Finally, at long last, the wait was over. The 2022-23 college basketball season finally tipped off last Monday, and you couldn’t ask for a better inaugural host than Baylor. The Bears are two years removed from a national championship, were ranked No. 5 in the preseason AP Top 25, and they have one of the most exciting freshmen in the country in 6-foot-4 guard Keyonte George. It was noon on the East Coast when the game — and the season — tipped off.
Only one problem. Baylor’s opponent was Mississippi Valley State. The Bears raced out to a 13-2 lead, owned a 30-point advantage at halftime, and breezed to a 117-53 victory. Welcome back, college hoops.
The day did not get much more interesting from there. The indispensable website KenPom.com assigns each game a “thrill rating” before tipoff, and out of the more than 150 that were played on Opening Day, the most “thrilling,” according to Ken, was … wait for it … Memphis at Vanderbilt. There was not a single game all day pitting two top-25 teams against each other. In fact, there wasn’t a single game all week between ranked teams. The only truly marquee matchup took place between Gonzaga and Michigan State on Friday night at the Armed Forces Classic aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. It was a terrific game in a compelling setting, but it was not enough to give an entire sport the liftoff it deserved.
Such, alas, was the story of the first week. College basketball fans set their collective alarms for the start of the season. Then all the coaches rolled over and hit the snooze button. Wake me when it’s next week, OK?
And yes, this week will be much, much better. The Champions Classic, a rotating doubleheader between Duke, Kansas, Kentucky and Michigan State, will tip off Tuesday night in Indianapolis. Gonzaga plays at No. 12 Texas Wednesday night. The Gavitt Games, which is a series between the Big East and Big Ten, will be played Monday through Friday and culminate with a game between Michigan State and Villanova. Baylor, Illinois, UCLA and Virginia will square off this weekend in Las Vegas for a four-team tournament. The capper comes Sunday, when Gonzaga plays Kentucky in Spokane. That’s a fantastic slate, but given how hard it is for college basketball to attract eyeballs during football season, there’s no reason the entire sport should wait so long before giving us something worth watching.
When I spoke to Baylor coach Scott Drew about this on Saturday, he recognized the problem that he and his peers helped create, and he promised things would be different moving forward. “A lot of us have noticed that there weren’t a lot of good games, and the media has done a good job of making people aware of that,” he said. “Now that the Champions Classic has moved, there’s availability to have some marquee games those first couple of days. I think in the next couple of years you’re going to see that happen.”
Indeed, a big reason why Opening Day was such a dud was because ESPN decided to push its gilded event back a week. Many people assumed the move was prompted by Election Day, but the main reason was to allow for more build-up and promotion. The Champions Classic will continue to take place during the second week of the season for the duration of the current contract, which goes through 2025. That leaves a gaping hole in the calendar, and plenty of opportunity for enterprising coaches and marketers who want to fill it.
We don’t need a ton of great games during the first week, just enough to get everyone amped for the season. When the NBA tipped off last month, there were only two games on the schedule the first night — Philadelphia at Boston, and the Lakers at Golden State. The idea of having a formal Opening Day in college basketball has long been discussed, but in the end, this is not something that can be legislated. It’s up to the top coaches to make it a priority, even if it means taking an extra lump earlier than they want. “My message to coaches would be that having notable and competitive games within the first two or three days of the season is good for the game,” Dan Gavitt, the NCAA’s Senior Vice President of Basketball, told me. “But it does take a level of risk, because you could start the season 0-1.”
It’s no surprise that Michigan State played in the only really good game of the week, with two more really good games to come this week. Tom Izzo has long been ready, willing and eager to take on all comers, and he’s perplexed as to why more of his colleagues don’t think the same way. “If you’re going to play at this level, play the best, man,” Izzo told me. “You might not be seeded as high in the tournament, but what does that matter? I’ve been a (No.) 1 seed and I got beat the first week. I’ve been a (No.) 7 seed and made it to a Final Four. Playing games like this gives you your edge.”
In the wake of last week’s snooze fest, let’s hope Izzo’s message carries through. College basketball has the greatest finish of any sport. It deserves a much better beginning.
When Kansas State’s Keyontae Johnson was warming up for the Wildcats’ opener at home against UT Rio Grand Valley last Monday, he saw his mother sitting right behind the baseline and blew her a kiss. He glanced over at her again just before tipoff and noticed she was wiping a tear from her eye. Johnson hadn’t played a full college basketball game in nearly two years, but you couldn’t tell by watching him that night. He finished with 13 points, four assists and two rebounds in a 93-59 win. Four nights later, Johnson had a team-high 16 points and nine rebounds in a 63-54 win at Cal.
