College basketball is about to take over Thanksgiving. Here’s what you need to know

Thanksgiving Week has always been the time of the year for over-indulgence, and while football is always going to be the sport most synonymous with the holiday of gluttony, college basketball has also stepped up significantly in recent years to do its part.

At just about every hour of every day this week, you’ll be able to find a live college basketball game somewhere on national television. It’s a beautiful stretch that only the early weeks of March can compete with.

Here are the storylines to keep an eye on this week as you’re overloaded with college hoops.

While Maui has always been the highest-profile early season event, in recent years, tournaments like the Battle 4 Atlantis and last year’s PK80 have at times been able to produce better fields and better early season moments.

That shouldn’t be the case in 2018 thanks to this bracket:

That’s three straight days of nationally televised games for top-ranked Duke, which as you may have heard, is all sorts of exciting this season. The Blue Devils could face No. 9 Auburn in the semifinals, and then No. 3 Gonzaga a night later in the championship game.

Duke has never lost at the Maui Invitational, winning the tournament in 1992, 1997, 2001, 2007 and 2011. Those five titles are the most of any program in the history of the event.

Half of the field in this year’s Maui Invitational — Duke, Arizona, Gonzaga and Illinois — has won the tournament at least once. It’s the first time at least four former champions have all been in the same field.

For the first time in the 34-year history of the Maui Invitational, Chaminade will not be serving as both the host and a participant in the tournament field. This means that staying up past midnight on Thanksgiving week Monday to watch the Division-II Silverswords battle whatever tournament favorite they were up against — a holiday staple for so many college hoops fans — will not be happening in 2018.

The good news? Chaminade isn’t gone from the Maui Invitational forever. They’ll now only be participating in the tournament in odd-numbered years.

In the NIT Season Tip-Off semifinals on Wednesday night, No. 2 Kansas will face while Marquette, while fifth-ranked Tennessee will take on Louisville. This sets the stage for a potential top five showdown Friday night at the Barclays Center between the Jayhawks and the Volunteers.

Ideally, college basketball fans could be treated to No. 1 vs. No. 3 on the day before Thanksgiving, and then No. 2 vs. No. 5 on the night after Turkey Day.

Not all Feast Week tournaments are ending before Thanksgiving or skipping over Thursday.

The semifinals of the Las Vegas Invitational will be going down on Thanksgiving, with North Carolina taking on Texas and UCLA facing Michigan State. The latter of those two matchups figures to be particularly compelling.

The winners and losers will square off on Friday inside Orleans Arena. The two semifinal games can be seen on Fox Sports 1, while the championship and third-place games will both be on Fox.

Outside of the Duke show, there has been no bigger story from college basketball’s opening two weeks than the struggles of reigning national champion Villanova. The Wildcats were hammered at home by 27 against Michigan in a rematch of last year’s national title game on Nov. 14, and were then stunned in overtime three days later by visiting Furman.

Next up for Nova is the Advocare Invitational in Orlando where they’ll look to get right against an 8-team field that also features Canisius (the Wildcats’ first round opponent), Memphis, Oklahoma State, Charleston, No. 22 LSU, UAB and No. 14 Florida State.

The tournament quarterfinals will be played on Thursday, the semifinals on Friday, and the championship game will go down on Sunday.

It’s still one of the biggest events of the week, but the 2018 Battle 4 Atlantis field pales in comparison to its largest competitor, the Maui Invitational.

No. 4 Virginia headlines a field that also includes Florida, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, Stanford, Dayton, Butler and Middle Tennessee. A solid group of programs in most years, but one that doesn’t move the needle significantly in 2018.

Here’s the bracket for the event, which begins on Wednesday:

California has not been an especially sound defensive team so far in the Wyking Jones era, which might make Monday night’s Legends Classic semifinal against St. John’s worth your time. Shamorie Ponds is arguably the best pure scorer in college basketball, but he has yet to fully go off in 2018-19. Don’t be surprised if that happens against the Bears.

The winner of Cal-St. John’s will face the winner of VCU-Temple for the championship on Tuesday. All games will be played at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn and will be televised by one of the ESPN family of networks.

The Hall of Fame Classic from the Sprint Center in Kansas City has brought us some solid moments in recent years. It hopes to deliver again with a four-team field of Nebraska, Missouri State, Texas Tech and USC. Both the Cornhuskers and Trojans have legitimate NCAA tournament aspirations, and would provide a highly intriguing title game if they were to win on Monday meet on Tuesday night. That final will be played at 9:30 p.m. ET on ESPN2.