Between Kansas and Kansas State, plus Wichita State’s attempts to stay among the national elite, the state of Kansas will be watched closely this college basketball season. It almost made news in ways it wouldn’t have wanted to on the first Monday night of the 2018-19 season, though.
Kansas and Kansas State both are in the top 15 in the national polls, but both received tests on Monday at home that probably weren’t expected by most. In the end, both pulled through-No. 2 Kansas topped Vermont 84-68, and 12th-ranked K-State held off Denver 64-56-but neither came easily, and both also exposed a regular (but sometimes forgotten) fact of college basketball, that no player or team is invincible and every team has flaws, no matter the number beside its name.
The Jayhawks took some early blows from the Catamounts, a perennially good team under coach John Becker that showed last year it had no fear playing some of the sport’s biggest names when it nearly won at Kentucky. Vermont led by eight in the early going and still was in front until the final minute of the first half, and it’s safe to say junior Anthony Lamb-regarded already as a sophomore last year as possibly the best player in the America East before a midseason injury-is all the way back after he scored 24 in this one.
KU owned play inside, as expected-Udoka Azubuike finished with 23 points and 11 rebounds, and led a 38-28 rebounding edge-and behind the Allen Fieldhouse crowd it rallied as the game went on, also as one would anticipate. Still, the Jayhawks got exactly zero points from Dedric Lawson in 19 minutes, and may not have won if not for an out-of-this-world scoring performance from Lagerald Vick, who scored 32 and hit 12 of 14 shots, including all eight from the three-point line. Kansas certainly won’t be able to count on that every night, but it sure came in handy in this one.
Kansas State was taken even deeper in the game by Denver, an underrated team from the Summit League that we had on our list of 20 teams to watch entering the season. The Pioneers came back from 10 points down in the first half to lead several times in the second 20 minutes, and were down three with less than three to play.
Barry Brown wound up saving the Wildcats (25 points), and a turnovers bugaboo from last year haunted Denver again (17 here, turned into 23 K-State points). Still, this one had some discouraging signs for the hosts, too, who made just 12 of 27 from the free throw line and got just five points and mostly limited production from the bench in a game where one might’ve expected a highly ranked Big 12 team to have an advantage.
Side Dishes
- After two straight away from home to start the season, North Carolina debuted at the Dean Dome and was in charge in a 90-72 win over Stanford. UNC led by 26 at halftime and this was a walk-on special for the Tar Heels, with a total of 16 different players getting in the game.
- Buffalo entered the national rankings on Monday after its win at West Virginia last week (more on that below), and the Bulls debuted with another road win at Southern Illinois by a 62-53 score. The Bulls pulled away in the second half after trailing most of the first, showing they’re far more than a three-man team-Montell McRae tied for scoring honors with 11 and Davonta Jordan added nine points plus five assists. The Salukis, meanwhile, played without their leader Armon Fletcher, a huge loss even as injuries are nothing new for SIU, having affected the team heavily each of the last two years.
- Another team like Denver that was on our preseason 20 to watch list was San Diego, and the Toreros have done nothing to disappoint so far. USD defeated a good Weber State team last week, and last night the Toreros went on the road and went head-to-head at Washington, though the Huskies pulled out the 66-63 win. Credit Washington for continuing to win close games like these out of conference the last two years-last year included narrow wins over Belmont, Montana and UC Davis.
- Just like North Carolina, Oklahoma has played a couple out-of-the-ordinary away games in a row early this season. Lon Kruger took his team on the road twice against former assistants of his, first at Texas-Rio Grande Valley, and last night at Texas-San Antonio. The Sooners won both, including an 87-67 win at UTSA in a weird game where it took the Roadrunners eight minutes to even score a point, yet they led by four in the second half before OU finished the game on a 39-15 run.
- Minnesota topped Utah 78-69 at home, taking over midway through the first half, holding a steady lead the rest of the way and getting its first win over the Utes since 1955. Something to watch: the Golden Gophers have not been a good shooting team the last couple years but hit 51.8% from the field in this one, including freshman Gabe Kalscheur hitting 5 of 6 three-pointers on the way to 19 points.
- Butler bested Detroit Mercy 84-63, yet another in a seemingly endless example of early season games where a contest was much closer until the final few minutes than the final might have indicated. The Titans were down by nine with under eight to play. Kamar Baldwin filled the stat sheet (26 points, eight rebounds, six assists), while red-hot freshman Antoine Davis-son of coach Mike Davis-scored 20 for UDM on a night when his dad said he was sick and probably shouldn’t have been on the court.
- Baylor had a rough time with a SWAC team again, leading Prairie View A&M by just four with seven minutes left before repeatedly getting out running late and winning 91-80.
- Belmont won with its second straight offensive explosion, putting two halves together to Middle Tennessee State’s one to win 92-73. The Blue Raiders actually led 54-46 at halftime but scored just 19 in the second half. Dylan Windler had another big game with 34 points and 11 boards.
- VCU is now 3-0 after taking care of Bowling Green 72-61, the Rams having a much easier time with the Falcons than St. John’s did a few days earlier.