It’s amazing that Johnson is even playing again, much less playing so well. The last time we saw him in uniform was on Dec. 12, 2020, when he was playing for Florida and collapsed from heart inflammation during the opening minutes of the Gators’ game at Florida State. It was a frightening moment, and the road back has been long (including a sexual battery allegation earlier this year, charges of which were dropped over the summer), but Johnson, who was named the SEC’s preseason player of the year prior to the 2020-21 season, said he has every reason to believe he can be the same player he was before he got sick. Speaking by phone on Saturday afternoon, Johnson told me that he did experience some anxiety before the games began, but once things got underway his mind never drifted to his heart issue. “I try not to think about it, because if I do, I might start imagining something is happening that’s not really happening,” he said. “Once the ball tipped up, I was fine.”
Right on cue#KStateMBB x @Keyontae pic.twitter.com/toWMQNSN9q
— K-State Men’s Basketball (@KStateMBB) November 12, 2022
Kansas State is taking every precaution to keep Johnson safe. He wears a heart monitor inside his wristband for every game and practice, and a team trainer maintains a watchful eye on Johnson’s heart rate to make sure it doesn’t get too high or too low. If the trainer sees something he doesn’t like, he can let coach Jerome Tang know about it, and Johnson will sit. That hasn’t happened yet.
Just as he did before his collapse, Johnson used his 6-6, 230-pound frame to bully his way to the rim during the games last week, and he drained 4 of his 7 3-point attempts. (He was a 37.6 percent 3-point shooter at Florida.) Johnson’s father has told him he looks like a more poised player, and though he still needs to improve his conditioning and rediscover his feel, Johnson appears ready for a high-level season. “I just tried to stay positive the whole way and keep thinking good thoughts,” he said. “It’s amazing to think that I just played my first two games. I’ve been through a lot.”
Other Hoop Thoughts
• During Penny Hardaway’s first four seasons at Memphis, his teams have featured young lineups and highly-ranked recruits. That produced lots of buzz and a couple of NBA Draft picks, but not nearly enough wins. So it was striking during the Tigers’ win at Vanderbilt on Monday that all nine players whom Hardaway used were seniors. Six of them have been in college five years, including 6-9 senior forward DeAndre Williams, who is 26 years old. Hardaway brought in six transfers and zero freshmen in the offseason. Memphis will almost certainly be the oldest team in the country this season, and it was very much Hardaway’s intent to make it so. “I definitely wanted to get older,” he told me on Saturday. “It’s easier to coach these guys because they’ve already been through the fire. When you’re coaching, 17-, 18-year-old kids, everything is new.”
Hardaway hopes that having an older team means it will take much better care of the ball, which has been a huge problem the last four years. Mostly, though, he hopes it will lead to better chemistry. The presence of young, hyped-up freshmen like Jalen Duren and Emoni Bates put an enormous strain on the team’s locker room last season. When Duren moved on to the NBA and Bates transferred to Eastern Michigan, Hardaway replaced them with older transfers like Kendric Davis, the 6-0 super senior guard from SMU who had 16 points and six assists in the opener, and Keonte Kennedy, a 6-5 redshirt senior guard from UTEP.
The flip side to being so old is that you lose a lot of players, and Hardaway is already putting together a huge recruiting class for next season. That includes Mikey Williams, a 6-2 guard from California who is ranked No. 22 in his class in the 247Sports Composite, as well as five other current high school seniors. Hardaway will still probably need to add transfers from the portal next spring, but having learned some hard lessons, he will be cagey about whom he brings in. “I’m still going to chase that young talent. I’ll just coach them differently,” he said. “When you talk to the guys in the portal, you have to tell them the truth. You can’t lie and make them feel that if they come here, it will be all about them. My plan is to mix the old with the young, but it won’t work unless everyone knows exactly what to expect.”
• There are a couple of other high-profile programs with new looks this season. Unlike Memphis, Purdue usually has older rosters, but Matt Painter only has one scholarship senior in 6-1 senior guard David Jenkins, a transfer from Utah. He did not play in the opener against Milwaukee because of an eye injury but played 15 minutes off the bench in the Boilermakers’ win over Austin Peay on Friday. Two freshmen started for Purdue, and two more played a combined 25 minutes off the bench. The freshmen have talent, but given the style Painter likes to play, it’s hard to be young and have success in his program. So it will be very, very important that 7-4 junior center Zach Edey has the dominant season so many are expecting from him.
Matt Painter is rolling out an unusually youthful lineup this season. (Trevor Ruszkowski / USA Today)
Kansas, too, is showing a much different look than we’ve grown used to seeing from Bill Self’s teams. The Jayhawks almost always have a quality big man or two (think Udoka Azubuike, Joel Embiid, David McCormack and Jeff Withey). But the starting lineup through the first two games did not have any player taller than 6-8, and the two who are that size, freshman Gradey Dick and junior Jalen Wilson, are drivers and floor spacers. The only legit big man is 6-11 freshman Ernest Udeh Jr., and though he does have a live body, it’s hard to imagine him logging major minutes down the stretch. Self has two more games to serve for his four-game suspension, and when he comes back he has a lot of figuring out to do as to how he’s going to make this lack of size an advantage, and not a deficiency.
