While my preseason projections won’t be available until the end of October, I have cranked out the odds for the holiday tournaments based on my rankings. Today’s column looks at who is likely to win each early season tournament, and what storylines to keep an eye on.

Do not hesitate to print out the tournament brackets and follow along as they happen. It is extremely easy to get busy with the Thanksgiving holidays and miss some of the best games of the season. But if you print out these brackets and fill them in, you won’t miss the upsets. Just click on the handy links throughout this document to find the printable brackets.

Preseason NIT Printable Bracket

I’ve already expressed my doubts about Michigan and my faith in Pittsburgh. But Pitt’s second round opponent will be very dangerous. Both Lehigh (led by NCAA hero CJ McCollum) and Robert Morris (led by super-scorer Velton Jones) have the ability to knock off Pittsburgh. These teams have a real chance to win the Patriot League and Northeast Conference, and this is the type of game that can mean the difference between earning a 15 seed and a 13 seed come March.

2K Sports Classic Printable Bracket

OSU’s Jared Cunningham, Alabama’s JaMychal Green, Purdue’s Robbie Hummel, and Villanova’s Maalik Wayns are gone, and those players were not only their team’s leading scorers last season, they were the heart of their respective offenses. Which rebuilding team will forge a new identity first? Because Anthony Grant has become a dominant defensive coach, while Craig Robinson has not, Alabama is the favorite here.

Charleston Classic Printable Bracket

There are some big name conference schools here, but this tournament is a dream for fans of mid-major squads. Murray St. won’t be able to duplicate last year’s 31-2 record, but with superstar point-guard Isaiah Canaan returning, Murray St. should have enough to beat Auburn and St. John’s. In fact, they might even face the College of Charleston in the semifinals. This offseason Charleston added head coach Doug Wojcik, a veteran coach who hasn’t been able to get to the NCAA tournament, but a coach who has consistently built strong defensive teams. If Wojcik can get Charleston to play great defense this season, he has enough returning talent to make a run at an NCAA tournament bid. Andrew Lawrence is clearly Charleston’s best returning offensive player, but the real player to keep an eye on is Adjehi Baru. Baru was ranked 37^th in the nation out of high school and is one of the highest ranked recruits to ever attend Charleston. And while Baru was a nice complimentary player as a freshman last season, it will be very interesting to see if he can break out as a sophomore.

Of course the clear favorite here is Baylor. Baylor may have lost some key post players to graduation and the NBA, but they have plenty of incoming talent. This will be our first chance to see the highly acclaimed 7’1” freshman Isaiah Austin in action.

Puerto Rico Tipoff Printable Bracket

Oklahoma St.’s odds aren’t poor because Oklahoma St. is a bad team. The Cowboys add Top 10 freshman Marcus Smart alongside former Top 10 recruit LeBryan Nash. That one-two punch will make Oklahoma St. a likely NCAA tournament team this year. But the Cowboys have a terrible tournament draw.  First Oklahoma St. has to face Akron. Akron point guard Alex Abreu may be under-sized, but he’s an extremely talented player, and 7 foot center Zeke Marshall could have played for a number of BCS teams. And while the MAC hasn’t had multiple NCAA bids since 1999, Ohio and Akron are strong enough to break that trend.

Meanwhile Tennessee is a heavy favorite to be the second round opponent. Tennessee may have only finished 19-15 last year, but the Vols played substantially better after Jarnell Stokes joined the team mid-season. And with Trae Golden and Jeronne Maymon becoming efficient scorers for head coach Cuonzo Martin, a lot of people have taken notice. Florida head coach Billy Donovan has gone on the record to say that Tennessee is the team to beat in the SEC this season.

And if Oklahoma St. wins that game, they only have to face NC State in the final, the same NC State team that many people have labeled as the ACC favorite. So no, Oklahoma St. isn’t a bad team. But their path to a Puerto Rico tipoff title is brutal.

