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— The Athletic’s Seth Davis, Brian Hamilton, Eamonn Brennan, Brendan Quinn and Brendan Marks contributed to this story.

We’re a month into the 2022-23 men’s college basketball season, so five of our experts came together to talk about what they’ve seen, and what they expect to happen next.

Which team has impressed you the most so far?

Quinn: The answer is Purdue, with its No. 1-ranked offense and four top-40 wins over Gonzaga, Duke, West Virginia and Marquette, but that’s an easy pick. Instead, here are some flowers for Maryland. At this point last year, Mark Turgeon was already off in the sunset and fans were begging for a savior. Is Kevin Willard it? Who knows, but an 8-1 start and wins over Illinois, Saint Louis and Miami are already more than anyone was expecting this early. Donta Scott has been awesome and is a sneaky All-Big Ten first-team candidate. Jahmir Young is one of the most impactful transfers in the country. Hakim Hart just put 17 points on Illinois and is averaging 14 and 5. The Terps began the year at No. 56 in KenPom’s ratings. They began this week at No. 19.

Hamilton: I sat next to a Big East official the other day at the Baylor-Marquette game, and the topic of conversation turned to Connecticut, and how everyone underestimated Connecticut as a thing. And potentially a thing that plays in Houston in April. Deep, athletic and not even completely healthy, with a well-defined star in Adama Sanogo and a PK Invitational title. (I will note that I had Sanogo on my preseason All-America second team, in The Athletic’s internal voting.) Ninth in the nation in adjusted offensive efficiency and 10th in adjusted defensive efficiency as of Tuesday morning, per KenPom. Fourth overall in KenPom’s ratings and sixth in Bart Torvik’s rankings, which covers both the predictive and results-based metrics and creates a pretty strong consensus. Maybe you’d like to see slightly better 3-point shooting from a Final Four contender, but UConn’s efficiency inside the arc and its ability to apply pressure by getting to the free-throw line a ton might make up the difference. I’m as impressed with Zach Edey as anyone, but it’s arguable the Huskies are better equipped for March with a big like Sanogo than Purdue is with a big like The Big Maple.

Marks: Plenty of the teams I saw in Portland at PK85 — Purdue, UConn, even Alabama — merit a mention here … but give me Virginia, and not just for my ACC homerism. The Cavaliers have two of the most impressive wins of the early season, a pair of top-20 victories over Baylor and Illinois, and I’m betting that come-from-behind road win over Michigan ages well, too. Sorta like Tony Bennett, right? Speaking of which, last season marked Virginia’s least efficient defense (No. 59 nationally, per KenPom) since Bennett’s second season; this year, then, was a test of sorts. Would the Virginia way still work? Turns out, it definitely does.

And while a large part of Virginia’s 7-0 start is because of its high-performing pack line defense, let’s not discount what Bennett’s team is doing offensively. Small sample size, but the Cavs are the fifth-best 3-point shooting team in the country, have a top-50 effective field-goal percentage, and barely turn the ball over. The sneaky (and surprising) key to Virginia’s offensive success so far, though, is a ridiculous free-throw rate; UVa is averaging 26.4 free-throw attempts per game, 11th most in the country.

Brennan: I’ll add a Texas shout-out to this mix. On the all-important “impressiveness to Eamonn” scale we would definitely rank Purdue, Connecticut and Virginia higher — they have all taken the start of the season by storm, and most of all they have all done it away from their own building. That’s the one quibble keeping Texas from really being the choice here, because in every other sense it looks tremendous. The defense is aggressive and physical and switchable and strong. The arrival of Tyrese Hunter has a) added Tyrese Hunter, which is a good first-order result in and of itself and b) reduced the burden on Marcus Carr, allowing him to play as a mere part of the whole for the first time in his college career. Freshman Dillon Mitchell looks great, and the players who all arrived in the portal last year have had a season to gel. It looks like a really good team — but the schedule has been soft. It wasn’t until Tuesday night’s game against Illinois that Texas left its own state or played anything like a neutral-court game, let alone a true road contest. A bit more evidence of this team’s primacy on the road would be great — but it looks like a title contender all the same.

