The NCAA men's college basketball season is getting started up on Friday night and there will be some top teams in action, including Duke, Kentucky, Michigan, Kansas and Michigan State and there will be over 100 teams playing their opening games and a number of them will be covered on ESPN and the family of channels with start times coming at 7:00 pm and going on all night.
Some other teams that will be playing early includes Kentucky taking on UNC-Asheville and that game will be on ESPN3 and ESPN Full court and Duke will be playing Davidson and that game will be on ESPNU, while Kansas will get started up with their game against Louisiana Monroe on ESPN3 as well. Syracuse is ranked in the top 10 and will start up against Cornell, while North Carolina will start up against Oakland and Florida will be playing against North Florida. Wisconsin will be playing against St. John's while Oklahoma State will be playing against Mississippi Valley State.
The games will be entertaining on Friday and some of the other top teams playing include Notre Dame, Virginia and UConn, who will be playing Maryland on ESPN2. The Wildcats have a tough game coming up soon with Michigan State and they are being looked at as the favorites after being number one in the preseason rankings. The All-America team has a number of players that are on top teams, including Marcus Smart as the only unanimous pick from Oklahoma State and he comes in after being one of the top players last season, averaging 15.4 points, 5.8 rebounds, 4.2 assists and 3.0 steals and some other players include Russ Smith, Doug McDermott and Andrew Wiggins on Kansas.
The Jayhawks have high expectations this season with Wiggins and he is expected to be a player of the year candidate. Kentucky took the top spot in the AP Top 25 poll with 27 first place votes, while Michigan State is at two with 22 votes, while Louisville got 14 after winning the national championship and Duke got two votes t number four while Kansas rounds out the top five. After that is Arizona, Michigan and Syracuse with OK State and Florida rounding out the top 10 and beyond that is Florida, Ohio State, North Carolina and VCU ahead of Gonzaga in the top 15. After that are solid teams like UConn, Oregon, Wisconsin and Notre Dame, while UCLA, New Mexico, Virginia and Baylor rounds out the top 25.
The top teams with Kansas, Duke and Michigan State and Kentucky all will be top favorites for the national championship, while Louisville will be looking to repeat after winning last season.
CLICK here for the full list of games, start times and TV channel coverage from ESPN.com.