- Another Atlantic 10 team was involved in the wildest game of the night, as Duquesne was down 12 to Illinois-Chicago with just over three minutes left in the second half, never once led the game in regulation, but came back for an 89-88 overtime win. Freshman Sincere Carry-has there ever been a more NBA-ready name?-scored 32 points, including the tying points with one second left in regulation.
- Penn State won its second straight with a 76-61 victory over Jacksonville State, as Lamar Stevens scored 25 and added nine rebounds, and Rasir Bolton also added 25 off the bench. The NIttany Lions looked good, playing hard against a JSU team that will contend in the Ohio Valley.
- Texas got a battle for a while but made a second half run to take out Louisiana-Monroe 65-55. Another cover-your-eyes shooting performance from long range for the Longhorns (6-for-25), but enough work inside the arc got the job done.
- For some reason, the first in-season top 25 polls generated a lot of animated discussion yesterday. Duke moved up to the top spot over Kansas, which was reasonable but not essential (do we really know if Kentucky is even a certain NCAA tourney team right now, after how bad it lost to Duke and its struggles at home against Southern Illinois?) Another hot topic was scribe Jeff Goodman-recently at ESPN, now with the new Stadium network-putting Buffalo 10th on his ballot, something that wouldn’t have generated a sniff if say, Notre Dame or Texas A&M rose up so high based off of one win. In this case, though, Goodman managed to offend not just fanatics who get scared white any time they see an unfamiliar name in college rankings (see: UCF football), but also those who take predictive rankings-even ones less than a week into the season-as unimpeachable gospel. It really should be as simple as acknowledging that polls-or power ratings-don’t mean much in early November, but also that sometimes different people can see the same thing differently. We’re also less than a week into the season, and there’s a fair chance that what people think they know about a team after 1-2 games could be entirely different in a month. So let’s all chill.
- In one of those developments you can set your watch to, Michigan State coach Tom Izzo is not happy with the officiating early in the season. In other news, the sun rose in the east today. (Don’t believe this has happened before? Run a web search for ‘Tom Izzo officiating,’ then enjoy.) Izzo vented after the Spartans’ win over Florida Gulf Coast Sunday night, not about the officials themselves, but about how he doesn’t like how he feels they’re being forced to “over-legislate” the game in areas like freedom of movement and lengthy in-game reviews.
In truth, Izzo has a number of fair points. Monitor reviews in the sport have long been out of control, and flagrant fouls are needlessly over-complicated. If an official sees it, call it. If they don’t, life goes on. If there are egregiously dirty plays, handle them after the event with suspensions. As far as too many fouls…a couple years ago the complaints (not by Izzo) were about how ‘unwatchable’ college basketball had become, and that there needed to be more points. (We felt the game needed adjustments, not an overhaul, yet a wrench was forgone for a blowtorch.) It’s pretty simple; if one wants points, then fouls need to be called. If fouls are not called-and a lot of them weren’t for a number of years-then scoring goes down. If Izzo disagrees with anything and is afraid of 150-140 games, he needs to be vocal and detailed about it with those who instituted a host of offense-friendly, NBA-duplicating rules, as well as those continuing to threaten that the college game needs even more of them.
Tonight’s Menu:
- The novelty of conference ‘challenges’ wore off several years ago now-we don’t need a Challenge to have schools like Nebraska and Seton Hall play each other; they collude amongst themselves in scheduling just fine without one. While the Gavitt Games has typically been one of the more worthy such events of late, this year’s has a number of matchups that are less than enticing, to be polite (Penn State/DePaul? St. John’s/Rutgers?) Its opener is Wisconsin at Xavier (6:30 p.m. Eastern, FS1), a rematch of their contest in this event last year. That’s followed by Georgetown at Illinois (8:30 p.m., FS1).
- Memphis at LSU (7 p.m., SEC Network) feels like a natural matchup-both teams are Tigers, after all. In this case it also sounds like another showcase for the LSU Tigers, who play their third game of a four-game homestand to start the season.
- Stephen F. Austin is at Miami (Fla.) (7 p.m., ESPNU), and it might be the game of the night, but almost certainly would’ve been before the Lumberjacks were drained by injuries before the season. We’ll get a better look at just where SFA is now.
- The Atlantic 10’s early pain might continue when Rhode Island goes to College of Charleston.
- Georgia is at Temple in a true John Chaney Special, the type of name non-conference games the Wise Old Owl played regularly when he coached in Philly. First road trip for Tom Crean as UGA’s coach.
- Far more than just a college hockey mecca, nowhere has there been a better concentration of quality in-state hoops games so far this season than in Massachusetts. It continues tonight with Harvard at UMass.
- Drake is at Colorado, the first look at the Bulldogs against Division I competition this year. The teams played last year in the Paradise Jam and had a quietly very good game, the Buffaloes winning 86-81.
- Georgia Tech is at Tennessee in one of the few other national TV showings of the night (9 p.m., ESPN2).
- Iona makes a long trip across the country to take on New Mexico.
- California did not look good in its opener against Yale in China, and the Golden Bears now better be on the lookout at home against a decent Hampton team.
Have a super Tuesday.