Davis: I’m one of eight AP voters who had Purdue at No. 1 the last two weeks, so it’s the easy choice for me. We all expected Edey to improve, but I don’t think anyone saw this level of dominance coming. Aside from the numbers, what has impressed me most about Big Maple is his court sense and decision-making. He is getting double- and triple-teamed from every direction, yet he keeps his head and almost always makes the smart pass. That leads to a lot of open 3-point opportunities, which is working for a squad on which eight different players have made 3s this season. The two freshmen, Braden Smith and Fletcher Loyer, have made an amazing transition to college despite not being in the top 100 of the Recruiting Services Consensus Index as high school seniors. The Boilermakers are even 29th in adjusted defensive efficiency on KenPom after being 93rd last season, which proved to be their undoing. I can only imagine how hard it must be for Boilermaker fans to get their hopes up again given all the March disappointments, but this team really, truly, maybe, could possibly have the chops to finally get this program back to the Final Four. I’m rooting for ’em!

Who has been the breakout player of the season that’s not 7-foot-4 and lives in West Lafayette?

Quinn: Is … Jalen Pickett the best guard in the Big Ten? He might be, and by the measure of this question, that’d suffice as a helluva breakout. Pickett was a nice player a year ago after transferring from Siena to Penn State, but he has taken things to another level this season. He’s fourth nationally in assist rate and is leading the Nittany Lions in scoring at 16.1 points and grabbing 6.6 boards. Pickett is the pilot of a Micah Shrewsberry offense that ranks 29th in efficiency (1.12 ppp) and 13th in eFG% (57.2). It’s been impressive, even if no one has noticed.

Hamilton: Without a genetic wink-wink via his twin brother’s production a year ago, wouldn’t Kris Murray qualify as a revelation? We’d be talking about the guy who no one in Division I paid much attention to as a prospect, who only started one game as a sophomore, who now has emerged as a wildly efficient 20-and-10 forward and prototypical NBA wing prospect. (You know, kind of like we did with Keegan Murray a year ago.) Going into Tuesday’s showcase showdown with Duke at Madison Square Garden, Kris Murray was scoring 21 points a game and grabbing 10.6 rebounds a night while shooting 40 percent from 3-point range and turning it over at a career-low rate despite career-high usage. If his name was Kris Smith or Kris Jones or Joey Jo-Jo Junior Shabadoo, everyone would be scrambling to figure out how the next great Iowa City scorer was discovered, developed and unleashed.

Marks: Maybe this is too close to home, but I’m just thoroughly impressed by what Duke freshman Kyle Filipowski has done through 10 games. He’s a 7-foot stretch-four, someone as capable of crushing dudes inside as he is draining stepback 3s. It’s early yet, but KenPom currently lists Filipowski at No. 7 on its player of the year list, and he’s the early frontrunner for Freshman of the Year. (Arkansas’ Nick Smith Jr., who just made his return from injury, and Alabama’s Brandon Miller will have something to say about that, but still.) Filipowski has five double-doubles in 10 games, third-most in the country and tops among all first-years, and he quickly has developed into Duke’s offensive fulcrum. The Blue Devils don’t have the best or prettiest offense — they average just 0.909 points per possession, per Synergy, which is the 53rd percentile nationally — but without Filipowski, it would be a whole lot worse.

Brennan: You know who’s gotten really good all of a sudden? Reece Beekman. You could say this for everyone at Virginia — even fifth-year senior Kihei Clark, who is playing the best and most mistake-free basketball of his lengthy career — and yet Beekman stands above, both within his team and relative to his POY-contending peers in the ACC. Beekman has always been an elite perimeter defender; it’s what surprised Virginia coaches so much when he arrived as a freshman, what cemented his place in UVa lineups from the beginning. Now that he’s scoring comfortably from all three levels — shooting 47.1 percent from 3 and getting to the rim (and thus the free-throw line) at unprecedented rates — he is one of the best all-around players in the sport.

