Some quick hitters as we reach the night college basketball opens for all teams:
- St. John’s showed that they are a scrappy bunch and will try to win games by speeding teams up and winning the hustle battle. In each of their first two games, they turned the game around by speeding up the opponent and turning loose balls and second chances into baskets. They are a very young group, but they’re athletic and acquitted themselves very well in starting out 2-0 this week.
- George Mason now knows the outcome with Andre Cornelius. The senior point guard pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor credit card fraud and is suspended for the first ten games of the season. While not a small loss, and one that will occur during some tough non-conference games that include the NIT Season Tip-Off, they will get him back before CAA play and have their senior core all together by then. Cornelius, Ryan Pearson and Mike Morrison have been through a lot of wins over the past three years, and in a CAA with a lot of teams lacking in experience, that could be huge.
- The Carrier Classic matchup of Michigan State and North Carolina is for obvious reasons getting a lot of headlines, and Duke’s opener against Belmont is also getting a lot of attention as Mike Krzyzewski tries to move closer to the all-time Division I wins record and Belmont will be a team to watch all season long. But there are plenty of intriguing matchups on opening night: a promising young Oregon team playing at Vanderbilt, improving Loyola Marymount at UCLA, Northeast favorite Long Island at Hofstra and Patriot League favorite Bucknell at Minnesota and BYU at Utah State. Those are games I’ll have an eye on.
- A commitment that flew under the radar a bit recently was Temple landing Daniel Dingle. The highly-skilled forward is a great pickup for the Owls, as Dingle could play in the Big East or ACC but will instead help Fran Dunphy compete for more Atlantic 10 titles.
