College basketball is back, for real. The first night of games came and went last night, so here’s my reactions from opening night.
Kansas had a bad night
The Jayhawks did not look like their usual selves at all. The biggest thing that stood out in their 68-66 loss to Duke was the fact that they turned the ball over 28 times, to the Blue Devils’ 16. They don’t seem to have a ton of solid scoring options, Devon Dotson was really the only one who shot the ball well. He can be a solid number one guy, but Ochai Agbaji ends up being their second scoring option, that can spell some problems. It might have to do with the fact that Duke looks to have an elite defense, but you can only say so much about that. They were lucky to only lose that game by two, even after the three at the buzzer that cut it from five.
Tyrese Maxey!
The freshman stole the show and had a great game for Kentucky off the bench, dropping 26 points on 7-12 shooting and hit an Onions-esque three to put the game away for the Wildcats against Michigan State. He was obviously the best player for John Calipari’s squad and will probably be inserted into the starting lineup soon if he can keep this pace up.
New eras at Alabama and Nebraska off to a bad start
The Nate Oats era with the Crimson Tide and the Fred Hoiberg era for the Cornhuskers got off to rocky starts, with Alabama losing 81-80 at home against Penn and Nebraska getting blown out by UC-Riverside, 66-47. At least some people expected that there was a chance that Alabama could lose to a very solid Penn squad, and they did, despite a noble performance from Kira Lewis, Jr., even though he missed the potentially game-tying and winning free throws in the final seconds. However, everyone on Nebraska had a poor night, and it showed as they got their teeth kicked in on their home floor. Nebraska will need to turn it around quickly if they want to be taken seriously, and especially now with a big name at head coach, or else the fans could turn on the program due to the fact that they were expected to turn it around. It obviously won’t be immediately, but they can’t afford to be the same program it has been.
Good win for Virginia Tech, bad loss for Clemson
Mike Young got his first win with the Hokies with a 67-60 win over Clemson on the road. Virginia Tech got an unexpected jolt from Landers Nolley II, who scored 30 points in his collegiate debut on 12-23 shooting. Virginia Tech does not have a lot of size and depth, but if they can get a lot of performances like that out of him, he can be a star in the ACC and the rebuild after Buzz Williams and Kerry Blackshear left may not take as long as was expected. For Clemson, the seat of Brad Brownell gets hotter for a team that has already taken a drop of sorts.
A quick note, I really enjoyed the ACC conference games on the first nights of the year, it created a fun storyline to the season starting.
New rules are good
We saw the new rules, the extended three-point line, the reset shot clock after an offensive rebound and the new timeout rules come into play for the first time. I’m a fan of all three. The extended three-point line especially, and I tweeted this at one point, it creates a lot more spacing on the floor and forces players to move the ball around a lot more than they had, and makes the shot itself more difficult, and I saw less teams just chucking up threes because of that.
The reset shot clock is good too, because it speeds up the game. No team needs a full 30 seconds after an offensive rebound to put a shot back up.
About the new timeout rule with coaches allowed to call live-ball timeouts in the final two minutes, it’s clearly going to be a work in progress as coaches get used to it. I watched in the Stony Brook-Yale game, I saw Yale go to the free throw line down one in the final seconds, made the first one to tie the game at 62, miss the second, Stony Brook got the rebound and the ball got tied up. It makes you wonder why Seawolves coach Geno Ford would not call timeout there (he had one left) to reset it. They ended up getting a wild shot off, but it missed and Yale ended up winning 74-69 in overtime.
Quick hits
I feel like outside of Utah State, the Mountain West is pretty even this year. I watched Utah beat Nevada, the Wolf Pack are solid under Steve Alford but have some work to do.
Markus Howard is still very here. He put up 38 points, 30 of them in the first half on 11-20 shooting and 7-10 from three as Marquette beat Loyola (Md.) 88-53.
Baylor is very solid and rugged defensively. It showed in a big way, especially in the early portions, of their win against Central Arkansas, opening on a 19-0 run and winning 105-61. They are legit in the Big 12 this season.
Ohio beating St. Bonaventure rather handily in Olean in the first game of Jeff Boals’ tenure with the Bobcats is really interesting. The Bonnies are probably still figuring out the kinks, and maybe it shows that Ohio can compete in a MAC that’s no longer run by Buffalo.
AJ Hoops 