With 27 days left until BYU’s first game of the season, is anyone else feeling the need for some kind of BYU basketball advent calendar? Like the one you hang up during December before Christmas, but with blue all over it. It can’t just be me.

If you’re anything like us, you’re probably hungry for anything you can get on the Cougars before the season starts. It definitely helps when we see practice highlights like these (keep it coming, please).

With so much change during the offseason, preseason rankings are to be taken with a grain of salt, of course. That said, it’s always interesting to see where teams stack up heading into the season.

College basketball guru Evan Miyakawa is well-known for his basketball analytics page, where he posts all kinds of stats for the avid fan, from player projections to lineup metrics to game predictions. His algorithm has BYU at #28:

If you take a look at BYU’s advanced metrics, you’ll find other cool stuff, like the Cougars’ best two-man lineup based on last season’s stats (Knell and Fouss).

Bart Torvik, another college hoops analyst, has BYU hoops at #27.

Last but not least, Ken Pomeroy’s famous rankings (kenpom.com) are some of the most highly regarded during the season. This month he released a preseason poll where 719 voters made selections on over 32,000 matchups. The results of those votes have BYU at #35.

In case you missed it, you can catch some early season BYU basketball action at home in an exhibition game vs. Colorado Christian on October 30th at 7pm MT. The Cougars’ first regular season game will also be at home on November 5th at 7pm MT against Central Arkansas.