Looking for a storyline for the 2005-06 college basketball season? Here’s a good place to start:

For the first time since the 1972-73 season, both North Carolina and Kansas University failed to make the Associated Press preseason top 25. For the first time since 1962-63, West Virginia did.

The landscape of college basketball is changing, with perennial powers slumping, emerging programs flourishing and conferences realigning dramatically.

Here are some nuggets to follow from now until March:

Feeling blue: Not only did North Carolina fail to get ranked in the preseason, the Tar Heels are in danger of failing to make the NCAA Tournament after winning the national championship last season. UNC lost its top seven scorers from last season, including four first-round draft picks, and will be depending on a group of wholly unproven players. The Tar Heels do bring in one of the nation’s top recruiting classes.

The bigger east: If the Big East wasn’t the best conference in the country last season, it was second to the ACC. Now with a new look, the Big East should be the deepest and strongest league in the land.

The Big East retained powers such as Connecticut, Syracuse and Villanova but also expanded to 16 teams, adding such programs as Louisville and Cincinnati. The conference had five teams ranked in the preseason top 25 and three others that received votes.

The little conference that could: On the flip side of the Big East is Conference USA, which lost nine teams and added six. Among the teams it lost: Louisville, Cincinnati, Charlotte, DePaul and Marquette. The programs it added: Central Florida, Marshall, Rice, SMU, Tulsa and UTEP. Not exactly a trade-off that will help its conference RPI.

Memphis should dominate this conference, possibly going undefeated. The Tigers play a grueling nonconference schedule, including games against Texas, Gonzaga, Cincinnati and Wisconsin-Milwaukee. They figure to get tested much more in November and December than during their conference season.

Shot in the arms: Expect two top-10 teams to get a lot better around the middle of December.

Connecticut and Arizona each will get a key player back Dec. 17. Huskies starting point guard Marcus Williams has been suspended after being arrested on charges of trying to sell stolen laptops. Arizona’s Jawann McClellan was ruled academically ineligible after dropping a summer-school class when his father died suddenly of a heart attack.

Williams emerged as one of the top point guards in the country last season, ranking third in the nation in assists (7.8 apg). The Wildcats were depending on McClellan to take the place of Salim Stoudamire, who was a second-round draft pick of the Atlanta Hawks in June.