Michigan State’s men’s basketball season ended Monday with a startling 79-76 overtime loss to James Madison at the Breslin Center in East Lansing. That’s all she wrote for the No. 4-ranked Spartans. Maybe next year. Send in the clowns.
OK, so maybe that’s a wee bit of an overreaction. It was Game 1 of the season on the first night of the season across the country. One supposes it’s still early.
“But I didn’t think it would go like that,” MSU coach Tom Izzo said.
No? Seven other top 10 teams played Monday, and they won by an average of over 40 points. See, that’s more like it. All the really big early-season games are still to come, with two of them — MSU against No. 2 Duke followed by top-ranked Kansas against No. 16 Kentucky — on tap Nov. 14 in the Champions Classic at the United Center.
So, let’s talk about what to watch for this season. Ten storylines:
1. KU, that’s who: Kansas is No. 1 by a landslide, with 46 of 63 first-place votes having gone to the Jayhawks in the AP preseason poll. That makes this a fine time to mention that North Carolina got 47 first-place votes a year ago and ended up declining an invitation to the NIT. But Teflon Bill Self, impervious to NCAA investigative advances, has what undeniably has become the top program in the country and a team that should be too good — and too big — to fail. Big as in 7-2 Michigan transfer Hunter Dickinson manning the middle.
2. Edey’s rocky road: No one is more fascinating than No. 3 Purdue’s 7-4, 300-pound Zach Edey, the reigning national player of the year and easily the college game’s most dominant force. How could a No. 1-seeded team with Edey lose in the first round of the NCAA Tournament as the Boilermakers did last season? How could a player as rare as Edey potentially not even get drafted in 2024? Enjoy this dude while you can.
3. 23 and we: “We” as in the entire Big Ten, which desperately needs one of its schools to win a national championship. It doesn’t matter who it is, though it might have to be Purdue or MSU; Illinois, ranked 25th, is the only other team in the initial poll. Not since Izzo was a fresh-faced lad of 45 in 2000 has a Big Ten squad cut down the nets at the Final Four. All those coaches constantly saying it’s the best league in the land has gotten more than a little embarrassing.
4. I-L-L …: Ay-yay-yay? Illinois is the Big Ten’s winningest team in league play over the last four seasons. In other news, seventh-year coach Brad Underwood has yet to guide the Illini past the second round of the NCAA Tournament. Last season’s squad was so dysfunctional, Underwood’s cartoonish yelling seemed to accomplish nothing. The Illini — who won their opener 80-52 against Eastern Illinois — have all kinds of talent, but we’ll see.
5. ’Cat fancy: It should be easy to buy into Northwestern’s quest to make a second straight trip to the Big Dance for the first time in school history. The Wildcats have All-American guard Boo Buie — who scored 27 in a 72-61 opening win against Binghamton — along with several other key returnees and promising Princeton transfer Ryan Langborg. But we still remember what happened the last time Chris Collins and company brought the guts of a tourney squad back, don’t we? They flopped.
6. N-I-L …: Ay-yay-yay? This being 2023, transfers (more than 1,800 of them!) are all over the map and some are getting paid like kings. But how will Dickinson respond to the pressure of playing at Kansas, which is — sorry, Big Ten lovers — way tougher than playing at Michigan? How will Max Abmas, the former March Madness star from Oral Roberts, handle expectations that he’ll star at Texas? Similar questions can be asked about Caleb Love going from North Carolina to Arizona and many others.
7. Ranking the conferences: The Big 12, which has Kansas and newcomer Houston ranked along with Texas and Baylor, is tops until proven otherwise. The Big East has three teams — Marquette, reigning national champ UConn and Creighton — stacked from 5th to 8th and Villanova (22nd) creeping back up. The SEC has Tennessee, Arkansas, Texas A&M, Kentucky and Alabama all in the poll. Top to bottom, the Big Ten likes to say it’s the toughest, but it looks like third or fourth at best. We’ll go Big 12, Big East, SEC and Big Ten, in that order, for now.
8. What about DePaul and Loyola? Yeah, what about them? Coach Tony Stubblefield has struggled to get anything going with the Blue Demons, who were 3-17 in the Big East last season. The Ramblers finished 15th — dead last — in the Atlantic 10. Loyola gets No. 10 Florida Atlantic, the Final Four darling of last March, at Wintrust Arena on Wednesday, a chance to get our attention. Until further notice, we’re fast asleep on these teams.
9. Magic Micah? All Micah Shrewsberry has to do at Notre Dame is step into the shoes of Mike Brey, who coached the Irish to 13 NCAA Tournaments in 23 seasons and was as beloved by the media as any coach in the country. But Shrewsberry did such impressive work at Penn State — no one did more with less last season — that it would be crazy to doubt him. He faces a huge rebuilding task, but the upsets will come.
10. My Top 25 poll: 1. Kansas, 2. Duke, 3. Purdue, 4. Michigan State, 5. Marquette, 6. UConn, 7. Creighton, 8. Tennessee, 9. Houston, 10. Arizona, 11. Florida Atlantic, 12. Baylor, 13. Villanova, 14. Arkansas, 15. Wisconsin, 16. Gonzaga, 17. Texas A&M, 18. Miami, 19. Kentucky, 20. Saint Mary’s, 21. Texas, 22. North Carolina, 23. Maryland, 24. USC, 25. Illinois.
