There are, as of this writing, just 50 days left until college basketball betting tips off once again. The 2017-18 NCAA Division I men’s basketball season will start on November 10th, 2017 with the first tourney being the 2K Sports Classic. The season will end with the Final Four in San Antonio on April 2nd, 2018. Practices will officially begin on September 29th, 2017. The Associated Press preseason poll has yet to be published, but the Arizona Wildcats, the Duke Blue Devils, and Michigan State Spartans are the main candidates to get the No 1 spot.
- 2017–18 NCAA Division I men’s basketball season
- Regular season: November 10, 2017-March 4, 2018
- NCAA Tournament: 2018 Tournament dates March 13, 2018-April 2, 2018
- National Championship: Alamodome San Antonio, Texas
Starting the season at the top spot, though, does not guarantee ending it there as well. Just ask Duke, who began last season as No. 1 but were eliminated in the second round of the NCAA basketball betting tournament by South Carolina. The last team that went wire-to-wire was the 2008-09 North Carolina Tar Heels. Back to the Blue Devils, this will not be the same Duke that failed in its bid to capture the 2017 National Championship. Quite the contrary; this is the greenest set of players that Coach K, at the ripe old age of 70 years, has coached in his 38-year career. Universitas Dukiana is also, now that child prodigy Marvin Bagley has been cleared to by the NCAA Eligibility Center, the college basketball favourite to win the 2018 NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament.
OFFICIAL: @MB3FIVE has been officially certified by the NCAA Eligibility Center.#HereComesDuke 🔵😈3️⃣5️⃣🚀 pic.twitter.com/fJtfLPW2j2
— Duke Men’s Basketball (@DukeMBB) September 8, 2017
Meanwhile, defending champions North Carolina, the Gonzaga Bulldogs, the South Carolina Gamecocks and the Oregon Ducks will all attempt to return to the Final Four. Each of these schools will, even though the occurrence is rather common, find it just a little bit harder than last season to make back it to the top 4 programs in the nation. South Carolina Sindarius Thornwell and plus P.J. Dozier; Oregon lost Dillon Brooks, Tyler Dorsey, and Jordan Bell; Gonzaga lost Zach Collins and Nigel Williams-Goss; and, finally, UNC lost Justin Jackson as a junior, Tony Bradley, Isaiah Hicks, Nate Britt, and Kennedy Meeks.
The good news for the Tar Babies is that point guard Joel Berry II will return and try to join Phil Ford, Michael Jordan, Antawn Jamison and Tyler Hansbrough as the UNC player to win a national player of the year award. North Carolina might have, all things considered, extra, albeit unwelcome, motivation to go and win back-to-back National Championships, so as to make up for the NCAA potentially removing two of three won with head coach Roy Williams in the wake of an academic fraud scandal, though UNC says the NCAA lacks the power to penalize student-athletes (as in it has jurisdiction over the athletic, but not the academic, side of things) who took a series of allegedly sham classes in the African and African-American studies department, adding that there is “nothing inherently wrong with a student enrolling in a reputedly ‘easy’ course” to remain academically eligible.” All in all, Louisiana’s own college basketball betting scandal is far more entertaining.