We are now five weeks from the start of the 2025-26 college basketball season. It has been a long, hot summer of waiting for games to begin. As the weather gets cooler, the season will get hotter.
College basketball has undergone so many changes over the last couple of years that it is hard to keep up with all the fast-moving parts. The uncertainty has yielded far more question than answers. But answers are coming. Here are five questions that are burning through my brain as the season draws nigh:
1. Will Dan Hurley be new and improved?
The hottest question entering last season was whether UConn could win three championships in a row. It appeared to be a distinct possibility when the Huskies were ranked No. 3 in the preseason AP Top 25. But the conversation over their 0-3 performance in the Maui Invitational during Thanksgiving week had less to do with the team’s performance and more to do with their coach’s antics. Dan Hurley’s comportment, both during the games and in his press conferences, reflected a level of panic and arrogance that did not wear well over the course of the season. It was actually a pretty good season for UConn —it finished third in the Big East and reached the second round of the NCAA Tournament — but you wouldn’t know it by watching, or listening to, its coach.
On Tuesday, Simon & Schuster will release Hurley’s new book, Never Stop: Life, Leadership, and What It Takes to Be Great, written with Ian O’Connor. At first blush, it appears the publication of this book is a year too late, but I actually think Hurley has a chance to demonstrate his leadership abilities this season even more than the last two. Passion is great, and a little controversy goes a long way when it comes to promoting a sport. But there’s a fine line between emotion and intensity, and Hurley needs to do a better job walking that line. That’s what it takes to be great. If Hurley can manage his emotions better without losing his edge, his Huskies could very well be in the hunt for Big East and NCAA championships once more.
2. Can Hubert Davis cool the heat?
It didn’t take long for Davis to fire up the Tar Heel faithful. In 2021-22, his first at the helm after succeeding Roy Williams, Davis not only led North Carolina to the NCAA championship game, where it lost to Kansas, but handed two huge losses to Mike Krzyzewski along the way — in his final home game in Cameron Indoor Stadium, and again at the Final Four. It’s hard to imagine a better start to a head coaching career.
North Carolina’s performance over the final two months of that season helped people forget that the Heels headed into late January very much on the bubble. That’s why they were a No. 8 seed in the NCAA Tournament. The team’s results in the three years since have been far less promising. In 2022-23, North Carolina became the first team in history to be ranked No. 1 in the preseason AP Top 25 and fail to make the NCAA Tournament. They earned a No. 1 seed in 2024 but lost in the Sweet Sixteen. Last season, they were the last team in the field — and a controversial selection at that — and got bounced in the first round.
It would be one thing if Davis didn’t have the resources to build a proper roster, but all indications suggest the program’s NIL payroll was well north of $10 million, which was in the top-five nationally. The same is true for this cycle, but Davis’ transfer portal cycle was noteworthy more for who left (Ian Jackson, Elliot Cadeau) than who transferred in (Henry Veesar, Jarin Stevenson).
North Carolina is currently No. 18 in BartTorvik’s preseason ratings, which augurs a season in which the team is competitive but not quite elite. Can Davis exceed those expectations? And what are the prospects for this storied program moving forward? Time will tell, but now that same Tar Heel faithful is understandably restless, and they are eagerly awaiting answers as Davis heads into a pivotal year five as head coach at his alma mater.
3. How will the international flavor taste?
For many years, it was difficult for American colleges to recruit international players. In the first place, many of the best players had signed contracts with professional clubs that rendered them ineligible by NCAA rules. And for the ones who were able to come, it was often to their benefit financially to stay overseas.
Those barriers have been obliterated in the NIL/revenue sharing era. That has produced a huge influx of international recruits for the coming season. Neoklia Avdalas (Virginia Tech), Dame Sarr (Duke), Filip Jovic (Auburn), Tounde Yessoufou (Baylor) and Omer Mayer (Purdue) are among the best-known prospects, but the sheer number of such players will give college basketball the strongest international flavor it has ever had.
How will these guys do? Count Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd as among the skeptics. As an assistant coach at Gonzaga for 20 years, Lloyd got way ahead of the curve when it came to international recruiting. “One thing I know about Europe is that just because someone had success over there doesn’t guarantee that they’re going to have success over here,” Lloyd told me in July. “I’ve had a lot of good players I recruited from Europe and I’m like, man, how did it not work for that guy? I don’t know if it’s just a different coaching style, different style of play, confidence, homesickness. There could be a lot of reasons. Plus, a lot of these international guys got a lot of money. So I want to pump the brakes on that because there could be a lot of disappointed people.”
The NIL/revenue sharing math has changed with the enactment of the House v. NCAA settlement, so it’s way too early to tell whether this influx is a temporary spike or the start of a new trend. But it is sure to spice up the sport this winter.
4. Can the Big Ten break its losing streak?
It’s either a damning indictment or a remarkable anomaly (or both), but the Big Ten has not won an NCAA championship since Michigan State claimed the 2000 title. How is it possible that this league has gone a quarter century without winning another? The Spartans have played in six more Final Fours since then, and Michigan and Purdue played in three championship games between them. But none was the last team standing on Monday night.
Thanks to expansion and realignment, the Big Ten now includes 18 teams, so that math alone should work in the league’s favor. Four of those teams are ranked in BartTorvik’s preseason top 10: Michigan (3), Purdue (4), Illinois (7) and UCLA (9). Of that quartet, it would appear Purdue, which returns All-America candidates Braden Smith and Trey Kaufmann-Renn from its Sweet Sixteen team, is best positioned to end this ignominious streak. The Big Ten league is too good to go this long without having someone, anyone, from its ranks cut down the nets. This could be the year.
5. Is Cinderella really dead?
There’s an old saying about the proper answer when someone asks about the impact of the French Revolution: “It’s too soon to tell.” In that spirit, I would caution about jumping on the whole Cinderella-Is-Dead bandwagon. After all, it was only two years ago that a pair of mid-majors, FAU and San Diego State, crashed the Final Four. That led many people to conclude that the transfer portal had allowed smaller schools to overtake the blue chippers. And that ignored the fact the previous quartet comprised Duke, North Carolina, Villanova and Kansas.
The whole point of the NCAA Tournament is that it’s chaotic and unpredictable. Why must we always try to make sense of it?
Still, there’s no doubt that the chalkiness of the 2025 tournament defied recent history. It was the first time since the tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985 that the Sweet Sixteen was comprised solely of power conference teams. (Keep in mind that because of realigment and expansion, those leagues include a lot more teams.) It was the first time since 2007 that a No. 11 seed or lower didn’t reach the second weekend. No top-four team lost in first round. And of course, four No. 1 seeds made the Final Four for just the second time. That led many to conclude that since the bigger schools have the deepest pockets when it comes to NIL money, they now had a profound and permanent advantage.
Profound, yes, but nothing is permanent, especially when it comes to March Madness. Moreover, if the new post-House system works as designed (a huge “if” if ever there was one), then things will be on a much more level playing field moving forward. So let’s tap the brakes on this new narrative until we have more information. I say we revisit this burning question in a few hundred years.
