Tonight is opening night on the college basketball schedule, and if all goes as expected, this will be the first "normal" season, nose to tail since 2018-19. After two screwed up seasons, it will be good to level set one of my favorite sports after it was one of the first and most significantly disrupted sports by the Pandemic.
Covid-19 destroyed the 2020 NCAA basketball post season just recently underway when the whole world ground to a halt. First conference tournaments were scrubbed, then the rest of the league. While professional leagues later came back in bubbles later that summer, the 2020 NCAA season was just done and gone forever. Then, the beginning of the 2020-21 season was affected by the same problems the rest of the world was, with breakouts, delays and cancellations. VCU missed the tournament because of a late positive on their team.
This year? There shouldn't be as much, if any of that. College basketball will return to represent sports as chaos again, in such a good way. Today, there are a few big match ups, and a lot of games featuring huge disparities in talent, like Purdue's opener with Bellarmine, a small school from Louisville. It will offer the first samples of teams with big names choking away games against smaller teams, but will also be the first introduction to the best teams in the country.
Purdue is one of the best squads in the country, and I'm excited about that, as you might imagine. Minnesota Gophers basketball was my first sports love, and even though they will likely be bad, they are a full on mystery, and I'm excited about that. St. Thomas is D-1 now, and I am excited to see them play. I have no Following the Compass teams for this season (it was the New York Giants and Colorado Rapids this season), but that's no matter, as I will still keep tabs on ever team I've tracked in the past, I'm sure, and I'm excited about that.
But mostly, I'm just excited that there will be basketball in gyms, at the right time of year again. I think that we have all learned a lot about preventing and mitigating the spread of contagious diseases, and of course, are finding more and more people getting vaccinated, so it will be safer this season. There will be games on my TV almost every night I want them to be on. We've been grasping for normal for almost 2 years now, and by God, tonight's excitement feels normal.
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