The Field of 68 Opening Day Marathon is quite a way to start the season. Sixteen mid- and low-majors will participate in the festivities, with five games in Rock Hill, SC at the city’s Sports and Event Center and three more games in Sioux Falls, SD at Sanford Pentagon, the home of the G League’s Sioux Falls Skyforce.
The games will be streamed on Field of 68’s YouTube channel and on X, which is a media outlet led by Jeff Goodman and Rob Dauster. The first game tips off at 12:01 a.m. ET in Rock Hill and the last game tips off at 8 p.m. ET in Sioux Falls. These games are just a small part of the 181-game opening day of the season, with the exception of the Notre Dame vs. Villanova game in Rome, Italy on Sunday. While not headline-grabbing games like Florida vs. Miami, Ohio State vs. BYU, Purdue vs. Gonzaga, or UCLA vs. Arizona, this is a great opportunity for teams that don’t normally have a platform to get some visibility.
I don’t have picks on all of the games, but let’s take a look at the slate and find some.
You can also check out Steve Makinen’s Daily Matchup Ratings to see where he has an edge. Be sure to download the 2026-27 VSiN College Basketball Guide as well.
Odds from DraftKings as of 11:30 p.m. PT on Saturday, October 31
Liberty vs. High Point (-6.5, 155.5)
12:01 a.m. ET
This is low-key a great game to open up the marathon. Liberty’s Ritchie McKay always fields a competitive team and High Point’s Flynn Clayman held up the standards set under Alan Huss, as he took the Panthers to the NCAA Tournament last season, where they beat Wisconsin in the 12 vs. 5 game. They also gave Arkansas a real test in the second round in a 94-88 loss.
However, as is often the case with mid- and low-majors that have success, keeping the team together is hard. Fortunately, the Panthers do have Cam’Ron Fletcher back for a seventh season of college hoops and his second with High Point. He averaged 12 PPG and 7.1 RPG last season, including 25 and 8 against Arkansas and 14 and 10 against Wisconsin. The rest of the roster is made up of transfers from Monmouth, South Florida, Tulane, UT Rio Grande Valley, and other places.
When Scott Cross left Troy, so did brothers Cooper and Cobi Campbell, who stayed together and transferred to Liberty. Cooper shot 39.4% from 3 and Cobi shot 40.2% from deep. McKay had a senior-laden team last season, so he has a lot of new faces this year.
This game is a true pace war. Since McKay took over in 2015-16, the Flames have never been higher than 282nd in Bart Torvik’s adjusted tempo metric and have only been above 315th twice. High Point played at a top-50 tempo last season under Clayman, a pretty big leap from 2024-25 under Huss. It’ll be tough for the Flames to slow this game down because of the excitement of the start of the season, but McKay is an excellent offensive head coach, as the Flames have been 18th or better in eFG% per Torvik in seven of the last eight seasons. The one where they weren’t, they ranked 33rd.
Pick: Liberty +6.5
Grambling vs. Northern Illinois (-5.5, 147.5)
3 a.m. ET
I’m not sure there’s a great way to prepare to play basketball at 3 a.m., but Grambling and Northern Illinois will do it. NIU, now in the Horizon League, has a new head coach in Matt Majkrzak, who took Northern Michigan to the Division II NCAA Tournament in each of the last four seasons. The 36-year-old was brought in to kickstart an offense that has been atrocious the last two seasons and bad for the better part of 20 years. Under Rashon Burno last season, the Huskies were 323rd in eFG% offense per Torvik and 355th in adjusted offensive efficiency.
I really liked Grambling’s hire of Patrick Crarey II, who won 14 games in his first season at Florida A&M in 2024-25. While that may not sound impressive, remember two things. First, he was 10-8 in conference play. Second, the Rattlers and other SWAC teams play a lot of paycheck games and get thumped on a regular basis in non-conference play. The 14 wins for the Rattlers were the most since the 2007-08 season.
Crarey had a down year with Grambling in my opinion, as the team played a lot of high-variance basketball with the 357th-ranked TO% on offense and the 12th-ranked TO% on defense. The problem was that they shouldn’t shoot worth a lick, finishing 295th in eFG%. One of Crarey’s portal pickups was Hassan Washington, who had 4.4 PPG for Northern Illinois last season, but did shoot 58.7% on 2s. He just didn’t play much and only shot 44% at the stripe.
No pick from me in this game, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Huskies offense improve quickly. Max Weisbrod (Northern Iowa) and David Douglas Jr. (Fresno State) shot 38% and 39.7%, respectively, from 3 and Majkrzak’s team will pass the ball a lot to create open looks.
Appalachian State vs. Merrimack (-3.5, 135.5)
6 a.m. ET
Again, I’m not sure how you prepare to play basketball at 6 a.m., but here we are. Joe Gallo might have his best Warriors team and maybe this one will be the one to go dancing. Last year’s Merrimack squad was ferocious on defense and went 23-11 overall and 17-3 in conference play, but got tripped up by Siena in the MAAC Tournament, shooting just 7-of-27 on 2s for the game. And therein lies the problem for Merrimack, who had .907 and .849 points per possession in the final two games of the season.
