Phil Pressey, Cody Zeller and Doug McDermott (Getty Images)

College basketball season tips off Friday with 14 members of the AP Preseason Top 25 in action. To celebrate the end of the offseason, here are 64 65 ... wait ... 68 fearless predictions for the new season.

1. A team from outside the six power conferences will make the Final Four. Five of those teams are ranked in the AP Preseason Top 25, with VCU, Butler, Saint Louis and a handful of others lurking on the fringes.

2. Whichever No. 5 or 6 seed draws Davidson in the round of 64 of the NCAA tournament will be a popular upset pick. The Wildcats have their best chance to make a deep run since Stephen Curry graduated with five starters back from last year's 25-win team.

3. Kentucky's season will more closely resemble its turbulent 2010-11 campaign than last year's dominant title run. The youthful Wildcats will sustain some early losses — especially on the road — but they'll improve over conference play and emerge as a Final Four threat come March.

4. Coach who needs to make the NCAA tournament to keep his job: Oklahoma State's Travis Ford. With promising freshman Marcus Smart joining Le'Bryan Nash, the Cowboys need to bounce back from last year's 15-18 flop.

5. Coach who could parlay an NCAA tournament bid into a better job: Steve Masiello, Manhattan. The ex-Louisville assistant inherited a 6-25 team and turned the Jaspers into instant contenders in the MAAC last season.

6. You'll spend 15 minutes between Selection Sunday and the start of NCAA tournament play desperately trying to find Tru-TV on your cable system. Three weeks later, you'll forget the channel exists again for another 11 1/2 months.

Kentucky coach John Calipari at Wednesday night's telethon (Kentucky Wildcats TV)

Any neutral New York fans who attend Friday night's matchup between Kentucky and Maryland in Brooklyn now have good reason to root for the Wildcats.

That's because Kentucky coach John Calipari will present a check for almost $1 million to help in relief efforts for victims of Superstorm Sandy. The Wildcats helped raise the money by answering phones and taking pledges during two telethons Wednesday night aimed at helping people in the New York-New Jersey area.

Not many coaches would halt game preparations 48 hours before their season opener to spearhead relief efforts for people hundreds of miles away, but Calipari has seldom missed a chance to use his platform as Kentucky coach for charitable purposes.

In 2010, Calipari donated $1 million to an organization benefiting underprivileged kids in Memphis and organized a telethon to raise more than $1 million for the victims of the earthquake in Haiti. And the last two years, he has organized alumni games at Rupp Arena to benefit a handful of charities.

"When you're the head coach at Kentucky, you have an ability to move people throughout the state and fans throughout the country that are the Big Blue Nation," Calipari told Kentucky Wildcats TV on Wednesday night. "Rallying them and keeping them involved and active is part of what your job is."

Kentucky isn't the only college team raising money for victims of Sandy. Closer to home, Hofstra will provide free tickets to its men's basketball home opener next Friday to anyone who brings in items to help the relief efforts.

Nerlens Noel and Kentucky's other top freshmen debut against Maryland Friday (US Presswire)

Unlike most years when college basketball begins with a trickle of mediocre games leading into the 24-hour marathon, this season's opening weekend actually has some intrigue and panache.

Traditional powers UConn and Michigan State meet on a U.S. air base in Germany. Three other top games will be staged on current or former Naval ships. And defending national champion Kentucky will debut its newcomers and begin its title defense in a marquee clash with improving Maryland.

Here's a closer look at the top games from college basketball's opening weekend and what storylines to watch:

1. Will Kentucky's new batch of highly touted freshmen pass their first test?

Any notion that Kentucky's season-opening matchup with Maryland (Friday, 8:30 p.m. EST) will merely be the appetizer for Tuesday night's main course against Duke ended Wednesday when Dez Wells became eligible for the Terps. Now Maryland is Top 25 good thanks to steady point guard Pe'Shon Howard, promising sophomores Wells and Nick Faust at wing and potential NBA draft pick Alex Len in the paint. The key for Kentucky may be how effective big men Nerlens Noel and Willie Cauley Stein are defensively. If they can intimidate the Maryland guards from going to the rim and turn the Terps into a perimeter shooting team, that will be to their advantage against an opponent that lost its only two consistent shooters from last year.

NCAA logo (Getty Images)Even though voters in Colorado and Washington approved a constitutional amendment Tuesday legalizing recreational marijuana use, college athletes in those states probably should refrain from lighting up a joint anytime soon.

Marijuana use remains a violation of the NCAA's substance abuse policies, according to an NCAA statement released to Yahoo! Sports on Wednesday afternoon.

"The legalizing of marijuana in Colorado and Washington does not impact the NCAA drug testing rules," the statement said. "The NCAA banned drug and testing policies are not tied to whether a substance is legal for general population use, but rather whether the substance is considered a threat to student-athlete health and safety or the integrity of the game."

The NCAA's stance is similar to the ones taken earlier Wednesday by the nation's major professional sports leagues. Spokesmen from the NFL and NBA told USA Today that marijuana remains prohibited under their respective anti-drug rules for all players regardless of the state laws.

It's no surprise to see the NCAA follow suit since it has banned other legal supplements and pharmaceutical drugs in the past. Using "Muscle Milk," for example, is prohibited under NCAA rules because it contains a banned muscle-building substance.

Yahoo! Sports contacted four Division I colleges in Washington and Colorado on Wednesday to ask how their respective athletic department policies would be impacted by the legalization of recreational marijuana in their state.

