By Aidan Joly
The college basketball season is officially underway across the country. 199 games across the country, with some ongoing as I type this, but there’s still plenty to talk about. Let’s discuss some of my takeaways from night one.
The slate wasn’t good enough
The slate, top to bottom, wasn’t great. There was only one game between power conference teams and that was Memphis-Vanderbilt, two very “meh” programs (but I’ll get into that game in a little bit). But it felt like that was the biggest game of the night. Auburn-George Mason had potential, but it ended up being kind of a flop. Not having the Champions Classic on the first day of the season is a mistake in my mind. The second half of that November 15 doubleheader, Kansas-Duke, is the first ranked matchup of the year. Over a week into the season! Starting up on a Monday didn’t help either.
Scheyer, Neptune shine in debuts
First-year Duke coach Jon Scheyer and first-year Villanova coach Kyle Neptune are tasked with following up two Hall of Famers, both of them at 35 years old. Neptune has a year of head coaching under his belt at Fordham last year, while this is Scheyer’s first head coaching job. Night one was a success for both of them, with Duke beating Jacksonville 71-44 and Villanova taking down city rival La Salle 81-68.
Experienced Kentucky
For the second year in a row, the Wildcats have an experienced team. In Monday’s 95-63 win against Howard, it started a senior and two juniors. It was without rim protector Oscar Tschiebwe, who has a shot at winning a second National Player of the Year award this season and Sahvir Wheeler, who are both seniors, due to injuries. Cason Wallace and Chris Livingston are both stud freshman and NBA Draft picks come June, but this is an older Kentucky team by all accounts.
Memphis taking next step?
The Penny Hardaway era at Memphis has been a tumultuous one. Having kicked off his fifth season at the helm of the Tigers, he reached the NCAA tournament for the first time last year. The Tigers showed even more promise in a nice 76-67 road win against Vanderbilt on Monday. DeAndre Williams put up 17 points on 7-11 shooting, SMU transfer Kendric Davis collected 16 and Alex Lomax had a double-double with 10 and 10. There are still some kinks to be worked out, but this team shows even more promise this season.
Auburn’s high ceiling
Maybe I’m a little higher on Auburn than most, or I overestimated George Mason, but I expected this game to be a dogfight and it wasn’t. The Tiger defense suffocated the Patriots into 19 turnovers as opposed to Auburn’s nine en route to a 70-52 win. Auburn took 15 more shots than George Mason did and also beat them on the offensive boards 22-10. If the Auburn defense can hold up like this, Bruce Pearl’s squad can do great things this year.
Yikes, Florida State
Florida State had a down year last year, going 17-14 (10-10 ACC) and missed the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2016. So, this year is expected to be something of a bounce-back year for the program. It got off to a horrendous start, losing to Stetson, a team ranked No. 314 in KenPom’s preseason rankings. The Hatters hit 14 threes on the way to the win. It might be a long year in Tallahasee.
I want to give a couple quick shoutouts at the end here. Colgate and Buffalo played a great game, matched up well and it came down to the final seconds. Another goes out to Queens College, which took down Marshall in the program’s first game at the Division I level. Finally, one to Arkansas-Pine Bluff, which was ranked No. 361 in KenPom coming into the day and was a just-missed floater off the hands of Trejon Ware away from stunning No. 14 TCU in Fort Worth.
AJ Hoops 