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The Connecticut Huskies have just not been that competitive this season under Kevin Ollie. UConn is 7-3 and its only quality win this season came against Oregon. The Huskies got pummeled by Michigan State and Arkansas when they traveled to Portland on Thanksgiving, and they barely squeaked by Columbia and Monmouth before losing to Syracuse two weeks ago. UConn is desperate for a signature win. The Huskies will try to get one against the Arizona Wildcats.... 

The Utah Utes and the BYU Cougars will meet in another Holy War on Saturday night. Utah is looking to go back to the NCAA Tournament after missing out last season, while BYU is looking to return after a two-year hiatus.... 

For the first time ever, the Tennessee State Tigers and the Texas Longhorns will square off this Monday. Tennessee State has a decent chance to win the Ohio Valley this season and has done well in non-conference play. The Tigers are sitting at 5-3 and have been competitive in two of their three losses, a blowout by Kansas being the lone exception.Texas heads into this one looking to pick up another win before traveling to Tuscaloosa at the end of the week to take on Alabama. The Longhorns dropped a tough one to Michigan earlier this week and need to start racking up wins if they want to get to the NCAA Tournament.... 

The Omaha Mavericks are still looking to find their footing during their transition to Division I. Omaha only gained full admittance to Division I three years ago and Darrin Hansen is slowly starting to make something out of this team. Hansen led the Mavericks to their second straight winning season and second straight winning record in Summit League play. This team is slowly getting better, but is still probably going to be no match for the Kansas Jayhawks.... 

Rick Barnes needs to start winning big games with the Tennessee Volunteers and fast. Tennessee has failed to have a winning record in each of the two seasons he has spent in Knoxville and there’s a chance he could be let go of at the end of this year if the team doesn’t show some significant improvement. Last year, they were almost able to knock off the North Carolina Tar Heels, and that would have given Barnes just the win he needed. This year, he will try to pick up that win against the defending national champions.... 

Although the Kansas Jayhawks and the Nebraska Cornhuskers are no longer conference rivals, the rivalry between these two schools can still get plenty fierce. Unfortunately for Nebraska, this has always been a rather one-sided rivalry. Kansas has won the vast majority of contests between the two schools, especially in the last two decades. The Jayhawks have lost two in a row heading into this one though and that has to give the Cornhuskers some hope heading into this contest.... 

The Wichita State Shockers have been knocking on the door for a while now and might finally break it down and become one of the elite teams in the country. Expectations were sky high for the Shockers coming into this season. No longer were they simply expected to make the NCAA Tournament, they were expected to make a deep run in it with a loaded team. Moving from the Missouri Valley to the American was supposed to make this team more prepared for March Madness as well as a tough non-conference slate.... 

The UCLA Bruins must be breathing a sigh of relief right now. The Ball family circus has finally left and now the team can get back to winning games. While there’s no doubt that the three Ball siblings are talented, the family’s antics has taken the focus off of an exciting young team. UCLA is hungry to get back on the floor again after blowing a 15-point lead to Michigan last week and will be more than happy to welcome the Cincinnati Bearcats to Los Angeles.... 

It’s rinse and repeat for the Kentucky Wildcats. John Calipari has a brand new group of talented freshmen to coach and he has shown that he can get the best out of them. Although the Wildcats stumbled against Kansas early on in non-conference play, now that the team has had more time to come together they are about to play three quality opponents before starting SEC play. The first of those will be the Virginia Tech Hokies, who have taken their program to the next level under Buzz Williams.... 

Maybe The Hoya Destroya was the right person to turn around the program. After consecutive losing seasons, the Georgetown Hoyas needed to make a change and parted ways with long-time head coach John Thompson III. In his place, the team hired Patrick Ewing, a former player and long-time assistant who had been biding his time and waiting for a chance to get a head coaching job. It was considered a roll of the dice, but so far that gamble has paid off and Georgetown is one of a handful of remaining undefeated teams left in the country. Now, they will try to move to 9-0 when they take on the Syracuse Orange in a clash of former Big East rivals.... 

Things have not gone well for Tubby Smith in his second season as the head coach of the Memphis Tigers. Six of Memphis’ top eight scorers from 2016-17 transferred out of the program after just one season under Smith and the program has had to rebuild everything from the ground up as a result. To the team’s credit, they have beaten everyone they were favored to beat so far this season and are sitting at 7-2. However now they face perhaps their toughest test yet in the Louisville Cardinals.... 

The Crossroads Classic has been one of the hottest tickets in the Hoosier State since its inception and this year is no different. The Butler Bulldogs and the Purdue Boilermakers are two of the top teams in the country and their meeting on the basketball court has been highly anticipated for over a month. With both teams entering conference play in just a couple weeks, this is one final chance to pick up a nice non-conference victory.... 