• I bemoaned the lack of compelling games at the top, so let me tip my hat to Stanford and Wisconsin for playing a game at Milwaukee’s American Family Field (formerly Miller Park) on Friday. It was the first college basketball game played in a baseball stadium since 2015. We need more wacky ideas like that.
I also appreciate that the Pac-12 agreed to play a Legacy Series with the SWAC. The series features 12 games between men’s and women’s teams. Unfortunately for the Pac-12, two SWAC teams have already pulled off upsets, with Grambling State beating Colorado and Texas Southern knocking off Arizona State. Another SWAC school, Alcorn State, won at Wichita State earlier in the week. Maybe the SWAC should be a multi-bid league this year?
• Finally, leave it to Ken Pomeroy to come up with most wonderful statistical oddities. At the conclusion of last season, Pomeroy revealed in a tweet that Bucknell guard Andrew Funk had set an NCAA record by grabbing the most rebounds in a season (116) without a single offensive rebound. Funk didn’t even know until that point that he had done something unusual, but he heard about it throughout the off-season — including from his current coaches at Penn State, who mentioned it when they were recruiting Funk out of the transfer portal, and have since reminded him of it often.
I’m happy to report that Funk’s record will not be broken this season, at least not by him. That’s because with 2:20 to play in the first half of Penn State’s win over Loyola Maryland on Thursday, Funk, a 6-5 super senior, grabbed an offensive rebound. It wasn’t the greatest rebound ever recorded — he chased down a long 3-point miss from behind the top of the key. But it counted all the same, and Pomeroy recognized the feat by tweeting, “Great win and first offensive rebound in 648 days for @andrewfunk11.”
Funk told me that he had been looking to break the streak, if only so he could stop taking grief from the Penn State staff. “The ball just bounced to me. I can’t even take credit for doing anything special,” he said. “When I got the rebound and subbed out, I gave coach (Mike) Farrelly a fist bump. It was a funny little ongoing thing between us.”
As to why he is so lacking in this area of the game, Funk quipped, “I’m a big transition defender, is what I like to say.” The question now is, how far will Funk run up this number? One more offensive rebound, and he’s doubled his total. Can he reach double digits? A baker’s dozen? “I certainly hope so,” Funk said. “I’m glad I got this one out of the way, but I’m not sure a whole lot is going to change. I don’t think I’m going to be an offensive rebounder on anybody’s scout report.”
Mid-Major Top 10
1. Dayton (2-0). The Flyers have a road game at UNLV on Tuesday, they play at the Battle 4 Atlantis over Thanksgiving, and then they go to Virginia Tech on Dec. 7. So we’re about to find out just how good they really are. Last week: 1
2. San Diego State (2-0). The Aztecs looked impressive in beating BYU, 82-75, Friday night at home. Two transfers, 5-10 senior guard Darrion Trammell (Seattle) and 6-9 senior forward Jadeon Ledee (TCU) are leading them in scoring. Their only game this week is Tuesday at Stanford. LW: 2
3. Saint Louis (2-0). I am very bullish on the Billikens, but they’ve got a big stretch coming up with games this week against Memphis (home), the Hall of Fame tipoff at Mohegan Sun against Maryland and then either Miami or Providence, and a road game at Auburn on Nov. 27. LW: 5
4. Saint Mary’s (3-0). The Gaels beat three pretty good teams at home in Oral Roberts, Vermont and North Texas, but they don’t play a KenPom top 50 team until they meet Houston in Fort Worth on Dec. 3. LW: 3
5. Western Kentucky (2-0). The Hilltoppers overcame a nine-point deficit to beat Eastern Kentucky on the road, 66-60. The only KenPom top 100 game this team plays before conference play is at South Carolina on Dec. 22. LW: 8
6. Hofstra (2-0). The Pride are off to a nice start with wins over Princeton (road) and Iona (home). Senior guard Aaron Estrada, the reigning CAA Player of the Year, averaged 18.5 points, 5.5 assists and 5.0 rebounds. LW: NR
7. Furman (2-0). The Paladins handled Belmont with surprising ease at home Friday night, winning 89-74 behind 6-3 senior guard Mike Bothwell’s 25 points. They will play Penn State on Thursday in the first round of the Charleston Classic. LW: NR
8. UC Irvine (2-0). The Anteaters scored their first win over a power conference opponent since 2019 when they blasted Oregon, 69-56, on Friday in a game they led at one point by 27 points. They play at San Diego State on Nov. 29. LW: NR
9. Utah State (2-0). Ryan Odom lost his top two scorers from last season, but the Aggies started off with solid wins over Utah Valley and Bradley. Steven Ashworth, a 6-1 junior guard, had 28 points and six assists against the Braves. LW: NR
10. Drake (1-0). The Bulldogs only played one game last week, an 80-48 win over IUPUI, but they return four starters from the team that won 25 games last season and finished in a tie for second in the Missouri Valley. LW: NR
Dropped out: Wyoming (4), UAB (6), Liberty (7), North Texas (9), Iona (10)
Antonio Reeves leads Kentucky with 20 points per game this season. (Jordan Prather / USA Today)
Ten games this week I’m psyched to see
(All times ET)
Michigan State vs. Kentucky in Indianapolis, Tuesday, 7 p.m, ESPN. The big question here is whether Oscar Tshiebwe (knee) will play for Kentucky. He hasn’t practiced, but the team is hopeful he can give it a go. If he does, then Michigan State could have a similar problem keeping its big men out of foul trouble as it did against Gonzaga’s Drew Timme during Friday’s loss at the Armed Forces Classic.
