While we all patiently wait a month-and-a-half or so for the start of the 2011-12 college basketball season, I've got a little something coming on the blog that will hopefully get us primed for the year.

Thursday will be the debut of ‘The Sweet 16,’ an occasional series that will profile the – you guessed it – 16 best returning Division I college hoops players from the Baltimore area. The selections were made based on prior success and projections for this coming season.

The series isn’t really a ranking, per se, of the top 16 players from the area. After the 16th player has been featured, I’ll set up a bracket-style tournament with polls on the blog for everyone to vote on who they think is Baltimore’s top college hoops player.

There were some really tough omissions -- namely Texas A&M’s Naji Hibbert (Baltimore native, DeMatha graduate) and Morgan State’s Aric Brooks (St. Frances). (It's also entirely possible that I forgot someone worthy. With more than 65 DI players from here, it's hard to keep track of everyone). Akron’s Chauncey Gilliam (Columbia native) also would have been under consideration had he not sat out last season as a transfer from UMBC. He’ll have a chance to make the cut next year, along with this year’s freshmen and any JUCO transfers.

We’ll get things started Thursday with the first of three local guys playing for an in-state school.