Season gets under way with a military flair

The college basketball season gets under way tonight with a game at a Europe military base, two more aboard Navy ships and another featuring a reshaped national champion playing in a brand new building.

No. 14 Michigan State plays Connecticut, in its first game since the retirement of coach Jim Calhoun, at Ramstein Air Base in Kaiserslautern, Germany. It's the first game between Division I teams held in Europe.

Then it's on to the decks for No. 4 Ohio State against Marquette on the USS Yorktown in Charleston, S.C., and Georgetown facing No. 10 Florida on the USS Bataan in Jacksonville, Fla.

No. 3 Kentucky, the defending national champion with a heralded freshman class, plays Maryland in the first college doubleheader at the new Barclays Center in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Also, one of the sport's shrines reopens. Pauley Pavilion, boosted by a $132 million renovation, will be the site when No. 13 UCLA hosts Indiana State, the alma mater of John Wooden.

A statue of Wooden stands outside the north entrance and the corridor on the east side of the 47-year-old arena has been named Wooden Way. Three large cabinets are filled with mementos of the Wooden era that includes 10 NCAA championships - seven in a row - during his 27 years in Westwood.

The big opening weekend - 21 teams from the preseason Top 25 will have played by Sunday night - will be followed by a month full of early season tournaments. Several special matchups before Christmas will dot the 2012-13 schedule leading into the start of conference play.

There will be a third game played on a ship this weekend when No. 9 Syracuse faces No. 20 San Diego State on the USS Midway in San Diego on Sunday. The game will be the first telecast of more than 100 for MSG Network.

ESPN will continue its coverage of almost 1,500 games with its annual 24-hour college basketball marathon on Tuesday.

Those 12 games, including a 6 a.m. start for Stony Brook at Rider, an 8 a.m. tip for Northern Illinois at Valparaiso and a 10 a.m. start for Harvard at Massachusetts, are part of the 54 the network will show during a six-day stretch.

Early matchups between ranked teams include Michigan State against No. 7 Kansas and then No. 8 Duke facing Kentucky in the doubleheader in Atlanta that caps the 24-hour marathon; No. 23 Wisconsin at No. 10 Florida; and the Battle 4 Atlantis that involves No. 2 Louisville, Duke, No. 15 Missouri and No. 17 Memphis.

Four months of conference, nonconference and in-season tournament games all point to Selection Sunday on March 17. The NCAA tournament ends three weeks later with the Final Four in Atlanta’s Georgia Dome.

Kentucky’s Calipari, players help storm victims: Kentucky basketball coach John Calipari is bringing a lot more than the third-ranked Wildcats and their impressive freshman class to the New York area.

The man who led the Wildcats to the national championship last season and his four heralded rookies will play Maryland tonight in the first college doubleheader played in the new Barclays Center in Brooklyn.

Before the game, Calipari will present a check for almost $1 million to help in relief efforts for those affected by Superstorm Sandy. The money was raised in two telethons involving the Wildcats, who answered phones and took pledges to help people in the New York-New Jersey area.

Calipari said he has stayed in touch with friends from the area since the storm hit and the money raised will be used to help people affected the most by its damaging impact.

In 2010, Calipari used telethons to raise more than $1 million for the victims of the earthquake in Haiti.

Calipari said it helps that he has 400,000 “very close friends” on Facebook.

Minus Majerus, Saint Louis has high expectations: Saint Louis has four starters back from a team that went 26-8, ended a 12-year NCAA tournament drought and is picked to finish second in the Atlantic 10.

There’s one major void that’ll be hard to fill.

The Billikens begin their bid for follow-up success Friday night in the opener against South Carolina-Upstate without the man who rebuilt the program. Interim coach Jim Crews will be guiding them instead of Rick Majerus, who took a leave of absence in August for health reasons and has not been in contact with the program.

“Were we surprised? Absolutely,” Crews said Thursday. “Were we shocked? I’m not sure anyone was shocked, because Rick has had health problems for a long time and he’s been very open about it.

“You connect the dots sometimes.”

Crews’ biggest early challenge will be filling in for his top returning starter and center. Point guard Kwamain Mitchell is out until probably January with a broken left foot, and starting center Cory Remekun is expected to miss a few weeks with a knee strain sustained in practice on Wednesday.

Mitchell averaged 12 points and led the team in assists and steals.

The 58-year-old Crews played on the undefeated Indiana national championship team in 1976 and has 24 years of head coaching experience at Evansville and Army. He had done some TV work since getting fired at West Point in 2009, and joined Majerus’ staff last year thinking it would be a one-year commitment.

No. 10 Florida, Georgetown embrace unique opener: One of the first things Florida coach Billy Donovan did upon boarding the USS Bataan was ask about touring the gun turret.

Forget the wind, the open-air backdrop, the chilly temperatures and potential court condensation.

This was bigger than basketball, and Donovan knew it.

“To be on this ship, sharing a moment like this, means more than I can ever express,” Donovan said.

No. 10 Florida and Georgetown were thrilled to be part of the once-in-a-lifetime event — tonight’s season opener on the deck of an ambitious assault ship in Jacksonville, Fla.

Both teams toured the 844-foot Bataan on Thursday, posing for pictures and talking to everyone wearing a uniform and taking part in the Navy-Marine Corps Classic. Donovan even invited three former Navy basketball players assigned to the Bataan to help run shoot-around.

Georgetown coach John Thompson III was equally taken back.

“For these kids to get the opportunity to come here and meet the sailors and the Marines that are on the Bataan,” said Thompson, “most of them, if not all of them, would never get this opportunity. Georgetown is a learning institute; that’s part of our job.”