Chicago area colleges ready for basketball season

Are you ready for some basketball?

I hope so because, as the famous Hall and Oates Maneater song says…" Look out here she comes !"

Yes, we know, football is still going on—but the time for full-court presses, driving layups, spectacular blocks, three-pointers raining from a distance, and, of course, those hard-driving slam dunks has begun.

Hoops season is indeed upon us and not a moment too soon, with the colder weather starting to infiltrate our collective epidermis.

Put another way? The drive for March Madness begins…right now!

Plenty of Chicago area teams, of course, are represented in the collegiate basketball world.

DePaul University playing at the Wintrust Center in the South Loop, Loyola University at the renovated Joe Gentile Center on the North Side, The UIC Flames on Chicago's beautiful West Side, and Chicago State firing things up on the South West side of the city, are amongst the biggest of the schools.

Lest we forget, Northwestern University is playing at Welsh-Ryan in Evanston, and NAIA school Roosevelt University is playing right here in the Loop on Wabash Ave in the Goodman Center.

That's a lot of quality basketball, all right here in the city, and it begins this week.

The cherry on top? Even though the United Center is not the home court for any of our local teams, it will host four of the top teams in the country in a nationally televised doubleheader coming up on Tuesday.

Which of our local squads has the best chance of making the Big Dance (The March Madness NCAA tournament?)

Objectively looking at it, the best possibility is the purple-clad Wildcats of Northwestern. They return four of their top six scorers from last year's NCAA qualifying team, including All-American candidate Boo Buie.

But Loyola, under young Coach Darnell Valentine, and DePaul, hitting year three with not-so-young Coach Tony Stubblefield, and UIC, with Coach Luke Yaklich leading the way, will all try and make a run at it and can do it if the chips fall in the right way.

One recommendation as you watch the games: Forget all the transfer portal stuff, ignore all the NIL deal noise, and enjoy the quality hoops action. (If you do not know what those above terms mean—good! Better not understand, as it is much easier to enjoy the games.)

One thing is almost inevitable. It will be fun to watch it all unfold.