Any Idiot Who Complains About The College Basketball Regular Season Needs To Sit Down And Watch Tomorrow's Loaded Schedule

I know it's pointless to yell at people to like my sport, but it's Friday and there ain't much going on. All I can think about is tomorrow's schedule. Sure, I may be deflecting because I'm forced to go to my wife's company party tonight and everyone knows that sort of thing typically sucks. I gotta find an out, but I know once I leave there I can sit in my office tomorrow for a solid 12 hours and watch this slate. 

It's arguably the best December slate we've ever seen (at least in recent memory) in college basketball. You have rivalry games. You have 7 games of top-50 KenPom teams against each other. You have games built on hate. You have games that people wait an entire year for. You want hate? You want pure animosity? Xavier/Cincinnati and Louisville/Kentucky deliver that. Seton Hall/Rutgers, rivalry game. Creighton/Alabama in a rival for what jumpsuit Rico Bosco wears on Monday. UCLA/Arizona was once a rivalry but who the hell knows now with the conferences. 

The point is, this is what a college basketball Saturday should look like. I know there's Army/Navy tomorrow and the Heisman Trophy, but you're not competing against football all day. You have Memphis/Clemson starting at 11am and ending with Saint Mary's/Boise at 9pm. Everything else falls somewhere in the middle. Most of these games are on campus too. It sucks that UConn/Gonzaga isn't on campus (but MSG might as well be), UCLA/Arizona should be on Arizona's campus, just like A&M should be at Mackey. My point being any game on campus is better, especially since finals week is basically over everywhere in the country. 

I know people want to scream the regular season doesn't matter. Again, they are idiots for the most part. Not saying a loss eliminates someone from the NCAA Tournament, that'd be dumb. 68 teams make the NCAA Tournament. But a team like Dayton, hosting Marquette, has a chance to get a win that carries enough weight where they wouldn't necessarily have to win the A-10 Tournament. Memphis is another team in a similar boat. If they get 2 wins out of Clemson, Mississippi State and Ole Miss, they have equity when the AAC Tournament rolls around. The point being these games matter in the long run, we're just so used to college football where a loss used to end your season completely. 

All I'm saying is, we need to get back to our roots here in college basketball. Until February it feels like a halftime show for football, then it turns into NBA Draft pregame. Fuck that. College basketball is off to an incredible start and tomorrow is arguably the best day on the schedule so far. Put your work in tonight and ignore as much as you can tomorrow.