Memphis at Saint Louis, Tuesday, 9 p.m., CBS Sports Network. Like Memphis, the Billikens are laden with seniors and have one of the most efficient point guards in the country in 6-0 junior Yuri Collins, who had an astounding 27 assists and five turnovers in his first two games.
Kansas vs. Duke in Indianapolis, Tuesday, 9:30 p.m., ESPN. Jayhawks junior forward Jalen Wilson played a complementary role the last two seasons, but he showed in his first two games (20, 10 rebounds and 4 assists per game on 46.2 percent 3-point shooting) that he is ready to be Kansas’ go-to guy. Kansas’ small lineup could be problematic against a Duke squad that is teeming with size and just welcomed 7-1 forward Dereck Lively, the nation’s top-ranked freshman, back into the lineup after he missed the first game with a calf injury.
Gonzaga at Texas, Wednesday, 9:30 p.m., ESPN2. When these two teams faced off early last year, Gonzaga held a 22-point lead early in the second half and coasted to an 86-74 win behind 37 points from Timme. That should provide extra motivation for a Longhorns squad that has gotten solid play so far from its two transfers, 6-0 sophomore point guard Tyrese Hunter (Iowa State) and 6-4 senior guard Sir’Jabari Rice (New Mexico State).
Indiana at Xavier, Friday, 6 p.m., FS1. The Hoosiers looked sharp while steamrolling Morehead State and Bethune-Cookman, but this is going to be a much tougher test on the road against a Xavier squad whose top seven players consist of six seniors and a junior.
Baylor vs. Virginia in Las Vegas, Friday, 7 p.m., ESPN2. This game will kick off a terrific early-season four-team tournament, and Sin City is a great stage for Baylor’s George to put on a show. He averaged 18 points and seven assists on 42.1 percent 3-point shooting in his first two games. Suffice to say, he will be defended at a much higher level in this one.
UCLA vs. Illinois in Las Vegas, Friday, 9:30 p.m., ESPNU. UCLA’s Jaylen Clark is making an early case to be considered the best two-way player in America. The 6-5 junior guard was the team’s leading scorer (16.5 points per game) during the first two games, and he also averaged 7.5 rebounds and 4.5 assists while grabbing a ridiculous 11 steals. Brad Underwood lost virtually his entire roster from last season, but he has two solid transfers in 6-6 senior guard Terrence Shannon Jr. (Texas Tech) and 6-9 sophomore forward Dain Dainja (Baylor).
Villanova at Michigan State, Friday, 8 p.m., FS1. The Spartans couldn’t quite pull off the upset over Gonzaga, but they have a lot they can build on, especially once they get sophomore guard Jaden Akins back into shape following his layoff from foot surgery in early September. The Wildcats need to bounce back from their loss at Temple on Friday, but they’re still waiting for their prized freshman, 6-7 forward Cam Whitmore, to return from thumb surgery.
Kentucky vs. Gonzaga, Sunday, 7:30 p.m., ESPN. The Zags might be dragging coming off their games against Michigan State and Texas, but a home-ish (the game is in Spokane, but not at the Kennel) game against the Wildcats will give them all the energy they need. Hopefully Tshiebwe will play so we can get the matchup against Timme we’re all pining for.
Houston at Oregon, Sunday, 9:30 p.m., ESPN. The Ducks have some injuries and just got trounced at home by UC Irvine, but they will still put up a bigger fight than either of Houston’s first two opponents. The Cougars’ much-ballyhooed freshman forward Jarace Walker had 23 points, eight rebounds, two assists and two steals in Houston’s win over Saint Joseph’s on Friday.
(Top photo: Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images)
