The NCAA Men's college basketball season will get started up on Friday night with a number of good matchups on the docket and one of the top games is the UCLA Bruins against Drexel to kick off the season and the game will start up at 12:00 am ET and at 9:00 pm on the west coast at Pauley Pavillion.
There is another game that had the Georgetown Hoyas taking on the Oregon Ducks and the game will be part of the Armed Forces Classic, as the two teams will match up in Camp Humphreys in South Korea and the game will get started on TV around 8:00 pm and will also have stream coverage online on the WatchESPN website.
Oregon is ranked in the top 25 at number 19 this season while the Hoyas are out, but the matchup should still be a very close one with both squads travelling all the way across the world. The two teams come into the matchup looking for a win to start the season and both Oregon and Georgetown have tough conferences to face and even though the Ducks are ranked and the Hoyas are not, depending on the way things shake out this season, it could be the other way around by the end of things. The Pac-12 is expected to be very competitive this season ahead of the Ducks, with teams like the Arizona Wildcats and the UCLA Bruins ranked and even more teams could end up in the top 25 later down the line like they did last season.
Check here for the coverage on Friday.
The Hoyas had a very nice run last season in the Big East with Otto Porter, but he now is in the NBA and John Thompson III must find what young talent he has. The Armed Forces Classic is a great way to kick start the season and this is the second time that ESPN is doing it after teams played overseas in Germany to start the season and it should continue to be an annual event for college basketball and the network. The Ducks come into the game with a couple of their top players not making it onto the court after being suspended, as both Dominic Artis and Ben Carter will be suspended for a number of games after it was found out that they violated some cardinal NCAA rules about selling apparel, as they sold shoes given to them by the school.
ESPN reported on the news and wrote that both Carter and Artis will be out for the Ducks for the early part of the season, as they will not be on the court until at least December 17, when they are allowed to return for the game later in the season against UC Irvine and that means missing two of the bigger games of the early stretch for the Ducks, as they play the Illinois Illini and the Ole Miss Rebels on the schedule in December and those could end up being crucial matchups for the team come later in the year. The team is prepared to play without them and head coach Dana Altman said that the Ducks will not be looking past Georgetown just because they are ranked and the other team is not.
The Hoyas have a tough schedule within the conference in the Big East and while things are changing around a great deal there, it still should be a fight to the finish once the tournaments kick off at the end of the year. The Hoyas have some tough games with the Kansas Jayhawks as well as Michigan State and that also means that two of the top coaches in college baseball will go up against each other two different times, as John Thompson will face off against Tom Izzo as well as Bill Self this season.
The Armed Forces Classic will start up at 8:00 pm ET from South Korea and Camp Humphreys and the two teams in the Oregon Ducks and Georgetown Hoyas will face off for their first matchups of the season and the game will be streaming online on the Watch ESPN website.