Davis: Having watched Oumar Ballo the last few years (mostly at practice, because he barely played), both at Gonzaga and in his first season at Arizona, I could not have foreseen this level of development. He has done a great job taking care of his body, and as is often the case once guys get a few years under their belt, the game seems to have slowed down for him. Ballo went from averaging 6.8 points and 4.4 rebounds in 15.2 minutes last season to 19.1 points and 9.3 rebounds in 26.6 minutes this year. He’s been consistent, too. He has scored in double figures every game, has three double-doubles, and he was the MVP in Maui after putting up 30 points and 13 rebounds in the win over Creighton in the final. Ballo’s ability to be a force at the rim will give Azuolas Tubelis the flexibility he needs to play out in space. If the Wildcats make a run at the Pac-12 championship, don’t be surprised if Ballo wins player of the year.

What team that has disappointed so far are you most confident will find their way by March?

Quinn: Even though Colorado State lost David Roddy from last season’s sixth-seeded NCAA Tournament team, I was pretty high on the Rams this year. Instead, they’re 6-3 with losses to Charleston, Penn State and Northern Colorado. Look closer, though. Niko Medved’s team was without Isaiah Stevens for the first seven games after the star point guard fractured his foot in mid-October. The loss to Charleston came on the road, where Pat Kelsey has turned TD Arena into an asylum, and Penn State is sneaky good. Wright returned two games ago, and the loss to Northern Colorado followed. That game? UNC shot nearly 60 percent from the field in the first half, then hit its first seven 3-pointers and 9 of 11 shots overall in the first seven minutes. Things happen. Fact is, Stevens is still really good and will return to 100 percent, John Tonje is an all-conference caliber piece and Medved is as highly regarded as he is for a reason. The Rams rank in the top 20 in eFG percentage, but need to improve defense and offensive rebounding. I’ll bet they do and manage to compete with San Diego State, Utah State, Boise State and New Mexico (don’t look now, but Richard Pitino is 7-0 with a win over Saint Mary’s) atop the Mountain West.

Marks: Louisville! Kidding, kidding. But I’ll go with another team breaking in a first-year head coach, Villanova. Look: The Wildcats are, uh, not awesome right now, losers of five of their first eight games. That whole Jay Wright retirement thing, it turns out, is tough to overcome! And by “find its way,” I’m not saying Villanova is suddenly gonna transform into the Final Four favorite it has been the last decade. But a tournament berth, especially after what we saw this week from likely one-and-done wing Cam Whitmore, is well within reach; out for several weeks with a thumb injury, Whitmore is finally back, and even in limited minutes against Oklahoma, the freshman looked like he’s gonna be a force. Here’s betting on Whitmore willing this team to a few key wins, and maybe the return of Justin Moore in time for a late postseason push. The Wildcats may have wasted most of their nonconference slate, but the Big East is good and deep enough that there’ll be plenty of chances for resume-boosting wins.

Hamilton: My answer is None of The Above, if I’m being super honest. But I’ll take a flier on Dayton, which became one of the few groups in history to have an absolutely rotten time in the Bahamas. But does an oh-fer trip to the Battle 4 Atlantis look worse than it was, given the circumstances? A one-point loss to Wisconsin is more than respectable. An overtime loss to BYU is maybe less so, given the 23-point lead Dayton blew … but two key rotation players (Malachi Smith and Kobe Elvis) fell out to injury as the walls caved in. Smith, in fact, missed the first three games with an ankle issue, too, which helps explain his epic struggles before Ankle Injury No. 2. It’s apparently unclear when either Smith or Elvis will return at this point. But even with all its problems, and even with zero actually good wins on its schedule so far, Dayton is still the second-ranked Atlantic 10 team in the major metrics ratings. It still has a top-40 defense, which means it can stay in almost any game. If the Flyers get healthy — admittedly a sizable if — they should look better within their own league.

