One season of college basketball ends. Congrats to Jim Calhoun and the UConn Huskies for winning their third NCAA Championship.
Now we can start to speculate about how teams will perform through the 2011-12 regular season, conference tournaments, and the NCAA Tournament. Kentucky, North Carolina, Ohio State Texas—and even defending national champ UConn—may all be right there again.
But don’t you think there will also be unanticipated dark horses that could make some serious noise? At this time last year, who could honestly predict a Final Four of Virginia Commonwealth, Butler, Kentucky and UConn?
Let’s look at the top teams that could rise (and, in some cases, rise fast) from where they finished. Some of these teams will be bouncing back a disappointing 2010-11 season. Others will be teams that made progress in 2010, but are going to really come into their own next year.
Still others will be teams that—through a combination of a nice (or very nice) group of returning players and elite-level recruits—will jump dramatically onto the national scene.
Let’s go!