Coaches vs Cancer

If you get tired of the sloppy play by all the new players in November, please don’t miss Notre Dame vs St. Joseph’s in the first round of the Coaches vs Cancer tournament. Both teams return all five starters from last season and have plenty of offensive stars. I’m going to keep writing about the shot-blocking CJ Aiken, super-slasher Carl Jones, and the super-efficient Langston Galloway until St. Joe’s gets more love, but this four team field is wide open.

Notre Dame is the favorite, but I do have one question for Irish fans. Given Scott Martin’s middling efficiency numbers in his career, was it a good thing that the NCAA granted him an additional year of eligibility? Martin made just 26% of his threes and 40% of his twos last year, and while injuries may have contributed to that, it is clear he wasn’t an elite player last year.

Paradise Jam Printable Bracket

Despite a host of mid-major schools, this tournament looks very dull. Mercer and Iona might compete for the ASun and MAAC titles this year, but neither looks like a likely at-large bid.

And still Connecticut’s tournament odds are not great. First NCAA tournament sanctions led to a host of transfers this off-season. Then the Huskies lost Jim Calhoun to retirement. And as we’ve seen in recent seasons, UConn has been a different team when Calhoun is out. He’s a special coach who can elevate the level of his players, and he will not easily be replaced.

Steve Alford’s team might actually be a little better on offense this season. The team loses Drew Gordon at the forward position, but New Mexico also loses AJ Hardeman. And as great an offensive player as Gordon was, Hardeman was a black hole on offense. With Alex Kirk returning from injury to provide that shot-blocking presence in the paint, and all the returning talent at the guard spots, New Mexico deserves more preseason praise.

Hall of Fame Tip-Off Printable Bracket

Washington’s Abdul Gaddy has had an injury filled career, but with Tony Wroten leaving early for the draft, this is Gaddy’s team. The senior point-guard will have to integrate some new pieces throughout the Washington lineup. Seton Hall will have a number of new faces as well, including Georgia Tech transfer Brian Oliver and Southern Illinois transfer Gene Teague. Realistically, the winner of this game will probably be headed to the NIT, but a win against Ohio St. would be a fantastic notch on any NCAA resume. While Ohio St. is the clear favorite thanks to the efficient high volume shooter DeShaun Thomas, there are questions about how the Buckeyes offense will run without Jared Sullinger.

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The older I get, the more I see that one of the things I love most about sports is the variety of it, the diversity of it and the CHARACTERS. Men’s tennis is at its best in many years because, for the first time in a long time, the top three or four players all have wildly different styles. The Tim Tebow story was fun on so many levels, but one of those levels was that he was just SO DIFFERENT in how he played — I’d say we are entering a great time for quarterbacks, because Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers and Eli Manning and Drew Brees and Michael Vick and Cam Newton and Tebow and others are not really alike at all.

-- Joe Posnanski

As a basketball fan, I’ve never understood the division that exists between fans of the NBA and the NCAA. While the NBA has the best basketball players in the world, March Madness is compelling in its own right and as entertaining as anything that happens on the professional level.

In the NBA, the owners of the 30 franchises consider turning a profit and getting an equal shot at the top players a right, regardless of how well (or how poorly) they run their organization and the respective size of their fan-bases. Since every losing team is a few ping pong balls from the rights to a LeBron James, Kevin Durant or Dwight Howard, personnel determines scheme in the NBA.

In contrast, the vast majority of the 344 Division I programs in college basketball have little chance of ever receiving a commitment from a McDonald’s All-American. But instead of petulantly trying to sabotage the sport in a misguided effort to legislate fairness, schools try many creative ways of leveraging the talents of the players they can recruit. As a result, scheme determines personnel in the NCAA.

