Tomorrow They Begin: The 2009-10 Early Season Tournament Preview

Yes, my friends, our long wait is almost over.  Tomorrow, there will be actual games to watch.  Right now, I want to invite you to join me over at the SBNation NCAA Basketball page.  On just about every night of the season (except for a few when my posting will be limited when I'm in California), I'll be delivering updates and commentary as the games go on.  I'll still be posting game previews, brackets, and commentary here, but on game nights, I'll be focusing a lot of my efforts there, as well as on Twitter, @bracketdobber.

But, since tomorrow's televised games are all part of the Coaches vs. Cancer Classic, a hybrid multi-team event or MTE, I figured I'd better get my post covering the bevy of early season tournaments up.

At the beginning of my season preview series, I posted an analysis of the growth of MTEs over the past couple of seasons.  The other day, I noticed another DC area hoops blogger, Dan Hanner, built on this with a truly great post that did a nice job of breaking down who's going where over November and December.

One thing both Dan and I call out is the growth of events that exist solely to skirt the exempted tournament rule.  Sure, there are a few events--like the ones the Gazelle Group and Basketball Tournaments, Inc. have set up--that separate major and non-major schools when it comes to determining a champion.  There are also hard-to-figure out quasi-round robins like the Glenn Wilkes Classic and Philly Hoop Group Classic.  But the biggest scheduling trend of this offseason is the growth of four-team round-robin tournaments like kudzu across the land, something I wrote about here.  

Now, I didn't realize that there were quite so many of these until I started doing conference previews.  Not only did BCS schools like Oregon, Providence, Texas Tech, and Washington, get into the act, but the non-BCS schools may be even more guilty. Illinois State, Missouri State, Montana, New Mexico, Ohio, and Southern Miss are just a few of the non-power schools who have taken advantage of the rule. (My favorite quirk of these events is the fact that UAB will meet crosstown rival Samford, in a tournament in Athens, Ohio.)  However, this does provide these schools an opportunity to get a few extra home games (always good for an athletic budget), while helping out some of their non-major brethren by giving them some neutral site games against similar teams.

Now, since I'm old school and prefer my tournaments to follow an actual bracket, this preview will exist without these round-robins.  Plus, the number of hybrid MTEs and traditional eight-team tournaments out there make it plenty long enough. So, you'll find a quick and not-so dirty guide to each of these events after the jump.

Maui Invitational (Lahaina: November 23, 24, 25)
The winner of two of the four quarterfinals in this tournament appear pretty clear.  In the top half, Maryland should handle Chaminade (but Greivis Vasquez should ask Ralph Sampson about what the Silver Swords did to an ACC squad once upon a time).  However, Cincinnati (in Lance Stephenson's coming out party) against A.J. Ogilvy and Vanderbilt isn't quite so simple.  In the bottom half, Colorado shouldn't be much trouble for Gonzaga, but Sean Miller's first test at the helm of Arizona should be a battle, as Wisconsin awaits.