As the thermometers drop on campuses nationwide, students start to ‘hibernate’. BBQs are abandoned, windows are locked, and Football Saturdays are replaced with Wednesday Night Basketball. That’s right. It’s once again time of year for your classmates to take to the courts for one of college’s time honored traditions.

While crowds assemble down the street and you desperately try to land a student voucher for one of the rivalry games, EA Sports has your back with some of the most realistic games on the market. NCAA Basketball 09 has taken authenticity and given it a healthy helping of crack.

Not only are the graphics like nothing you’ve seen before and have the team’s coaches roaming sidelines hungry for blood for the first time in NCAA Basketball history, but you can get your hands on your favorite coach’s playbook. Every Division I team is programmed with true-to-life styles of play. So if you’re Tennessee, you’ll be running a 1-2-1-1 full court press just like Bruce Pearl. Or if the Big 10 is your turf, you can play Bo Ryan’s patented-Wisconsin Swing Offense.

The player stats are also up-to-date as EA partnered with the guys at Blue Ribbon to give your roster accurate player ratings according to their real life counterparts.

The game also gives real-time locker room feedback on how you’re playing and what steps you need to take to improve your game. So if your style of play isn’t helping put points on the board, the coaching staff responds with new hints to help you regain the tempo on the court and come out with a comeback ‘W’.

In addition to the coaching staff, ESPN personalities Dick Vitale and Brad Nessler are on the mics calling the action and blogosphere bombshell Erin Andrews is reporting from the sidelines. Unfortunately for you, no 3D EA avatar this season, but the ESPN crew adds additional realism to the experience.

Apart from game play, the graphics need to be noted in terms of their authenticity. The nice people over at EA have seemed to out-do themselves claiming they want to “let you know how it feels to play that UNC-Duke rivalry”. The authentic graphics throw you head first onto the goal line and multiple camera angles get you right into the heat of the action like never before.

So if you don’t like how last night’s game went, don’t hesitate to match the two teams up and try and rewrite your school’s name in this year’s Final Four.

For more on the game, check out EA’s homepage