True story: Conference play is here.

It's kind of funny, actually, the way the modern start to the high-major, power-conference season sneaks up in the final few days of the calendar year. Things always go relatively quiet in late December. Teams slip away for final exams. Christmas -- save for the Diamond Head Classic, which may or may not have peaked that time Mississippi State legends Renardo Sidney and Elgin Bailey got into a fight, with each other, in the Stan Sheriff Center stands -- offers a genuine break. Come back in January, when things got real.

Things get real a little earlier now. Ask Indiana, which lost its Big Ten home opener to Nebraska on Wednesday night.

Or, more notable, ask No. 1 Villanova, which between now and Wednesday will face two of the three biggest roadblocks in its 18-game, nine-week path to yet another Big East regular-season crown.

Three obvious Big East challengers stepped forward in November and December: No. 10 Creighton, No. 13 Butler and No. 17 Xavier. Thanks to the league's elegantly balanced 10-team schedule, Villanova faces each of those teams once at home and once each on the road. The Bluejays, Bulldogs and Musketeers account for three of the Wildcats' first five league fixtures (with still-intriguing, uptempo Marquette in the mix, too). The first came Wednesday night, when Villanova narrowly escaped a disastrous home loss to DePaul in the closing seconds, a game that may have highlighted to Jay Wright's players that they can't afford a post-Christmas ease-in. They have to hit the ground sprinting.

The Creighton-Butler-Xavier deluge would be bad enough on its own, but the next five days are especially brutal. First is Saturday's trip to Omaha -- the farthest destination on the Big East map, for what that's worth -- to play an unbeaten, top-10 Bluejays team that scored 1.20 points per possession, averaged the highest 3-point percentage in college basketball (44.6 percent) through its first 13 games, and more than handled the last top-10 team (No. 9 Wisconsin, on Nov. 15) that visited the CenturyLink Center. The last time a Creighton team scored like this, Doug McDermott was Dougie McBuckets-ing his way toward the Wooden Award. These Bluejays, led senior guard Maurice Watson and reborn K-State transfer Marcus Foster, look every bit as good -- at least thus far.

The current season's Wooden Award favorite, Josh Hart, leads a Villanova team whose offense has been even more efficient than the one in the previous paragraph, and one particularly well-matched to deal with the Bluejays' stylistic preferences. Creighton's average possession length on the offensive end is 13.8 seconds, sixth fastest in the country, per KenPom.com, while its average defensive possession lasts 18.4 -- the 11th slowest in all of Division I. The Bluejays push the pace, get good shots, and then eschew offensive rebounds by choice, opting to force opposing teams to work long stretches for their own looks on the opposite end.

Villanova, meanwhile, is happy to play deliberately on both ends of the floor, and is expert at getting typically uptempo teams to slow things down. That -- alongside Hart's insane 37-point, 14-shot night -- is how it eventually overcame Notre Dame in New Jersey on Dec. 10. Meanwhile, the Wildcats' lasting formula in recent years under Wright -- ensuring that they take more 3s than their opponents -- remains very much intact this season. (The Wildcats' ratio of 3s to field goal attempts is 45.3; their opponents' is 37.9.)

This is an effective formula (duh) against almost any opponent, but it's particularly well-suited to push back against Creighton's particular strengths. Which is to say: Saturday's game is entirely winnable, because Villanova is that good. That doesn't mean it isn't also a brutal top-10 road trip to a crazy environment, and one the Wildcats will have to take on with the specter of yet another -- Wednesday night at Hinkle Fieldhouse -- just a few days away.

You never know what conference play will bring. If DePaul can (almost) beat the defending national champions in said champions' own gym, then anything can happen. The Wildcats may sweep the toughest prospective challenges on their calendar and lose a few random upsets down the line. Who knows?

Still, if the Creighton-Butler-Xavier trio is indeed going to knock Villanova back to the pack in Big East play this season, an informal team effort may be required. Conference play has only just begun, and already the biggest opportunities to do so -- and the Wildcats' toughest week of the entire season -- already have arrived.

Villanova-Creighton may wind up the better or even more entertaining game, but no matter the result, impressions of both teams won't be altered much in the aftermath. Indiana, though? The Hoosiers have beaten Kansas on a neutral floor and North Carolina (pretty handily) at home ... but also lost to Fort Wayne and, most recently, to Nebraska, at Assembly Hall, where the Hoosiers allowed 87 points on one end and coughed up 19 turnovers on the other, all in 72 possessions. Not good. Analysis! More analysis? Louisville may be one of a handful of teams in the country that can reliably keep Indiana from scoring even when the Hoosiers aren't turning the ball over. However the matchups shake out, an IU loss could confirm an impression of a talented team with some significant weaknesses to shore up; a win would be sort of baffling and also totally reasonable, all at the same time.

As my colleague John Gasaway wrote Thursday, it remains entirely possible that, for all the sturm and drang surrounding Grayson Allen's suspension, Duke might not be all that much worse off without him. Such is the nature of the Blue Devils' talent -- wherein Frank Jackson can slot alongside Wooden Award contender and pure-shooting robot Luke Kennard and off-guard Matt Jones, with Amile Jefferson and a rotating collection of bigs -- and not see a significant decline in offensive output. Coach K's lineup configuration options are enviable, to say the least. Still, Saturday's trip to Blacksburg isn't interesting solely because it's the first post-suspension game on Duke's calendar, but because, depending on how long that suspension lasts, a matchup with a pesky, balanced and sneakily interesting Virginia Tech team may wind up the most difficult of them all.