Crystal Ball for the 2015-16 NCAA Basketball Season

Duke won its fifth national title on April 6, and ever since we've wondered what would happen the following college basketball season.

Can the Blue Devils repeat as champs, becoming the first back-to-back winners since Florida in 2006-07? Will Kentucky come through with its second title in five seasons, and will such a run include another push for perfection like last year? How about Kansas, North Carolina or some of the other blue bloods, ones that haven't won it all since the last decade, can they get it done?

And who will be the surprise teams, as well as the ones that come crashing down after spending much of the offseason getting tons of hype?

These topics—and countless more—have been pondered, posited and predicted over the past seven months as we've waited for the 2015-16 season to start. And now it's here, beginning on Friday when the road to the next championship begins.

To help prepare for what should be a thrilling next five months of action, we've put together some bold predictions for things that will happen at various points throughout the season.

Nov. 13

The season is here! And to welcome it back, there are a whopping 156 games scheduled from Japan to (New) Jersey and many parts in between. This includes 23 games involving teams ranked in the Associated Press Top 25, but unfortunately none against each other.

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Despite that, at least one ranked team will be pushed to the limit by a relatively unknown opponent that was scheduled with the expectation they'd serve as a willing patsy. Look for Stephen F. Austin, which has made the NCAA tournament the past two seasons, to take Baylor to overtime before the Bears pull it out by three.

Nov. 16-17

Workplace productivity across the country reaches levels normally only seen during mid-March as hundreds of thousands of college basketball fans either call in sick or monopolize the office Wi-Fi watching games associated with the roughly 30 hours of non-stop televised hoops shown on ESPN and its family of networks.

The featured attractions of that marathon come at the end, with the Champions Classic pairings of Duke-Kentucky and Kansas-Michigan State from Chicago on Tuesday night. Kentucky and Kansas will come out winners in that doubleheader, but the most exciting game will come in the wee hours when first-year coach Eric Musselman navigates Nevada to a win at Hawaii (tip off: 4 a.m. ET) to finish a 3-0 run through the Rainbow Classic in Honolulu.

Nov. 18

Unless you happen to be in Orlando on a Wednesday night in mid-November, you'll need to go online to catch maybe the greatest clash of currently unpaid athletes in sports history. Thankfully the NCAA will have realized there's nothing to fear about a 7'6" engineering major with a 3.6 GPA, and they'll have cleared UCF freshman Tacko Fall in time for him to face off against 7'6” UC-Irvine junior Mamadou Ndiaye.

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That's 180 inches' worth of long-striding, volleyball-spiking, dunk-from-their-tiptoes action. If only these teams were meeting in a preseason tournament, where the winner (or, even the loser) got to square off against New Mexico State and 7'3”, 330-pound sophomore Tanveer Bhullar.

And yes, that's the little brother of former NMSU (and current NBA) mammoth Sim Bhullar, who comes in at 7'5" and 360 pounds.

It doesn't matter who wins the UCI-UCF game, by the way, since we're all winners for this game having been scheduled.

Nov. 26

No longer conference rivals thanks to the rampant realignment of a few seasons back, Connecticut and Syracuse meet for the first time since 2013 during the semifinals of the Battle 4 Atlantis in Nassau, Bahamas. Far from their respective homes in the Northeast, these teams will do their best to turn a converted ballroom in the Atlantis Resort into a mini-Madison Square Garden to the point they'll need more than 40 minutes to declare a winner.

It won't go as long as their most epic battle, a six-overtime affair won by Syracuse during the 2009 Big East tournament, but it will take a while before UConn comes out on top. However, the Huskies will be worn out from that clash and a victory the day before against Michigan, and as a result they get steamrolled by Gonzaga in the championship game not long after.

Dec. 1

North Carolina and Maryland began the season ranked first and third, respectively, making it very possible they could meet as No. 1 and No. 2 when the former ACC rivals rekindle their rivalry in one of the signature games of the Big Ten/ACC Challenge. However, UNC will have already lost once as it struggled to play without senior guard Marcus Paige.

Paige broke a bone in his left (non-shooting) hand the first week of November, and the timetable for his return was initially listed as three to four weeks. His first game back will be against the Terrapins, adding even more intrigue to the matchup, though Paige will be noticeably rusty to start.

That all changes in the final eight minutes, when the player often known as “Second Half Marcus” comes alive and scores 13 of UNC's final 17 points to secure the two-point home win.

Dec. 5

Arizona needed overtime to beat Gonzaga at home last December, making for one of the best nonconference games of the 2014-15 season and reaffirmed those programs as the two best out West. Now comes the return trip, as the Wildcats bring a top-five ranking and become the highest-ranked team to ever face the Bulldogs in Spokane.

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They'll also be the highest-rated to get blown out at the McCarthey Athletic Center, losing by double digits in a game Gonzaga controls from the tip.

Dec. 22

California is the hot new toy at Christmas, a much-hyped team despite not much recent success thanks to a mix of savvy veterans and two of the top freshmen in the country. The Golden Bears' first five weeks of action will be up and down with at least one loss, but their coming-out party will occur on the other side of the country during a pre-Christmas trip to Virginia.

The two-time defending ACC regular season champs will be 10-0 and fresh off an impressive home win over Villanova, and the players will be itching to get on a plane afterward to spend some time with family for the holidays. London Perrantes will wish he was already in mid-flight to Los Angeles as he turns it over seven times as Cal shocks the Cavs by six.

Dec. 26

Kentucky hosts Louisville in the 49th meeting of heated rivals from the Bluegrass State. Unfortunately, the game itself doesn't prove to be much of a contest, with the Wildcats easily handling the Cardinals.

