Basketball season is in full swing, which for the ACC and Big Ten is a welcome sight.

This much is certain: The team returning to the mainland as the Battle 4 Atlantis champion will have earned it.

Texas alumni are holding their traditional Hex Rally this week, but it probably won’t be as fun. In College Station, the Aggies are holding Midnight Yell Practice in anticipation of their Thanksgiving week game.

But with TCU and Missouri on the other side the Longhorns’ and Aggies’ vitriol, it’s just not the same.

The opening of the college basketball season garnered a little more buzz this season, even if some of the key games didn’t go as planned.

Even if the aircraft carrier games -- two of which were canceled and one was postponed -- didn’t go off without a hitch, the effort was in the right place. Teams like Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan State and Connecticut were in early action in key games, a trend that will continue with ESPN’s tipoff marathon beginning Tuesday morning at midnight.

After a long wait, NC State’s hopes for ACC supremacy may be realized. The Wolfpack have not won an ACC regular season title since 1989 and haven’t won the ACC tournament since 1987.

Football is still in the heart of its season. The NBA is just getting started. And the election was only yesterday.

In other words, it may be easy for college basketball to fly under the radar for the start of its season this weekend.

If it’s tough to pull away from football or other responsibilities in November, we’d like to help steer you the key games, teams, players and trends to watch as the college basketball season gets started Friday.

Even after every recruit signed, after players were drafted, and after (nearly) every coaching change was made, college basketball news impacting the 2012-13 season continued to break through the late summer and early fall.

College football season hasn’t begun, but here at Athlon we’re already hard at work in thinking about the 2012-13 basketball season. Believe us, the season will be here before you know it.

Every team has questions about the upcoming season, but some are bigger than others.