Basketball tournaments between colleges in the United States are very popular, thanks in part to heated rivalries, and attract a large number of fans and bettors. The main online operators in the market are always ready to offer more or less advantageous odds, before and during the hotter portions of the NCAA tournament, such as March Madness, the month in which we crown the collegiate champions. Between now and March there are a lot of matches to be played, and some of them are heated rivalry games. For example, the immortal challenge between Duke and North Carolina. These teams hate each other because of the location of their campuses, quite close to one another (there are no more than 13 kilometres between the two), and the fact that the first, in Durham, is a private college, while the latter, located in Chapel Hill, is a public one. This match-up is always fiery and noisy, because the fans love to be heard and take part in the game.
A lot of must watch games
In February college basketball fans won’t be bored. The schedule is pretty loaded in the last full month of hostilities before the beginning of March Madness, the three weeks at the end of which the nation will crown a new NCAA Basketball champion.
Everything begins on Saturday, 1st of February. The Florida Gators, ranked 5, take on the Tennesse Volunteers, ranked 8, in Knoxville. This is a divisional showdown in the Southeastern Conference (SEC) with two great teams facing each other. In that same weekend we will have Auburn, the top ranked team in college basketball, against Ole Miss, ranked 23 but strong with a record of 15 wins and 5 losses in the season. The following weekend will be lit as well. On the 8th of February the Gators will play against the Auburn Tigers, in a top 5 matchup where we will see which team has more fuel in the tank to compete down the road and get to the playoffs in better shape.
Auburn will be on everyone’s radar also on the evening of Saturday 15th of February, when the Tigers will play the team ranked fourth, the Alabama Crimson Tide, in Tuscaloosa. The schedule is pretty interesting for the number one team in the nation, which will have to play meaningful basketball in order to keep its rank during the next busy weeks. And what about the Duke Blue Devils? The number 2 team has a softer schedule until March. They play only a game against a ranked opponent, on the 22nd of February against the Illinois Fighting Illini. They’ll be away from home that day, playing at the Madison Square Garden in NY.
The Iowa State Cyclones, the third ranked team at the moment, is another side who has a quite easy schedule. They play the Kansas Jayhawks (eleventh in the national ranking) on the 4th of February, in Lawrence, and then the Houston Cougars on the 22nd. Again, this one is an away game for the sturdy Cyclones. There could be some surprises during the next month and a half, because there are some good unranked teams eager to show their talent. Utah State, for example, can be a difficult opponent for anyone after such a good start.
Should we trust the national ranking?
In the previous lines, we talked about ranked teams. What does that mean? The specialized press and the NCAA Basketball coaches are asked to fill a sort of ranking sheet every week. They assign ranking points based on the results put together by each and every collegiate basketball team. Basically, this system is an acknowledgement of merit: if a given team is one of the top 25 in the nation it receives the number corresponding to its rank and is free to put it on stat-sheet, tables and schedules. However, it is not anything relevant to playoff positioning or something similar.
The number 1 team has typically more wins than the number 2 but that doesn’t mean that it is necessarily stronger. Of course, ranked teams are usually better than unranked ones but that’s all. A ranked team is never guaranteed to defeat a side without any number next to its name.
