NCAA Basketball: 25 best team rivalries heading into 2019-20 season

As the new NCAA basketball season rapidly approaches, let’s take a closer look at some of the best rivalries for this upcoming season.

As NCAA basketball teams put their schedules together, there’s always that game or series of games that fans circle on the calendar. While it’s true that every fan wants their teams to win all their games, those specific games are the ones these fans live and die for. Simply put, they want to beat their bitter rivals.

Of course, rivalries come in all shapes and sizes. Some are built over years of conference play, while others are from pure geographic standards. Certain rivalries develop over time between two teams that play each other hard. As time has gone on, rivalries have come and gone, especially as conferences have realigned and non-conference schedules have gotten smaller and smaller.

The purpose of this list is to identify and rank the 25 best rivalries for the upcoming season. This is not a list that is ranking the greatest rivalries of all time, because some of them are no longer active or lacking potential moving forward.

There will be a few words on the rivalry, as well as some high impact moments from its history. We’ll also take a brief look at what to expect when those teams face off this coming year, though there will be one exception to this rule.

Not every rivalry can make this list, though the 25 we feature are among the very best in the nation. Without further ado, let’s start running through these rivalries.