Dez Wells (Getty Images)Thanks to a surprising decision by the NCAA two days before the start of the new college basketball season, the ACC may have a program capable of challenging the Tobacco Road trio atop the conference this year.

Maryland announced Wednesday the NCAA has approved the waiver appeal for Dez Wells, making the highly touted Xavier transfer eligible this season. Wells left Xavier in August after being expelled amid sexual assault allegations later deemed unworthy of prosecution by a grand jury.

"At the end of the day, the NCAA made the right decision," Maryland coach Mark Turgeon said in a statement. "Our staff did an incredible job in putting this NCAA waiver appeal together on Dez's behalf. Dez has been a welcomed addition, a great teammate, and has made a seamless transition in getting acclimated to our campus. This has been a long process for him and his family, and we're grateful he can put it behind him."

The immediate addition of Wells accelerates Maryland's rebuilding process under Turgeon. Instead of a fringe NCAA tournament contender hoping to finish in the upper half of the ACC, the Terrapins now appear to have the firepower to become the most worthy challenger to league title favorites North Carolina, North Carolina State and Duke.

Wells, a 6-5 sophomore, started 32 games as a freshman at Xavier last year and averaged 9.8 points and 4.9 rebounds on a veteran team, earning Atlantic 10 freshman of the year honors. He would have been the obvious choice to assume the role of go-to scorer for the Musketeers next season after the departure of Mark Lyons, Tu Holloway and Kenny Frease.

Maryland's backcourt will have an enviable amount of talent this season with Pe'Shon Howard returning from injury at point guard and Wells and promising sophomore Nick Faust at wing. Throw in potential star Alex Len at center and a strong, frontcourt-heavy freshman class, and the Terps have all the pieces necessary to end a two-year NCAA tournament drought and return to national relevancy.

Tom Crean (Getty Images)

Indiana freshmen Peter Jurkin and Hanner Mosquera-Perea each received nine-game suspensions Tuesday evening because they accepted thousands of dollars in gifts from a Hoosiers alum considered by the NCAA to be a university booster.

Perea and Jurkin (Indiana athletics)Sounds straightforward enough, right? Well, sure, until you scratch below the surface.

The "booster" is a Bloomington-based youth basketball coach named Mark Adams, who is the Venezuelan-born Perea's legal guardian and the former AAU coach of both players with Indiana Elite.

The gifts included plane tickets, meals and housing for both players and a laptop, phone and clothing for Perea, all legal under NCAA rules were Adams not classified as a booster.

And the only reason the NCAA has labeled Adams to be a booster is a result of $185 in donations he made to Indiana's Varsity Club between 1986 and 1992 — long before he knew of Jurkin's and Perea's existence or even became a basketball coach.

By the letter of the NCAA rules, perhaps Adams is indeed an Indiana booster for life as a result of the $30 per year he gave the school 20-something years ago. By any modicum of common sense, however, punishing two kids for small-change payments that happened before they were born is too harsh at best and illogical and flat-out wrong at worst.

Steve Fisher and Jim Boeheim (AP)

Rather than move Friday's season opener between San Diego State and Syracuse indoors as a result of wind and rain expected that evening, officials from both schools apparently have come up with a more creative solution.

They'll still play the game on the flight deck of the USS Midway, but they'll wait until the poor weather passes to do it.

According to the Syracuse Post-Standard, Syracuse and San Diego State will announce Tuesday evening that the Battle on the Midway will be moved to Sunday at 4 p.m. ET. A San Diego State spokesman confirmed the report Tuesday afternoon.

[Related: College hoop's 25 most intriguing players for the 2012-13 season]

The decision to push the game back to Sunday rather than play it Friday in the Valley View Casino Center is a sign both schools recognize the location of the matchup is much more germane to its appeal than the date.

As last year's inaugural aircraft carrier game between Michigan State and North Carolina showed, there are few more aesthetically stunning locations for basketball than the deck of an aircraft carrier overlooking the San Diego skyline. By contrast, there are few more unappealing NBA-sized arenas than the 46-year-old Valley View Casino Arena, which once housed the San Diego Clippers from 1978-84.

The matchup between San Diego State and Syracuse may be the best of this weekend's four games being played on military bases or Naval ships.

Todd Mayo (Getty Images)Had Todd Mayo been able to play for Marquette at the start of the season, the sophomore shooting guard likely would have assumed a far greater role as a result of the graduation of Darius Johnson-Odom.

Instead, Mayo will be academically ineligible until at least the end of the fall semester, leaving the Golden Eagles short-handed in the backcourt.

Marquette sent out a release Monday night that said Mayo will not be able to practice or play with the team because he has been unable to meet the NCAA's minimum academic standards. Mayo, the younger brother of former USC and current Dallas Mavericks guard O.J. Mayo, likely will be able to apply for reinstatement in time for conference play at the start of the spring semester.

"Todd understands success in our program requires a sincere commitment to excellence on and off the floor," Marquette coach Buzz Williams said in the release. "I'm extremely disappointed he's put himself in this position, but he has the full support of our program as he works to improve."

Mayo's inability to remain academically eligible is merely the latest incident in what has been a turbulent two seasons at Marquette thus far.

One of college basketball's better scorers off the bench last season during nonleague play, Mayo all but disappeared once the conference season began. Worse yet, he was suspended twice, once for a game against West Virginia last season and then again in the summer for violating team rules.