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College Hoops is here! Official practices start today

Michigan v Louisville

ATLANTA, GA - APRIL 08: Head coach Rick Pitino of the Louisville Cardinals holds up the National Championship trophy as he celebrates with his players including Peyton Siva #3 (R of Pitino after they won 82-76 against the Michigan Wolverines during the 2013 NCAA Men’s Final Four Championship at the Georgia Dome on April 8, 2013 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Photo by Streeter Lecka/Getty Images)

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Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to college basketball season.

Thanks to a rule change implemented this season, official practices now begin a full six weeks before the first day that teams are allowed to schedule games. And with the real season kicking off on November 8th, that means that today, September 27th -- a point in time usually reserved for Fantasy Football freakouts and the culmination of baseball pennant races -- is the official beginning of the college hoops season.

Y’all ready?

I am.

(MORE: To read through all of this year’s CBT Season Previews, click here)

Coaches will be allowed 30 days worth of practice over the course of the next 42 days, which will do a couple of things:


  • It will allow coaches to spread out their early season conditioning, which can help to reduce some of the crush of injuries that come with the brutal two-a-days that usually coincide with the start of the season. We use to call it “hell week”, largely because our morning practices didn’t involve a basketball. It got you into shape, but by the end of it, you were so tired and banged up that practice was less about improving and learning and more about just getting through it. Spreading that process out will make those first practices more effective.
  • There is more time for players to learn what a coach wants out of them. The extra two weeks will make it so that coaches can implement more offense earlier in the season. The way coaches work is that they get their defense set in the first few weeks of practice, and then slowly but surely integrate their offense. With three-and-a-half weeks of preseason practices, the offense that gets put into place for the first couple of games is a simple framework of what is in place by January. Might this make those marquee November matchups more palatable?

The difference, however, is that Midnight Madness won’t be happening all at once this season. They will be spread out, with different schools hosting their events throughout the preseason. The concept of Midnight Madness has changed. When it was originally created by Lefty Driesell at Maryland, it was done so because the coach wanted to practice at the first possible second that it was allowed by the NCAA.

Now?

It’s a party, a recruiting tool that’s used to entertain the fan base, introduce the freshmen to the students and to provide a break to the monotony of a six-week preseason.

ESPN’s annual coverage of the event will be on October 18th, with powerhouse programs like Kentucky, Syracuse, Michigan State and Maryland hosting their events that day along with schools like Florida-Gulf Coast. Kansas will be hosting Late Night in the Phog on October 4th, as will Indiana’s Hoosier Hysteria.

The season maybe beginning, but if you’re waiting on Midnight Madness for the year to actually begin, you’ll be waiting a while longer.

Follow @robdauster