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.

Let’s invent a new term called “Relative Value.” Relative Value is the possession-weighted ORtg of returning players divided by the possession-weighted ORtg for last year’s entire roster.

As an example of a team with a good Relative Value, we have the Oregon Ducks. Oregon returns only 46% of its possession from last season, but the Ducks just happen to return the exact right players. E.J. Singler and Garrett Sim (a pair of three point gunners) were Oregon’s two most efficient players last year, and both are back. If you were going to pick two starters to return, Singler and Sim would have been great choices. (Joevan Catron would have been the other natural choice, but he has departed.)

Compare that to the USC Trojans. USC loses its three most efficient rotation players in Nikola Vucevic, Alex Stephenson, and Donte Smith. (And they lost their PG, Jio Fontan to injury too.) That is not a recipe for success.

Since Kevin O’Neill has taken over as head coach, USC has been cursed with horrible offensive production. In 2010-11, Vucevic helped salvage the USC offense slightly. But now that Vucevic is gone, expect a return to the land of turnovers and bricks. 

USC is not the only team to return the wrong players in the rotation. Here are some other notable teams that return the wrong players this season. These teams not only lose a lot of talent, they lose the most efficient offensive players from the rotation:

Illinois loses five of its six most efficient scorers from last year. The Illinois seniors may have struggled to earn wins in their career, but their propensity for high shooting percentages and low turnover rates will be hard to replace. Only the fact that Illinois has had multiple great recruiting classes is going to keep the team from collapsing this year. (Well, that and Meyers Leonard’s apparent development over the summer.)

For Tennessee, Tobias Harris and Scotty Hopson took their efficient play to the NBA, while Melvin Goins and Brian Williams graduated. The returning group is led by Cameron Tatum, but as Tatum’s 27% three point percentage on 125 three point attempts last year indicates, the returning group is not nearly as efficient.

For VCU, the Rams lose three of their four most efficient scorers (Jamie Skeen, Joey Rodriguez, and Brandon Rozell), and will have a hard time duplicating last year’s success. Bradford Burgess is going to see a lot more double teams this season.

And for Butler, say goodbye to Matt Howard and his 120.2 ORtg as well as Shelvin Mack and his 106.8 ORtg. And look forward to more Ronald Nored and his 86.3 ORtg. Thank goodness for Butler’s sake that Andrew Smith is back.

Last Year’s Horizon League Standings

- Remember Eli Holman, the power forward who transferred from Indiana, throwing a potted plant in Tom Crean’s office in the process? He transferred to Detroit and has provided a legitimate low-post presence for the Titans. With Detroit’s entire rotation returning this off-season, many are pegging Holman’s team to win the Horizon league title. But Holman is now on an “indefinite leave of absence” and any hope that Detroit has of winning the league is almost certainly contingent on his return.

- Wright St. started to slip last year after Brad Brownell left for Clemson, and now the team loses several extremely valuable seniors this off-season. Head coach Billy Donlon is going to need to start putting his own stamp on the program if it is going to stay competitive.

- Valparaiso could have been a league title contender this year, but the team loses one if its best players, lead guard Brandon Wood, to Michigan St. I have no problem with Michigan St. following the rules and getting a valuable player. But I think we have to acknowledge how bad the graduate school transfer rule is turning out for the mid-majors. Mid-majors have traditionally survived by red-shirting a lot of players and hoping to develop teams filled with fourth and fifth year players. Those mature experienced players are the best way to compete with the superior talent of the major conferences. But with fifth-year seniors now able to transfer and play elsewhere immediately, the mid-majors may be unable to retain the most valuable 5^th year seniors.

Worse yet, if mid-majors fear losing their fifth-year players, they become more reluctant to red-shirt players overall. And the age/experience advantage that mid-majors once held may be partially negated.

Last Year’s Pac-10 Standings

I really like what the Sporting News did with this conference, placing the top four teams (Arizona, UCLA, Washington, and California) right next to each other in the Top 25. All four have a legitimate chance to win the league title, and all four have serious question marks. To call the league title a four-way coin flip makes a lot of sense.

But I also think there is reason to expect another down year for the league. Last year, the league struggled in the non-conference schedule, but despite those struggles the conference still had more early entrants in the NBA draft than any other conference. (The next table includes 2 Colorado players, but even without those two players, the Pac-10 would still be at the top of the list.) That talent drain, combined with another recruiting class that was less than dominant, suggests that Pac-12 may be in for another disappointing year. RealGM recently examined the Pac-12’s potential NBA prospects and there isn’t a guaranteed 2012 lottery pick in the group.

- I do not understand preseason rankings that have Arizona far ahead of the pack. Yes, Arizona beat Duke in the NCAA tournament last year. But they lost all-world player Derrick Williams to the NBA. Plus, the player that accounted for the second most possessions on the team, Momo Jones, has transferred. And the team’s most efficient player, Kevin Parrom, was recently shot and is recovering from that injury. 

- I loved UCLA’s Tyler Honeycutt and Malcolm Lee, but they were not particularly efficient players last season. Tyler Honeycutt missed a lot of two-point baskets, and Malcolm Lee took a lot of questionable three-pointers. Both players had the talent to be superstars, but neither had quite put it all together before declaring for the NBA draft. The real problem for UCLA this season is that they are going to be over-loaded in the frontcourt, and weak in the backcourt. The additions of North Carolina transfers David and Travis Wear should help the team, but it cannot replace Malcolm Lee’s contributions.

- The Pac-12 did not have a lot of players in the high school all-star games last spring, but Washington guard Tony Wroten was impressive, and I look forward to seeing him suit up for the Huskies this season. 

- Jeff Bzdelik installed a culture of defensive indifference at Colorado, and Tad Boyle was not able to change that in his first year. Part of the problem was that Colorado’s best lineup was short and lacked the interior presence to get stops. But building around Andre Roberson and Austin Dufault on the interior, Colorado has to make defensive stops a priority this season. With the Buffaloes’ talent losses, they are not going to be able to outscore people at will, and the defense has to get better if this team is going to stay competitive.

- Stanford had one of the youngest teams in D1 basketball last season, and all those minutes they gave to freshman should pay some dividends. If you do not know who Anthony Brown and Dwight Powell are now, you will be the end of the season.

- Utah has some college basketball tradition based on Rick Majerus’ time with the school. But in the last decade, other than Daniel Deane, Utah has simply not had the Top 100 recruits they need to compete at the highest level. This off-season was no different. Utah has to start bringing in a higher caliber of player if they are going to compete in the new Pac-12. 

- Herb Sendek has tried to step away from his reputation as a “Princeton offense” type of coach. But without a ton of talent on his roster right now, it seems like he would be wise to return to his roots. Northwestern, Georgetown, and Boston College have all shown that less talented recruits can thrive with the right cuts and screens. And yet, I read that Sendek wants to get more transition baskets and run more this season. Why abandon a proven system? Are the Pac-12 defenses simply more disciplined about stopping back-cuts and screens? Oregon St. head coach Craig Robinson, a former Ivy league coach and Bill Carmody assistant, has also struggled to run Ivy league sets in the Pac-12.