Brennan: At the beginning of the season I was reasonably certain that Kentucky was, or at least could be, the best team in the country. This is not a popular opinion, and I totally get why. Beyond being 6-2 with losses to Michigan State and (in blowout terms) to Gonzaga, the Wildcats’ offense remains pretty difficult for UK fans to watch — and, being UK fans, they are not shy in expressing this view. There has been very little stylistic evolution, and the allegations that John Calipari’s system is outdated have flown anew. And, yeah: This team definitely needs to shoot more 3s. It makes a high percentage; it just doesn’t take them very often, and that lack of space inherent in the system bogs things down.

And yet: The bones here are good. Oscar Tshiebwe is still going to be Oscar Tshiebwe. Cason Wallace is a stud. Antonio Reeves and CJ Fredrick are both highly credible perimeter shooters. The defense looks solid. Early losses and aesthetic frustrations aside, this team will almost certainly compete for the SEC title and be a high-single-digit seed yet again.

Davis: Wow, are you guys really leaving North Carolina to me? Does anyone think that Hubert Davis is not going to right this ship? There’s a reason these guys were in the NCAA championship game, and there’s a reason they entered the season as the consensus No. 1 team. They haven’t looked great, but they only lost to Iowa State by five, they lost to Alabama in quadruple overtime, and in their road losses to Indiana and Virginia Tech, Armando Bacot was either limited or out because of a shoulder injury. That’s light years ahead of where they were this time last season. Caleb Love and R.J. Davis are too good to be playing this poorly for much longer, and Pete Nance will get more comfortable as the season goes on just like Brady Manek did. I’m not predicting them to get back to the Final Four, but it’s a lot more likely than it seemed in December 2021.

Game of the season, so far?

Quinn: Creighton 90, Arkansas 87. This one. Straight gas, no chaser. Creighton rolled at 1.15 ppp. Arkansas at 1.12. Played in the funhouse known as the Lahaina Civic Center. The stars came out — Ryan Nembhard, Ryan Kalkbrenner and Baylor Scheierman scoring 25, 21 and 20 points, respectively. Anthony Black, Ricky Council IV and Trevon Brazile with 26, 24 and 17 for the Hogs. This was a Final Four game. Reminded me of the Kansas-Dayton OT throwdown in Maui in November 2019. Sign me up for a rematch in March.

Marks: Creighton-Arkansas. That sort of high-octane, offense-only explosion? Yes, please. Both teams are verified Final Four contenders — and that was before the Hogs had Nick Smith Jr., arguably the best pro prospect playing college ball. I’ll take Round Two in Houston, thank you very much.

Hamilton: The Gonzaga-Purdue semifinal in the PK Legacy event was sneaky meaningful but understandably overlooked, given that it tipped off after 11:30 p.m. ET. The Zags were pummeling the Boilermakers in the early going and it looked like another case of young guards gasping for air as 40 minutes of waves pounded them … until it wasn’t that, at all. It was Purdue obliterating a national powerhouse for the final three-fourths of the game. It was Edey matching/arguably outplaying Drew Timme and Purdue’s guards growing up in real-time, under real game pressure, certifying the whole operation as For Real. It made the championship game result against Duke not exactly a fait accompli, but not at all surprising. It made Matt Painter an early frontrunner for national coach of the year. Meanwhile, Gonzaga’s aura devolved into something more like a mirage with a second throttling by a power-conference team. We’ve seen it continue to play out since. Every expectation for a national championship pursuit and an exclamation point for Timme’s legacy was reset that night.

Brennan: Alabama-North Carolina at the PK85 thing was not exactly the best-played game of the season. Indeed, it devolved into a lot of one-on-one stepback 3s, and UNC guard Caleb Love personally fired up 36 shots en route to a loss, which was honestly almost impressive. But there is something undeniably wild about a four-OT game, particularly one that reveals the issues the preseason national title favorite faces in its climb out of the hole it has already built for itself. North Carolina is too easy to take out of its offense, too easy to bully, and too ready to break down into solo hero ball at the first sign of trouble. Alabama conned the Tar Heels into playing exactly the sort of game you don’t want to play against the Crimson Tide, and UNC was all too happy to go along with it.

