Welcome to the latest edition of Talking Hoops With Ted Sarandis. We’re just over a week into the season, and after eagerly awaiting the chance to talk about game action we take full advantage here, although off-court matters still come up.
We start by looking at the first shocker of the season – Evansville knocking off Kentucky at Rupp Arena on Tuesday night – and what it tells us. Namely, there is no dominant team in college basketball this season, that Kentucky has some real questions, and that it’s one more sign that many teams may look quite different depending on the day.
The first week-plus has seen some dandies, but it’s also seen a lot of bad games, and not just blowouts although those have been prevalent. It’s one more bad sign for the sport at a time it is fighting to be relevant with the general sports public. As noted in a recent Morning Dish, one school had a week to forget more so than others.
After that, we go over the big story since last Friday, which is the ongoing eligibility story of Memphis freshman James Wiseman. While the school is bravely fighting the NCAA on this, and there are undoubtedly many people rooting for the school, there is a lot of risk for everyone except Wiseman.
Last week, I noted that we were going to get an idea fairly quickly as to whether or not the Pac-12 has a chance for a resurgence. With over a week in the books, the early returns are promising. Only three teams have lost a game, with one of those losses coming against another Pac-12 team (in a game that won’t count in the conference standings), and Oregon knocked off Memphis recently for a quality win.
Finally, we talk about an aspect of moving the three-point line back that probably hasn’t been explored much, which is that the men and women have different distances, meaning most courts will have at least two three-point lines (depending on if high school or NBA games are also played there). A couple of games in the first week were played on a court with four different three-point lines, and that simply did not look good.
As we close out, I noted a couple of surprises both pleasant and unpleasant in the first week-plus, while Ted also thinks of an injured player as well as a couple of coaches who were let go during the off-season.
We hope you enjoy the podcast and share it with your fellow college basketball fans. Be sure to tune in again soon for more on college basketball.
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