ESPN Men's Basketball

It's college basketball preview season, and you know what that means: tons of preseason info to get you primed for 2013-14. But what do you really need to know? Each day for the next month, we'll highlight the most important, interesting or just plain amusing thing each conference has to offer this season -- from great teams to thrilling players to wild fans and anything in between. Up next: the noble speed freaks of Virginia Military Institute.

Let's be clear from the start: Stylistically speaking, there is no right or wrong way to play the game of basketball. There are only wins and losses. Everything else -- from a coach's philosophy to aesthetic preference to good old-fashioned matchup strategy -- is only so much interior detail.

In other words, up-tempo basketball does not equal winning basketball. Or vice versa. There are strategic advantages and disadvantages, and personnel is the key, but no system is so good it can succeed of its own merits alone. For fans, everything is subjective. Some people really love slow, deliberate, physical basketball. Others saw their hoops holy grail in Phoenix in 2005 and walk the Earth like Jules from "Pulp Fiction," casting about desperately for anything that might vaguely approximate it.

I'll admit it: I am in the latter camp. For every magnificent fiber of this sport, college basketball in 2013 can be too slow, too plodding, too careful -- smothered by helicopter coaches deathly afraid of leaving their livelihoods to chance. When a coach openly defies this trend, it's worth taking notice. When a coach does so, and then doesn't win all that much, and then keeps on doing it anyway -- well, that's when you've really got my attention.

That coach exists. His name is Duggar Baucom. He coaches the Virginia Military Institute Keydets. And his teams play fast. Always. Win or lose. That's all you really need to know.

Just in case, let's demonstrate: Since 2005-06, when Baucom came from Division II Tusculum College, VMI has finished outside the top 10 nationally in adjusted tempo only once, in his first season. To the right is a list of VMI's adjusted tempo figures -- and their won-lost records -- since.

In the past seven seasons, as part of Baucom's strategy, VMI has focused its efforts on turning opponents over and attempting to win the game on offense. This always leads to two things. The first is awful defense; the Keydets have finished a season ranked higher than 300th defensively only twice in the past eight years. The second? Thoroughly entertaining basketball!

In fact, that's the real marvel here. VMI has a system. That system is a joy to watch, but it does not yield consistent victories. VMI's coach has stuck with that immensely enjoyable system even as it has failed to bear consistent fruit -- and risked becoming a sideshow -- because he thinks it’s the best way his team can play basketball.

Which is exactly why you've got to, got to, got to see VMI. The Keydets may not always be successful, even in the forgiving context of the Big South. But they are guaranteed to thrill -- for better and for worse.

It's college basketball preview season, and you know what that means: tons of preseason info to get you primed for 2013-14. But what do you really need to know? Each day for the next month, we'll highlight the most important, interesting or just plain amusing thing each conference has to offer this season — from great teams to thrilling players to wild fans and anything in between. Today: Weber State, and Damian who?

The 2012-13 NBA Rookie of the Year went from Weber State to the National Basketball Association for very good reasons. In 2011-12, Damian Lillard, to that point a relatively unheralded senior redshirt junior playing for a small mid-major program in Ogden, Utah, touched the ball on nearly a third of his team's possessions. Despite that burden, he posted a 124.4 offensive rating, the highest of any player with a usage rate above 28 percent, per Ken Pomeroy -- higher even than All-American Doug McDermott, who consumed fewer of his team's trips. Lillard's late-blooming offensive brilliance canceled out every concern NBA scouts had about Big Sky competition. That summer, the Portland Trail Blazers made him the sixth overall pick in the 2012 NBA Draft.

Back in Ogden, it was fair to expect Weber State to fade away. Frankly, the Wildcats were never in collective focus anyway -- they lost to all three (at Saint Mary's, at BYU, at Cal) of their significant nonconference opponents, fell short in OT in the Big Sky title game, and finished ranked No. 148 in the country in Pomeroy's adjusted efficiency. For a team with a future NBA Rookie of the Year running the show, Weber State flew way under the radar. And with Lillard gone, surely the opportunity was lost.

Which brings us to the big, predictably introduced reveal: Weber State didn't get worse. It got better. Randy Rahe's team won four more games (30-7) than in 2011-12. Its defense got drastically better, zooming from 258th in the country to 99th. That would have been the biggest surprise, but for this: The Wildcats' offense didn't regress a bit. Weber State posted the fourth-highest effective field goal percentage in the country (56.0), thanks in large part to lights-out, 45.6 percent-from-3 shooting from senior guard Scott Bamforth. The Wildcats finished No. 76 in Pomeroy's efficiency rankings. They weren't just better. They were much better.

They also missed the tournament. Again. Thanks to another close Big Sky loss, and no nonconference results, again.

Which is precisely why Weber State offers such an interesting watch for the season to come. Just as the Wildcats had to overcome the loss of their ball-dominating, NBA-ready point guard a year prior, this summer they're reconfiguring without Bamforth, one of the best pure shooters in the college game, and reliable senior forward Frank Otis, arguably the team's best rebounder. But Davion Berry, who shot 41.4 percent from 3 last season in his own right, and center Kyle Tresnak, a shot-blocker and rebounder who by now has a well-rounded interior game, are both back. So is freshman Joel Bolomboy, the 2012-13 Big Sky Newcomer of the Year.

