Praise the hoops gods, the season is less than a week out. We are almost to actual games, people!
As we pack up the car and prepare to embark on a five-month journey along the road to the Final Four, we can’t get to where we need to go without a reliable atlas of college basketball. As is custom here at CBS Sports, I’ve provided a preseason map of the top teams from every state with a Division I program. (That means everyone except Alaska is included. Shouts to D-II Seawolves of Alaska Anchorage.)
This project is a projection of the schools I expect to be the best within the borders of their respective territories across the basketball realm from now until March. Some states have close chases between two or three schools, while plenty tracts of land have a clear-cut pick for No. 1 in their region.
Basically, if your school has its logo on its state, this is a wonderful piece of bragging material to shove in your rivals’ faces. So savor it and share it widely. The logos you see across this great, basketball-adoring nation line up with where I tiered teams in my preseason Top 100 And 1 rankings.
Here are the 50 flags of 50 schools (Washington, D.C. included) firmly planted into their home soil as we set to embark upon the 2023-24 men’s college basketball season.
Keytron Jordan, CBS Sports
Outlook: While UAB is looking like a top-four team in the American Athletic Conference, the Crimson Tide should still have a little bit of space in front of the Blazers in this state. Alabama had to dip into the portal to try and keep this team in contention in the SEC (that’s very much TBD), but it’s likely to end the season as the top team in the Yellowhammer State. A name of intrigue with the Crimson Tide is Hofstra transfer Aaron Estrada, who could be the top newcomer to the…
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