Building the best five-man lineups from colleges in all 50 states (plus D.C.) as we move closer to the start of the 2018-19 NCAA Basketball campaign.
We can all agree the college basketball offseason is a long one.
From the final buzzer of the national championship game in early April to tip-off in early November, college basketball junkies have a lot of time to fill. Luckily, the ever-growing transfer season, recruiting, schedule releases, and summer practices tide us over for the most part, but we still need to create a little something extra to pass the time.
For me, that has led to the creation of various debates, stretching from the top-10 players in the Big East to the best college basketball player at each height to a mini-series comparing players head-to-head. Now as we enter the home stretch of the college basketball dry period, I present the best five-man lineups from each state.
A couple rules to remember for this exercise:
- The players from each state are in relation to their college, not their hometowns. So even though Purdue’s Carsen Edwards is from just north of Houston, as a Boilermaker, he counts for Indiana’s hypothetical lineup, not Texas’.
- I listed every Division-1 program within each respective state and included the schools’ preseason projected ranking in parentheses (rankings are courtesy of barttorvik.com).
- In order to further simplify the research and make sure every quality team was represented, I came up with a simple rule – all top-100 teams, per barttorvik.com, must have at least one player represented. For some states, that means all five players will come from different schools; for others, the top team might squeeze three guys into the lineup.
- And finally: do not hit me up about your geographical region.
Now let’s get on with the show.