If you strongly prefer the College Hoops genre, this is a must have. If you simply want a basketball game maybe not.
I really wanted to like this game and for the most part I do but there is something about it that just seems a bit 'off'. Perhaps it's the camera angle; it's a bit further back than the NBA games and makes the action feel a bit less immersive. The floors and arenas look fine and the animations are good too. If you pay attention to the AI all the players seem to be acting in a reasonable fashion on both offense and defense. (Note: I have applied the first patch, 1.02 I believe. Before this the AI wasn't as sharp. An example was that loose balls would roll around until they went out of bounds, this is no longer the case). I've read some complaints that the player models are too skinny but having attended division one games in person the guys don't look as big as they do on TV so this is correctly realistic.
You can play a franchise/season or go directly into a number of tournaments including the Big Dance. This is a positive; I hate games that force you to sim a long season before you can get to the playoffs (NHL09 developers please take note).
There are a responsive set of sliders so between those and the various difficulty levels you can set things up for the appropriate level of challenge.
The tempo feature is superficial at best, just set your team up as 'balanced' and you can play the game any way you want w/o penalty. You will tire of hearing the announcers referring to tempo incessantly.
Another negative is that you cannot turn injuries off completely (there is low/medium/high). This is the only sports game that I own where this is the case. This may be more realistic but this is a part of the sport I choose to ignore when gaming.
The play running system works reasonably well on both offense and defense.
All in all it's a good depiction of NCAA B-ball. But there is something about it that makes it feel like it's on Playstation 2.5. Maybe it's the camera angle combined with the fact that all the players' long, baggy shorts look like they have way too much starch in them.