At Syracuse, Jim Boeheim has made a Hall of Fame career out of running a contrarian scheme, in his case an aggressive 2-3 zone. The Orange traditionally have rosters full of “1.5’s”, 6’3+ combo guards lacking the quickness to defend elite PG’s and the size to defend SG’s, and “3.5’s”, 6’8+ combo forwards lacking the quickness to defend elite SF’s and the size to defend PF’s. However, because Syracuse never plays man defense, the athletic deficiencies of their players are minimized.

So while nearly every NBA team runs a fairly similar system of isolations, pick-and-rolls and man defense, an incredibly diverse array of styles can be found in the college game. On one end of the spectrum, teams like Missouri play four guards and pressure the ball 94 feet for 48 minutes, on the other, teams like Wisconsin run a deliberate motion offense, trying to minimize the number of possessions and shoot at the very end of the shot-clock.

In the NBA, the players are too good for the “40 Minutes of Hell” system (which Mike Anderson has brought to Missouri and Arkansas in the last few years) to be successful. Like Mike Leach’s bizarre pass-happy offense in college football, Anderson’s system, which he learned as a member of Nolan Richardson’s staff in Arkansas in the 1990’s, has philosophical holes that professional athletes can exploit. Nevertheless, that doesn’t make them any less entertaining on the collegiate level.

And with 68 teams set to compete in the NCAA Tournament, there are a lot more surprises in the college game. Even programs ranked in the top-15 like Murray State have barely been on national TV this season.

We have a pretty good idea of how teams like the Pacers and the 76ers match up with the top of the Eastern Conference but not whether an undersized Murray State squad can handle the size of an elite team from a Power Six conference. It’s an open question how Isaiah Canaan’s speed and athleticism translates outside of the Ohio Valley Conference. Non-conference play in college basketball generally ends in late December, so it’s almost impossible to gauge how younger teams like Texas, Washington and Tennessee who have found their groove in the last two months will fare in March.

In the NBA, it’s hard to envision a scenario where Chicago, Miami and Oklahoma City aren’t three of the final four teams left in the playoffs. In the NCAA, as many as two dozen teams have a legitimate shot at making a run at the Final Four.

Of course, in terms of entertainment, none of this makes the NCAA necessarily better or worse than the NBA, just different. But, as Posnanski writes, there’s something to be said for the concept of “different” in the modern sports world. Basketball fans of all stripes should enjoy March Madness; the NBA will still be here in a few weeks.

It does not take much statistical analysis to realize that Vanderbilt returns the “right” players.  Losing Andre Walker and some non-rotation seniors is not a concern. But for teams that return less than 90% of their previous lineup, it is interesting to ask whether the team returns the “right” or the “wrong” players. On Monday, I defined the term Relative Value and I showed the teams that returned the least efficient or the “wrong” players. Today, I show teams that return the most efficient or the “right” players.

Editorial Note:  I had written this about Missouri: “Missouri loses a freshman, Ricky Kreklow, who never really fit in, and a senior, Justin Safford, who peaked two years ago, and saw his ORtg fall to 96.6 as a senior. Laurence Bowers and Ricardo Ratliffe were better post players than Safford last season, and this is definitely a case of a team returning the right players for the offense.” But Bowers tore his ACL this week, and now Missouri has some serious questions in the middle.  You can lower them significantly in the above list. But even if the statement is no longer accurate about Missouri, several other teams still return the right players this year:

Gonzaga loses Demtri Goodsen, but returns players like Robert Sacre and Elias Harris who were extremely efficient last season. Given Goodsen’s struggles with turnovers, the team should be able to overcome his departure.

Oral Roberts loses three inefficient players from the back of the rotation, but with the five most efficient players returning, Oral Roberts looks like one of the nation’s top small conference teams.

Of course ORtg is not the only factor that matters. On paper, the loss of Chris Wright (93.0 ORtg) and Juwan Staten (90.3 ORtg) is a clear improvement for a Dayton offense that returns a number of efficient players and is led by Chris Johnson. But Wright’s low ORtg was at least partly a function of the fact that he had become such a high usage player. With Dayton’s offense built around getting Wright the ball, his loss is not an automatic improvement for the Flyers. Relative Value is a useful concept, but it certainly is not the only factor to consider.