Davis: Gonzaga-Michigan State. I was fortunate to be courtside on the USS Abraham Lincoln for what was, regrettably, the only significant game in the opening week. The setting was majestic, the basketball was terrific (despite a lot of wind-blown missed jumpers), and the climax was riveting, with the outcome not decided until Jaden Akins missed a 3 as time expired. It was a great night for Timme, who had 22 points, 13 rebounds and four assists and willed his team back from a 12-point deficit in the second half. The game served as a fitting Veterans Day tribute and set the table for the season ahead.

What are you looking most forward to for the rest of this season?

Quinn: Can Edey keep this up? According to Purdue’s crack sports information staff, no high-major player in the last 30 years has averaged 22.0 points, 11.0 rebounds and 2.0 blocks. Edey? The man is currently averaging 23.3/12.8/2. If he reaches 20 points in Purdue’s next outing, which he will (vs. Hofstra on Wednesday), he’ll tie Andrew Bogut for the longest streak of consecutive 20-point games by a 7-footer in the last 25 years at eight. At his current pace, Edey could lap that number and smash all kinds of other records. He is one of the most efficient and productive college players — ever. Generational stuff. Let’s see where he goes, and where he takes the Boilers.

Marks: Can North Carolina get back to the version of itself from late last season, or was that just one-off March magic? We frankly don’t know — but right now, the preseason No. 1 team in the country looks pretty unimpressive, having lost four straight and falling all the way out of the top 25. I thought the Tar Heels would struggle to replace Brady “Bang Bang” Manek’s 3-point production — by the end of last season, he was attempting almost 10 3s a game and converting at about a 45 percent clip — but not quite to this extent; UNC is currently shooting 29.2 percent from 3 as a team, and its starting backcourt of Love and R.J. Davis has regressed in a major way. Until the Tar Heels start hitting from deep with some consistency, though, it’s gonna be something of a slog for Hubert Davis’ squad.

Hamilton: Man, it is difficult to choose one storyline for this. Certainly curious if North Carolina can pull a Kylo Ren and climb out of the crevasse after a seemingly fatal fall. Certainly wondering if this is truly the end for some of the old guard, with Jim Boeheim and Leonard Hamilton seemingly the most eligible to call it a day. Certainly interested to see if Texas can become the center of the college hoops universe by sending maybe three in-state programs to a Final Four staged in Houston. But since I was there less than two months ago, and since everything has devolved into a post-apocalyptic hellscape since then, I’ll go ahead and wonder if Louisville will turn fully on its anointed savior, Kenny Payne, after just one season. I can’t overstate how much people close to the program on every level believed Payne was the answer for all that ailed the Cardinals. No one can overstate how horrific the results have been so far, with more to come. Payne, from the jump, asked for patience. A lot of patience. Everyone seemed to sign on for a long build. But did they really mean it?

Brennan: BQ mentioned Edey, and I’m right there with him on that, but more broadly: What about a Purdue vs. Indiana showdown for the Big Ten title? When’s the last time that happened? Rutgers road loss aside — and it is just hard to win in the RAC these days, no matter who you are — the Hoosiers have been every bit as impressive as folks predicted in the summer. They would be the Big Ten title favorite like everyone said — except, well, Edey exists, and Purdue found its guards much faster than even Painter expected, and so the Boilermakers might actually be the best team in the country, let alone the conference. On Feb. 4 Purdue plays at IU; on Feb. 25 Indiana returns the favor. If those games are still putative conference title-deciders, this season will already have been a lot of fun.

Davis: I don’t know about y’all, but I’m loving this whole “Year of the Big” thing. It’s not just a theme for this season, it’s a way for this sport to distinguish itself for the foreseeable future from its professional and international counterparts, which have legislated and court-designed the traditional center completely out of the game. It seems like every night, we’ve got a quality big-on-big matchup to look forward to. And I guess we’ve always known this, but big men just seem more likable than the rest of us. They’re big, goofy, fun-loving merry pranksters, and they relish the opportunity to bang down low. If you look at KenPom’s player of the year rankings, seven of the top 10 are 6-8 or taller. I think that’s a great thing for college hoops.

(Top photo of Purdue’s Zach Edey: Soobum Im / Getty Images)