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Is the Battle 4 Atlantis now the premier early season tournament?

Iowa Villanova Basketball

AP

AP

On Tuesday morning, the brackets for each of the early season tournament fields were announced.

And while most of the fields look like they can produce one or two really good-to-great matchups if things break the right way, the Battle 4 Atlantis will once again produce must-see games that could end up having an impact on the way seeding breaks down in the NCAA tournament.

Really.

Let’s start with the obvious: the talent that will be in Atlantis is unparalleled. Wisconsin might be the best team in the country not named Kentucky. North Carolina and Florida could both end up being preseason top ten teams. Oklahoma has the talent to be a top 15 team this season. UCLA might be the second best team in the Pac-12, and Georgetown is good enough to at least contend for a spot in the NCAA tournament this year.

Things will really kick up a notch in the semifinals -- where, if chalk holds, Wisconsin will square off with Florida in a battle of two teams coming off of a Final Four berth while North Carolina will take on Oklahoma in a game that should be played in the 80s -- but that would ignore some of the tasty first round matchups. UCLA-Oklahoma will be the best first round game in all of the early season events, while Florida-Georgetown and UNC-Butler will be quite entertaining in their own right.

This is the just the fourth season that the event has been in existence, but it is fair to wonder whether or not this has become the premier early season tournament. In 2011, the first season that it was held, the Battle 4 Atlantis featured preseason title favorite UConn as well as upstart Harvard and a Florida State team that earned a three-seed in the NCAA tournament. In 2012, the event had three preseason top five teams to headline what was one of the strongest tournament fields I can ever remember. Last season featured three teams that reached the top ten in Kansas, Villanova and Iowa as well as Xavier and Tennessee, who made the Sweet 16.

Nothing will match the hype that comes with playing the Champions Classic, and the Maui Invitational is always going to hold sentimental value given the locale, the popularity of the event and the way it’s structured -- hosted by Chaminade is what amounts to a glorified high school gym.

But the Battle 4 Atlantis has been the better event since it’s inception.

Follow @robdauster