However, CBS still pumps up the game since its one of the network's first on the Road to the Final Four, even going so far as to have its own slimmed-down version of an on-site pre-game show, fans in the background and all. Which will make for some interesting signs potentially making it on TV, especially in light of Louisville's offseason news.

Dec. 31

The vast majority of the sports-loving world will be focused on the college football semifinal games that are set for this night, thus putting New Year's Eve party attendance at an all-time low. The few college basketball games that are on TV are either being shown long before or near the end of these gridiron battles, though none will get much attention on the highlight shows.

Which is too bad, because in front of what will probably be no more than 1,500 fans in the Millis Center, High Point dunk master John Brown will destroy one backboard and cause another to temporarily collapse.

Jan. 3

Memphis only plays one of its first 12 games this season outside of The Pyramid, a schedule that is perfect for a coach on the hot seat needing to get off to a good start to lower the temperature beneath him. But Josh Pastner's Tigers go 7-5 during that opening slate, with losses to Oklahoma and Ohio State (the latter in Miami) but also to Louisiana Tech, Manhattan and Ole Miss.

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Yet it's a horrible effort in Memphis' first true road game, Jan. 2 at South Carolina, that marks the end of Pastner's tenure. Following the double-digit loss, Pastner is fired and gets the coaching carousel started early.

Jan. 16

There's always at least one day during the regular season when the rankings seem to have no bearing on reality, an that's this Saturday. Based on the preseason Associated Press poll, there are 15 games involving ranked teams set for that day and most of those teams will still be in the Top 25 at this point.

Seven of them will lose, some more surprisingly than others. The entire day will be riddled with unexpected results, leading to some quirky nicknames to describe the overall carnage. We're going to The Market Correction, paying homage to the belief that even the best stocks have to take a dip every now and then.

Among the victims this day: Indiana (at Minnesota), Villanova (at Georgetown), Iowa State (at Kansas State) and, most surprisingly, Kentucky (at Auburn).

Jan. 30 (Kentucky at Kansas)

Familiar foes who are used to facing each other in front of enormous crowds on neutral courts in large stadiums, most recently in Chicago last November and in the 2012 national championship game in New Orleans. But thanks to the relatively new Big 12/SEC Challenge, they're set to square off in a much cozier setting.

For Kansas, at least.

There won't be many Kentucky fans inside Allen Fieldhouse, where these basketball blue bloods will face off as the marquee matchup of this event. It was played in December the first two years with little fanfare, and the move to late January was well-received and will make for a nice break from the monotony of league play.

When the dust settles, Kansas will have avenged those recent losses to the Wildcats, and columnists everywhere other than those based out of Kentucky will be writing and blogging about how college basketball should feature more high-profile, non-league games in January and February rather than just during November and December (when most non-diehards are more interested in football).

Feb. 28

A home loss to Penn State is Michigan State's eighth in its last 11 games, causing the Spartans to take a major dip in all NCAA tournament projections with several placing Spartans on the bubble. That includes Bleacher Report's Kerry Miller, who notes “Tom Izzo might not get to show off its penchant for winning big games in March since he might not get to coach during the second half of the month.”

March 11

Bo Ryan announced in late June the 2015-16 season, his 15th at Wisconsin and 32nd as a college head coach, would be his last. Six weeks later Ryan backtracked, changing his stance to “I'll do another year and we'll see what happens in the next number of months,” per ESPN's Andy Katz.

Following a second-round Big Ten tournament loss as the league's No. 8 this season, the 68-year-old Ryan will announce during the postgame press conference he's coached his final game. The Badgers will be 16-16, unable to come close to the success of recent seasons, and rather than have Ryan's final games be in the NIT, the school will decline any non-NCAA tournament invites and miss the postseason for the first time since 1998.

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March 13

The 68-team NCAA tournament field is announced and will provide the usual array of surprising seeds and matchups, along with some notable snubs. It will also include Army for the first time, having won the Patriot League tournament a few days earlier to claim the program's first postseason appearance since 1978.

With the Black Knights having their ticket punched to the Big Dance, only four of the original Division I programs (The Citadel, Northwestern, St. Francis of Brooklyn and William & Mary) will remain without a bid.

March 17-20

The two greatest days in sports, the first two days of the NCAA tournament, will end up being a big tease as only six lower-seeded teams end up winning in the second round. And none of those will be No. 12 seeds, marking the second year in a row that upset-heavy seed fails to come through, but No. 14 IUPUI will knock off a third-seeded power-conference team for its first-ever NCAA tourney win.

The real chaos won't start until the weekend, where one No. 1 seed and four more teams seeded second, third or fourth will fall. That includes Duke, a No. 3 seed, who by falling in the third round, will extend the streak in which the defending national champion fails to make it past the Sweet 16 to nine straight years.

April 2-4

Paul Sancya/Associated Press

Despite some major names falling by the wayside early in the tourney, the Final Four in Houston is a star-studded affair with Kentucky, Michigan State—which after that 3-8 skid in January and February has won nine straight—and North Carolina joined by Wichita State.

In the lead up to these games, Wichita coach Gregg Marshall addresses rumors of him heading to a bigger program by declaring he has no intention to go elsewhere because “I already coach a big-time program,” noting he's made as many Final Four appearances in the past four years as “the rest of the teams in our state have since 2008.”

Wichita then loses to North Carolina, while Michigan State downs Kentucky to set up a rematch of the 2009 title game. And it will end the same way, with the Tar Heels winning their sixth national championship and third under Roy Williams.

Follow Brian J. Pedersen on Twitter at @realBJP.