Notre Dame big man Luke Harangody begins his ninth season of college basketball.

LEADING OFF

College basketball season is back and so is the week guide. Every week I'll look at the week ahead in college hoops featuring rankings, predictions and links to stories.

Top 20 - The Associated Press rotated its voters and shrunk the total number of voters from 72 to 65. So I'm not voting this year. That said I'm still going to post rankings here every week. I'm doing 20 instead of 25 so it doesn't appear like I'm actually voting in the Associated Press Poll. I'll post the first poll here in next week's week guide.

FEARLESS PREDICITION: Cornell will beat Alabama, Saturday.
GAMES OF THE DAY: 

MONDAY: Florida International at North Carolina - The college coaching debut of Isiah Thomas. History has shown that often good college coaches make lousy professional coaches. Well Thomas has already shown he's a terrible pro coach, so it'll be interesting to see if that works in reverse.

TUESDAY: No games scheduled.

WEDNESDAY: Robert Morris at Syracuse - The best of not-such a great selection of Wednesday games. RMU is coming off an NEC title and and an NCAA bid, but lost the conference player of the year and the defensive player of year. 

THURSDAY: James Madison at Ohio State - Like Wednesday, not much to choose from.

FRIDAY: Morehead at Kentucky - The debut of John Wall will certainly draw some attention.

UMass at Central Florida - I don't usually include UMass games in here, but the debut of the Minutemen's five freshmen and UCF's Marcus Jordan makes this one more interesting than most of the big name vs. Washington General games that mark most of Friday's schedule.

SATURDAY: Creighton at Dayton - Creighton isn't as good as it has been, but it's still a good coming-out party for the Flyers.
Davidson at Butler - Davidson obviously isn't the same without Curry. But this is still two of the best mid-majors in recent years.

Cornell at Alabama - The reigning Ivy champs could score an early trophy.

SUNDAY: Oregon State vs. Texas Tech - Not the best possible Pac 10-Big XII matchup, but it's big conference vs. big conference.
Recommended Reading - 

The New York Times' story on Jeremy Tyler, who skipped his senior year of high school and college to play overseas, is both a good read and a cautionary tale.

Dan Wetzel looks at Isiah Thomas starting over.

Question I don't know the answer to: I'm curious about Kentucky. Very curious in fact. The Dribble-Drive Motion isn't something people pick up quickly. Memphis struggled at first with it. How quick will the Wildcats pick it up?

Buzzer beaters
 Seven hours til hoop season.