In other words, this is the season Weber State might finally break through -- just 17 months after waving farewell to one of the best young players in the NBA. I'm pretty sure that's not how it's supposed to work. But Weber State just keeps getting better.

It's college basketball preview season, and you know what that means: tons of preseason info to get you primed for 2013-14. But what do you really need to know? Each day for the next month, we'll highlight the most important, interesting or just plain amusing thing each conference has to offer this season -- from great teams to thrilling players to wild fans and anything in between. Next up: trickle-down realignment in the Western Athletic Conference.

Inequality is a defining characteristic of college basketball. Heck, it might be the defining quality. Without the massive gulf between college basketball's haves and have-nots, the NCAA tournament wouldn't be so captivating. Inequality gave us Cinderella. It has its pluses.

It also skews every discussion about the sport. We forget just how many of Division I's basketball schools have less in common with Kentucky than Division II. We forget how diverse the landscape really is. We forget about the little guys -- at least until 160 of them defeat a landmark stipend proposal, to name just one example.

It should be no surprise, then, that the conference-realignment headlines had the same selective focus. For the past two years, the Division I elite have jockeyed and clamored for spots in bigger, better leagues, each new development breathlessly covered on a hourly basis. Less well-known is the way realignment has trickled down to even the smallest, least monied leagues. No mid-major league offers a more instructive example than the Western Athletic Conference.

The WAC you'll see in 2013-14 looks almost nothing like the WAC of last season or years prior. The Mountain West vacuumed up Utah State (the WAC hoops standard-bearer for much of the past decade, featuring one of the best home crowds in the country) and San Jose State. Denver took off for the Summit League. Louisiana Tech and UTSA joined a hollowed-out Conference USA. Texas State and UT Arlington found a home in the Sun Belt. That's -- count 'em -- seven teams from a previously 10-team league that will no longer be in the conference in 2013-14. And next summer, when Idaho makes its official move to the Big Sky, that'll be eight. "Decimation" is the word that comes to mind. Nothing but the bones of the carcass remain.

But there is some good news. Marvin Menzies' New Mexico State program -- the WAC's NCAA tournament representative for three of the past four seasons -- stayed put. And while there's no question the WAC's quality has taken a significant hit, it has re-established itself as a home for programs that desperately needed a conference. Chicago State is a perfect example: After years spent as a guarantee-game punching bag in the loosely affiliated Great West, Chicago State finally has a league it can sell to lower-tier local prospects. Cal State Bakersfield was an independent; Grand Canyon is graduating from Division II.

There are dozens of stories here, stories of players and programs previously relegated to the sport's lowest caste finding their footing in a league that needs them every bit as much as the reverse. It might not make a whole lot of geographical sense, and it might not always offer the best basketball. But it is a fascinating realignment case study worth checking in on throughout the season.

It's college basketball preview season, and you know what that means: tons of preseason info to get you primed for 2013-14. But what do you really need to know? Each day for the next month, we'll highlight the most important, interesting or just plain amusing thing each conference has to offer this season -- from great teams to thrilling players to wild fans and anything in between. Today: Havoc in the Atlantic 10.

The backlash is bound to happen soon.

You know how this works: As soon as any style or system or musical genre or meme or anything else reaches cultural critical mass, people get sick of hearing about it. They get grumpy. They start finding flaws, start calling names, start parsing the image from the substance. The Internet allows us to wage these backlashes publicly and at lightning speed, but it's not a new phenomenon. We're Americans. We build you up, and we tear you down. It's always been this way.

Since 2011, when Shaka Smart led his suddenly scorching Rams from the First Four in Dayton to the Final Four in Houston, VCU men's basketball has been on the steady, comfortable ascension portion of the backlash curve. More specifically, the defensive style pioneered by Smart -- HAVOC, he calls it, in all capitals -- has become the hottest, and best-branded, system in all of college hoops. The best part? It works.

Well, sort of. This is why I fear the backlash: Because HAVOC, in which Smart's players aggressively smother opposing ball handlers over the entire floor, for the entire game, got exposed.

Just a few months after the Rams dominated point guard-less Butler, and had the whole world singing HAVOC's praises, a team with a very good point guard proved that if VCU couldn't force turnovers, it couldn't get stops. The numbers bore that out: In 2012-13, VCU forced opponents to turn the ball over on 28.5 percent of its possessions, the highest mark in the country. But if teams didn't turn the ball over, they shot well, grabbed a ton of offensive rebounds, and went to the free throw line all the time. In March, when Naismith player of the year Trey Burke shrugged off the HAVOC, VCU's high-octane system shut down.

That's why this is a pivotal season for the Rams, and for Smart. This may be his most talented team, with few obvious challengers in the realignment-thinned Atlantic 10. But can VCU adjust? Can it force gobs of turnovers without surrendering the other defensive factors? This is the defining question of VCU's 2013-14 season.

But for now, forget all that. Because from an entertainment perspective, there are few teams in the country that offer more fun for your buck than VCU -- gritty, speedy guards flying up and down the floor, harassing opposing ball handlers into submission, the Siegel Center crowd roaring its approval. Flaws or not, VCU's HAVOC is not to be missed.