The Warriors should win the possession battle more often than not, as last season’s 20.4% TO% on defense that ranked 16th in the nation was the lowest on Gallo’s watch as a Division I program. This could be a tough game for App State against Gallo’s 2-3 Tandem Zone defense, as these teams are figuring out how to play together at this stage and are working on their own schemes and sets as opposed to heavily scouting opponents.
You may need to boil an extra pot of coffee for this game. Merrimack plays at a crawl and so does App State. The Mountaineers were 358th in adjusted tempo per Torvik last season and the Warriors were 347th. App State added 7-foot-2 Rrezon Elezaj from UConn and 7-foot freshman Bryan Chretien out of France, so there’s a chance that they could play even slower with those guys on the floor.
Given the paces for these two teams, the total is quite low, but Dustin Kerns has had good defensive teams recently, ranking 33rd, 13th, and 6th in eFG% defense over the last three seasons.
Pick: Under 135.5
Winthrop vs. Queens (-1.5, 165.5)
9 a.m. ET
If you get a nap in or close your eyes for a bit during the previous game, that might not be a bad idea, because this game will be the opposite. I’m not sure what kind of home crowd Winthrop will get for a 9 a.m. basketball game on a Monday, but Mark Prosser’s team doesn’t have to venture too far from campus. Neither does Queens, as the short trip down I-77 from Charlotte won’t take too much time at the hour they’ll be coming through.
Winthrop was fifth in adjusted tempo in 2024-25 and 46th last season. Expect them to run again this season, as they have for the better part of a decade, first under Pat Kelsey and now under Prosser. Queens was a top-70 team per Torvik in adjusted tempo, but they, too, were a top-10 team at pushing the pace back in 2023-24, so the Royals have it in them to run. Last year’s ASun champs were 16th in the nation in eFG% offense and 319th in eFG%, hence the very lofty total here.
Winthrop actually didn’t shoot the ball well, but their aggression at getting to the rim was a saving grace. They were ninth in the nation in FT Rate, though they were first in the nation each of the previous two seasons. Given the early-season officiating mandates and how refs are instructed to call the game, it could be a parade to the stripe for the Eagles.
Kudos to Grant Leonard, who was able to keep Nasir Mann (13.5 PPG), Jordan Watford (11.7 PPG), and Avantae Parker (11.2 PPG) around. Returning three double-digit scorers at a low-major in the current landscape is incredible. Conversely, Winthrop lost nearly all of last season’s big contributors, most notably, Logan Duncomb, who was 27th in the nation in Usage Rate per Torvik. Per his PORPATAGU! metric, Points Over Replacement Player Per Adjusted Game At That Usage, Duncomb was a top-100 offensive player in the nation last season. He was also 23rd in FTR among players with at least 40% of the team’s minutes played, taking 251 of them. I don’t think North Dakota transfer George Natsvlishvili, who shot 52% on 2s and just 56.9% on free throws, will replace that production.
Pick: Queens -1.5
Murray State (-8.5, 160.5) vs. Tennessee State
11:30 a.m. ET
After pulling an all-nighter, the staff of the Rock Hill Sports and Event Center gets an extended break, as the marathon shifts to Sioux Falls. I’m a tad surprised that these two teams wouldn’t be part of the Rock Hill schedule, but they’re heading to South Dakota instead. Tennessee State was one of the biggest surprises in the country last year under former Duke star Nolan Smith. The Tigers went dancing for the first time since 1994 and the 38-year-old Smith won 23 games, despite not starting the job until July when the transfer portal had dried up.
If Smith can get some better shot selection out of Ty-Laur Johnson, he could be a star in the OVC. Johnson averaged 15 PPG for San Diego, but only shot 48.5% on 2s and 29.5% on 3s. The other big piece, literally and figuratively, is Aaron Bradshaw, who was originally at Kentucky and then went to Ohio State and then Memphis, but now he’s with a different set of Tigers.
Second-year head coach Ryan Miller sped up the Racers last season, going from 313th in adjusted tempo in the final season under Steve Prohm to 12th in Miller’s first year. Keeping 6-foot-9 sophomore Roman Domon was huge, but Fredrick King went back to Creighton after shooting 65.3% on 2s, including 68.7% at the rim with 39 of the team’s 101 dunks. Valpo transfer Shon Tupuola will be a huge piece of the equation taking King’s minutes.
These two teams are very well-coached and have a lot of transfers, so what we see here may not be what we get the rest of the way. No play from me here, but a key early-season data point for both.
UTEP (-1.5, 148.5) vs. Northern Kentucky
2 p.m. ET
The Sioux Falls doubleheader wraps up quickly here with UTEP and Northern Kentucky. It’s a bit of a hike for these two teams from El Paso and Highland Heights for a mid-afternoon game, so we’ll see what kind of energy we get.
It is a big season for Miners head coach Joe Golding. He’s had four straight losing seasons in C-USA play and now the team has moved over to the Mountain West. Last year’s team was atrocious on offense and also fell well off the usual pace in TO% on defense. His Miners team was tops in 2023-24 in TO% and ninth in 2024-25. They were barely inside the top 100 last season. This season, he basically has a brand new team with transfers from Evansville, Weber State, William & Mary, and some JUCOs.
