There’s nothing quite like college basketball, largely because all the preseason polls and prognostications rarely get it right. Unlike college football, where the teams that start at the top of the polls usually remain at the top of the polls (even if they lose a game or two), basketball’s polls are merely a means of judging who has the best chance at getting hot during the final month of the year.

Before Connecticut pulled off the rare feat of starting and finishing the season as the nation’s No. 1 team (riding a rollercoaster up and down with Emeka Okafor’s back all the while), no one had done it since the 1996 Kentucky Wildcats. So, while Kansas is the chic pick as the best team in the country right now, the chances that they will be cutting down the nets in Saint Louis are pretty slim.

With the 65 team field to determine who wins the national title, it’s not always the best team in college basketball that goes home the winner. Instead, it’s the team that happens to get hot at the right time that gets to take home the coveted wooden plaque.

Look at Syracuse just two years ago. The Orangemen were hardly the favorites to be the last team standing — as was evident from their No. 3 seed (not that the tournament selection committee doesn’t have a long history of poorly assigning the seeds) — but they rode Carmelo Anthony all the way to an NCAA championship.

This season promises to be one of the best in recent memory as there are a plethora of teams that actually are returning highly regarded players, not just inserting the next generation of great young talent into their lineup.

Kansas is the preseason favorite because it boasts a senior laden lineup with players who could easily have opted for the NBA instead of a fourth year in college. While they likely could spend a lot of time at-or-near the top of the rankings this season, they are far from guaranteed anything other than high seed come March.

In the ACC, Georgia Tech returns the three best players from a team that came up just short in the national title game last season, and that only gets it a No. 3 ranking … in its conference. Wake Forest and North Carolina are just as loaded with veteran talent this year, making the top-three little more than a coin toss. What it also means is that Duke, who has been ranked No. 1 for what seems like the majority of the last 10 years won’t even be a favorite to win their conference this year.

Even the Big Ten, which has been considered down-and-out the past couple seasons, has four teams in Illinois, Michigan State, Wisconsin and Michigan that could find themselves on a Final Four run come March.

While the parity of college basketball over the past couple of seasons has had a lot to do with the increasing rate of top players leaving school early for the riches of the NBA, this year is different; most of the top teams this season will be led by juniors and seniors who have proven themselves over time. The preseason pollsters will actually have something to base their decisions on other than the hype surrounding the top recruits in the game.

Looking at the fact that UConn’s victory made it just the third team to win multiple-championships since the tournament was expanded to 64 teams, it’s safe to say that the field remains wide open.

Preseason title contenders are a dime a dozen, and it’s usually a list populated by the same names: Duke, North Carolina, Kentucky, Kansas … the list goes on and on. While those teams usually find themselves in the hunt at the end, it’s the other teams that are generally the story of the season. Every year there are teams that come from way off the radar that make everyone stand up and take notice.

St. Joseph’s was one of those teams a year ago. While many pundits saw St. Joe’s as a sleeper team and a contender for the Atlantic-10 title, few predicted an undefeated run through the regular season.

There is just no way of knowing which player that no one has heard of going into the season is going to make a name for himself this winter and lead a team that wasn’t expected to do much on a magical ride.

The other thing that makes college basketball great is the fact that there are so many mid-major level programs that have built solid programs and are more than capable of having special seasons. While few people pay much attention to these small schools as they pile up impressive win totals against “inferior” competition, everyone takes notice when they knock a big name school out of the NCAA tournament.

So while Kansas is the popular pick to win their first national title since Danny Manning carried them to the promised land in 1988, the field is more than wide open. I suppose that’s why they play the games.