The Villanova Wildcats are looking to stay undefeated and grab another Philadelphia Big 5 Title on Wednesday. Villanova has not dropped a game to its inner-city rivals in the past five years and will look to keep that streak alive against the Temple Owls. Temple has already notched some nice wins this season and won the Puerto Rico Tip-Off last month. This will be Villanova’s toughest test yet, but Jay Wright’s boys are always up for the challenge.... 

The Cincinnati Bearcats are looking to snap a losing skid that will certainly take them outside of the Top 25 the next time the rankings are released. Cincinnati won seven straight to start the season and routed the competition in the Cayman Islands Classic. However, the Bearcats failed to get a win when they played back-to-back games against ranked opponents when they fell to Xavier and Florida. Now, Cincy will try to get back to its winning ways when it welcomes the undefeated Mississippi State Bulldogs to town.... 

The Texas Longhorns are off to a solid start in Shaka Smart’s third season in Austin. Texas might be 6-2, but the two losses were against two of the best teams in the country and it has some quality wins on its resume already this year. The Longhorns have scored wins over Butler and VCU and those will definitely help them out in March. Texas gets a chance to add another notch to its resume on Tuesday night when it hosts the Michigan Wolverines.... 

No team looks better than the Duke Blue Devils through the first month of the college basketball season. Duke is the clear No. 1 team in the country and has yet to lose. The Blue Devils are 11-0 on the season and have knocked off other contenders like Michigan State, Florida, and Texas. Now, Duke is set to start ACC play right before finals week. The Blue Devils will head on the road for their first conference game of the season when they take on the Boston College Eagles... 

It’s still another five years before the Backyard Brawl will return to the gridiron, but there is still a lot of animosity between the fanbases of the Pittsburgh Panthers and the West Virginia Mountaineers. Since college basketball has a lot more flexibility with its scheduling, these rival universities will get to square off on the hardwood in the meantime and will face each other for the first time since 2012 on Saturday.... 

Is this the year that the Alabama Crimson Tide finally establish themselves as a basketball power? The Crimson Tide haven’t made the NCAA Tournament since 2012, but there is a lot of buzz in Tuscaloosa about Avery Johnson’s third season on the job. Alabama is looking for its breakthrough win at this point. It will try to knock off a name-brand opponent when the Crimson Tide face the Arizona Wildcats, a team that was in the preseason top five, on Saturday night.... 

The Kansas Jayhawks can’t wait to get back onto the hardwood. Kansas was expected to paste Washington in its last game, but instead got dismantled despite being a 21.5-point favorite. It was one of the biggest upsets so far this season as this was the same Washington team that got throttled by 24 by Virginia Tech two weeks prior to that game. Kansas will get a shot to play spoiler to another team’s undefeated season when the Arizona State Sun Devils come to town.... 

The Cincinnati Bearcats may have lost the Battle of Cincinnati, but are off to a good start this season nonetheless. Cincinnati coasted to the Cayman Islands Classic title and now gets a chance to pick up some nice non-conference wins before starting play in the AAC. This Saturday they will play a Florida Gators team that has lost a lot of its luster from a week ago. Florida has now lost three straight games and might not be in the Top 25 the next time rankings are released.... 

The Archie Miller era has not gotten off to a good start. The Indiana Hoosiers dropped their season opener against Indiana State and are just a game above .500 at this point in the season. A learning curve was somewhat expected with a new coach and a new system, but not many people were expecting 5-4. Now the Hoosiers must travel south to take on a Louisville Cardinals team that is also breaking in a new coach.... 

Two of college basketball’s blue bloods will square off in one of the early games in a Saturday filled with action. The UCLA Bruins have had a lot of distractions to deal with over the last week and a road game may help them clear their heads and get their minds off of everything that has been going on with the school and the program. As for the Michigan Wolverines, this is a chance for the school to get another nice win to its credit in hopes of bolstering a potential NCAA Tournament resume.... 

The Wichita State Shockers have brought some respectability to the American Athletic Conference in just their first year of basketball as part of the AAC. Wichita State is the highest ranked team in the conference and has picked up some nice wins, knocking off Marquette and Baylor on its way to a 7-1 start. The Shockers will look to keep up their hot start when they travel to Stillwater to take on the Oklahoma State Cowboys on Saturday afternoon.... 

Although this is billed as a neutral-site game, there will certainly be a very partisan crowd when the USC Trojans take on the Oklahoma Sooners in the Basketball Hall of Fame Classic on Friday. The game is being played in the City of Angels and that means there will be a lot of fans in cardinal and gold cheering on the Trojans. That will likely lead to USC being the favorite, but there are plenty of reasons to think Oklahoma can win this game.... 

One of the most underrated rivalries in college sports is that of the Iowa Hawkeyes and the Iowa State Cyclones. These schools don’t share a conference, but share an intense rivalry as the two main programs in the state of Iowa. It’s no different on the basketball court and these two teams will play another game in the Iowa Corn Cy-Hawk Series this Thursday. It’s a chance for both Iowa and Iowa State to pick up a decent non-conference win and both schools need it....