to win a title left the college stage on a vapor trail. If it’s 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’s at No. 13. That’s quite the collection of ranked septuagenarians with Tom Izzo 71, Rick Barnes 72, Kelvin Sampson 71 and Rick Pitino 74.

And while it is reasonable to begin every season wondering when we will see their last bows, none seem in a hurry to leave. “I’ll be here,” Izzo said the other day, “until I die or something.”

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’s 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.

Florida will begin as the No. 1 team. Not that that means a lot. It’s 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.

Right behind the Gators is Duke, and while it’s 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 – the buzzer stunner by Connecticut last March and the wasted 17-point lead against Houston at the 2024 Final Four.

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.

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.

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’s 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’ll find him now at Duke. In two years at Kansas, Flory Bidunga missed 149 shots but blocked 145, and now he’s 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’ll be back in college as a Kansas Jayhawk.

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’t even started yet.