I listen to the Eye on College Basketball podcast, and in their opening night preview Matt Norlander gave the following fact: Florida is the first defending national champion to schedule a high-major opponent to open their season since 2012/13 Kentucky.* UK played Maryland, in what I personally remember as the Jarrod Polson game, and won by 3...
*The caveat to that fact is Virginia opened with Syracuse the year after their recent title, but it was the weird year where the ACC had everyone in their league open the season with a conference game, so it wasn't a scheduling decision by Virginia.
Before Kentucky, it was Duke in '03 (I think?) but that was in Maui so it wasn't explicitly scheduled either.
And before that was UConn in '99.
Weird that it's so infrequent. I think the CBB powers-that-be ought to strongly encourage an opening-night high profile matchup with the defending national champ. All the professional sports do some version of that and I think it's great.
I'm picking Arizona to win. I think Florida will be good but not dominant this year.
*The caveat to that fact is Virginia opened with Syracuse the year after their recent title, but it was the weird year where the ACC had everyone in their league open the season with a conference game, so it wasn't a scheduling decision by Virginia.
Before Kentucky, it was Duke in '03 (I think?) but that was in Maui so it wasn't explicitly scheduled either.
And before that was UConn in '99.
Weird that it's so infrequent. I think the CBB powers-that-be ought to strongly encourage an opening-night high profile matchup with the defending national champ. All the professional sports do some version of that and I think it's great.
I'm picking Arizona to win. I think Florida will be good but not dominant this year.
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