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Welcome to The Bilas Index, Volume I for the 2024-25 college basketball season. It has been an offseason of pleasant distractions, such as the Dodgers winning another World Series title, various and sundry Taylor Swift concerts, and the weekend airings of that ground acquisition game known as "football," despite the painfully low occurrences of actually using the foot to impact the ball, and the sport in which the hours of game time are populated by such small time periods when the ball is actually in play. Those banal distractions were helpful while we patiently waited for the arrival of the most beautiful game ever played to return to the floor. That moment is finally upon us, and what a welcome joy it is to see a game of balletic movement by world-class athletes with no stoppages after every play. A game in which players are required to compete on both offense and defense without committee meetings between plays. Basketball is, without reasonable debate, the most team-oriented, breathtakingly beautiful, strategically complicated game in world history, one that captures the imagination of those with fully evolved brains. It can be daunting to determine the best of the 300+ teams in Division I that will contend for the national championship of this aesthetically pleasing game, both for inclusion into the postseason competition for the trophy and for the teams that can and the one that will take that trophy home. That is where The Bilastrator comes in. Through the hyperintelligent use of analytics combined with the unimaginable power of The Bilastrator's brain and basketball IQ. Researchers have been studying for decades the unusual volume of gray matter inside The Bilastrator's bald dome, including the subtle characteristics of the speed at which his nerve impulses travel from the hardwood to his brain, and the number of neuronal connections in the diffuse network of brain regions that process the mountain of information produced in the college basketball ecosystem. The well-intentioned, unwashed masses feebly attempt to process data with the naked eye while understandably unqualified to do so, and are expected to fill out brackets at the end of the season with relatively no chance of processing the volume of basketball data successfully. Thankfully, you don't have to, because you have The Bilas Index, the most reliable, trustworthy and valuable tool to understand this beautiful game ever produced in the known universe. For that, The Bilastrator says, "You're welcome."  1. UConn Huskies
The 2025 national championship trophy belongs to no team. But, if you are making a projection or pick, how could any reasonable person choose a preseason favorite other than UConn? Think about it, albeit with a lesser functioning brain than The Bilastrator's. UConn has won the past two national championships with 12 straight double-digit wins, after being unranked or ranked outside the top five in the preseason polls. There are no titles without great players, but, it seems clear, there might just be something in the sauce. Dan Hurley has distinguished himself as an offensive savant, a modern-day Lombardi and the Saban of superstition. The talent at his disposal is excellent, but will be better and more cohesive as we reach January. Alex Karaban, Solo Ball and Hassan Diarra return, but they also added Saint Mary's transfer Aidan Mahaney and freshman Liam McNeeley, a great shooter who will benefit from Hurley's fabulous schemes. The Huskies are a special program, but this is the bridge year toward undeniable dynasty territory. Only Wooden and UCLA know what that feels like.
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