Last year’s CAA Standings

Another team high on the Relative Value list is Drexel. After a rough couple of years, Bruiser Flint turned Drexel into a winner last season, and the vast majority of the key players are back. The team loses Gerald Colds from the rotation, but the truth is that Colds will not really be missed. Colds was not a great passer, and not a great three point shooter, and subtracting his 88.5 ORtg seems like a clear improvement for an otherwise strong offense.

There is reason to think Drexel is the CAA favorite, but there is no guarantee that Drexel will finish ahead of the traditional favorites (VCU, George Mason, and Old Dominion). Because of the unbalanced schedule, and strength throughout the league, often the best team does not finish in first in the CAA. VCU won five NCAA tournament games, but finished 4^th in the CAA last season.

One team I expect to drop back is Hofstra. Hofstra was very fortunate to finish in 3^rd place last season. Their margin-of-victory numbers suggested they were closer to the 6^th best team in the league. But PG Charles Jenkins was an all-around stat-sheet stuffer, and he willed his team to victory in close games. Without Jenkins, Hofstra should take a significant step back.

Not only was Towson winless in league play last year, but things got even worse this off-season when star sophomore Isaiah Philmore transferred to Xavier. It may be hard to duplicate a 4-win season, but with Philmore and senior Josh Brown leaving, Towson has almost no chance of avoiding the CAA cellar once again.

Last year’s SEC Standings

Vanderbilt returns so many players that expectations should be high. But last year’s rotation finished 88^th in the nation in defense, and I have a hard time believing that the same group of players will be dramatically better. And without a significant improvement on that end of the court, Vanderbilt will have a tough time living up to its lofty expectations. The good news for Vanderbilt is that defensive performances are fairly unpredictable. Not only are our measures of defense rather poor (blocks, steals and defensive rebounds do not tell the whole story), but team defense can jump up or down between seasons with no clear explanation. Still, I fear Vanderbilt will have what I like to call a “Mike Brey” type season, where they pick up some big wins, but their defensive holes cause them to lose in the first round of the NCAA tournament. John Jenkins, Festus Ezeli, and Jeffry Taylor are a joy to watch, and I hope they prove me wrong.

I am much more bullish on Alabama. For the last few year’s Anthony Grant has gotten by with tenacious defense, but inadequate offense.  But as noted above, Alabama returns the “right” players this year. Alabama loses Chris Hines and Senario Hillman, two players with sub-95 ORtgs last year. Meanwhile, the returning group includes Tony Mitchell, JaMychal Green, and Trevor Releford who were all efficient offensive players last year. The days of watching Alabama struggle to score may finally be coming to an end.

As for the rest of the SEC, I am looking forward to several random events: 

I want to see John Calipari groom Anthony Davis from an athletic shot-blocking freshman, into a polished All-American.

I want to see how many times the bottom of the SEC loses to “cupcakes” this season.  I honestly think this league has upgraded its coaching, but there are still a lot of decimated rosters at the back of the standings.

I want to see how Billy Donovan handles former McDonald’s All-American Mike Rosario’s ego when he finds himself sitting on the bench behind Bradley Beal, Erving Walker, and Kenny Boynton in crunch time.  (And if Beal is on the bench in crunch time, I will be screaming at my TV.)

I want to see Mike Anderson take a team full of bench players and freshmen and surprise us once again by playing competitive basketball.

And finally, I want to see how long it takes Mississippi St. to find another bad headline. Last year, it was the suspensions and in-team fighting. This summer, Renardo Sidney did not accompany his team on its international tour. And this fall, it was prized recruit DJ Gardner who was kicked off the team in part because of inappropriate tweets. With this team, a quiet month is a good month.