I think we could see UTEP drop in TO% again. Everybody on his roster is 6-foot-3 or bigger and he spoke in the Blue Ribbon College Yearbook about how the makeup of the team and that size could change how much they pressure. I don’t blame him for trying to find more offense. The team hasn’t finished higher than 216th in eFG% on his watch.
Darrin Horn has newbies from Niagara, East Texas A&M, La Salle, and SMU on this NKU roster. The main returnee is Ethan Elliott, who shot just 38.3% on 2s and 23.9% on 3s. Elliott wasn’t much of a shooter, but he was a top-15 player in assist-to-turnover ratio. Will Shortt is the former Purple Eagle and he shot better than 61% on 2s while also filling the stat sheet in other areas with nearly a block per game and over four rebounds per contest.
The Norse were one of the worst 3-point defenses in the nation last season. An unfamiliar shooting version and lengthier wings should help them here, plus UTEP hasn’t really shot the ball well more often than not.
Pick: Northern Kentucky +1.5
UAB vs. McNeese State (-3.5, 148.5)
5:30 p.m. ET
Back to Rock Hill for what will unquestionably be the most physical game of the day. In two seasons under Will Wade, the Cowboys were 58-11 and 36-2 in conference play. Credit to Bill Armstrong for keeping the standards high, as the Cowboys were 28-6 and 19-3 in conference games on his watch. He’s back for a second season and has a lot of newcomers. Keeping Larry Johnson, who led the team with 43 dunks as a freshman, was huge, along with Jerrell Colbert, who had 30 slams. Collectively, those two had 73 of McNeese’s 107, so those are two reliable parties to start the year.
The ceiling, though, for the Cowboys rests on power-conference transfers like Elijah Moore (Utah/Syracuse), Corey Chest (Ole Miss/LSU), Jaylon Dean-Vines (Vanderbilt), and 6-foot-11 Christian Nitu (Florida State). Those guys didn’t play much at those schools, but could prove to be beasts in the Southland Conference. Three straight NCAA Tournament appearances have led to a windfall of cash for the program, so they can go portal shopping at the big box stores instead of the dollar stores.
The matchup in this game is on the interior because neither team shoots a lot of 3s. In fact, both teams were bad at making them last season. UAB was actually one of the worst in the nation. Andy Kennedy did get one really good shooter in Justyn Fernandez (40.3% last year, 38.1% lifetime), but Deuce Jones II has been a really inefficient, but high-usage player at La Salle and St. Joe’s. After finishing 305th in the nation in eFG% offense last year, I’d expect improvement, but how much is the question.
McNeese shoved opponents into a 3-pointer on 46.8% of shot attempts last season, including a 46.7% 3P Rate from Top 100 teams in seven games. UAB doesn’t want to be that team. Only six teams had a higher shot share on Close Twos than the Blazers. I’m not sure that they can get inside in this game. Also, this strikes me as a bigger game for Armstrong and McNeese to get some respect on their name, whereas I think Kennedy just wants to know who he can trust. Last year’s team had an underwhelming 7-4 start with blowout losses to NC State and Middle Tennessee, plus an embarrassing home loss to Alabama State.
Pick: McNeese -3.5
Furman (TBD) vs. Bethune-Cookman
8 p.m. ET
The busy day of basketball ends for the Field of 68 Marathon, but there are still games going on in other places and some that won’t even have tipped yet. We’re back in Sioux Falls for this one, as the reigning SoCon champs face the reigning SWAC regular-season champs. Unfortunately, the Wildcats lost to Prairie View A&M in the conference tournament. Some guys left, some guys stayed, so it’s not a complete rebuild for Reggie Theus and he honestly probably has an even better team with some solid transfers.
Furman likely has a better team than last year’s version that went to the NCAA Tournament and was within five against UConn with five minutes to play in the first round. This one is a tough handicap because the Paladins live and die by the 3 and the Wildcats are the polar opposite. Not only does BC not shoot 3s, but they also run teams off the 3-point line as much as possible. In 12 non-conference games last season, the Wildcats had a 32.2% 3P Rate and a 35.1% 3P Rate against, ranking 322nd and 58th, respectively. For the season as a whole, under 30% of BC’s shots were beyond the arc, but they also had the 21st-lowest 3P Rate against.
On the flip side, Furman fired a 3 on 46.5% of shot attempts and opponents took one nearly 42% of the time. Big man Charles Johnston took 120 3s and shot just 29.2%, but he shot nearly 70% on 2s. At 6-foot-11, I’ll be curious to see if he plays more inside, especially with 7-footer Jordan Butler. I’ll also be interested to see if Cole Bowser, the 6-foot-6 brother of 6-foot-11 Cooper Bowser, morphs into a bigger piece. His brother transferred to Arkansas. He’s still at Furman.
The Paladins have a much bigger reputation, so I think this line might surprise some people, but I do think it’s a good early-season number. Like I said, these are two very, very different teams and that makes for a tough handicap.
