Welcome back, college basketball. My, how some things have changed.
You could tell that in the nation’s first game of the season, an 11 a.m. tipoff in Indianapolis where IU Indianapolis took the floor with a new name (formerly IUPUI), new coach (Paul Corsaro from Division II) and 16 new players, which matches the largest rebuild in the country. The NAIA team the Jaguars rolled over 100-44, IU Columbus, never even had a program until this season.
On that note, the long road to San Antonio and the Final Four could officially go on the clock.
Some things looked familiar enough on opening day.
No. 1 Kansas still knows how to get the Lawrence fans in the mood, winning its 52nd home opener in a row going back to 1973, cruising over Howard by 30.
No. 2 Alabama can still score, shooting 63 percent to bury UNC Asheville by 56, with seven players in double figures.
No. 4 Houston can still defend, suffocating Jackson State 97-40, with a 35-4 gap in points off turnovers.
No. 9 North Carolina still knows how to say hello to a season, holding back Elon 90-76 to go 103-12 all-time in openers, even if the Tar Heels needed a 21-5 rush in the last 6 ½ minutes to do it. They committed only six turnovers, their fewest in a first game since the stat became official in the 1970s.
No. 12 Tennessee still owns the Big South. The 80-64 win over Gardner-Webb puts the Volunteers at 29-0 against the league.
Opening day still throws in a twist or two. UCF was picked to finish 11th in the Big 12 but the Knights promptly knocked off No. 13 Texas A&M 64-61— the first court-storming upset of the season. North Florida, previously 0-32 all-time against current SEC members, put on a 15-7 charge at the end to shock South Carolina 74-71. Princeton came from 16 points down to catch Iona 81-80. Maryland led Manhattan only 31-28 at halftime but won 79-49, with 22 points and 20 rebounds from Derik Queen, the first freshman with a 20-20 in his debut in 17 years. That was part of a 14-0 day for the Big, Big, Big Ten.
But Monday spoke of change, too.
There was a strong hint that No. 6 Gonzaga might be deeper than the Zags have ever been with the way they throttled No. 8 Baylor 101-63 and delivered the loudest statement of the day, which came in the wee hours. It was their biggest win ever over a top-10 opponent and Baylor’s worst shellacking in 17 years. The Bears hadn’t opened with a ranked opponent since 1979, and now they know why. “For Baylor fans that stayed up, I promise that we will get a lot better, and we will give you a better effort than this,” Bears coach Scott Drew said. “As far as Gonzaga goes, I think they’re going to have a special year, and always cheer for them when we’re not playing.”
Kansas has more fresh-faced depth, too. Monday’s leading scorer was playing for South Dakota State this time last season as Zeke Mayo came off the been to put up 19 points. That was part of the 50 points produced by Jayhawk newcomers.
Duke whipped Maine 96-62 with 18 points, seven rebounds, five assists and three steals from Cooper Flagg, who won’t even turn 18 for another seven weeks. But Flagg wasn’t even the highest-scoring freshman for the Blue Devils. Kon Knueppel had 22.
DePaul won for the first time in 310 days, snapping a 20-game losing streak with an 80-78 overtime victory over Southern Indiana in Chris Holtmann’s first game as coach. Another new face for the Blue Demons, Coastal Carolina transfer Jacob Meyer, hit a 3-pointer with two seconds left to force overtime and made two free throws with two seconds left to win it. He led the state of Kentucky in scoring as a high school junior and senior.
The guy who replaced Holtmann at Ohio State, Jake Diebler, finally worked his first game as the official head coach after closing last season as an interim. Nice start. The Buckeyes upset No. 19 Texas 80-72 by hitting 14 of 28 from 3-point land.
Michigan started a new day with Dusty May as coach and Yale transfer Danny Wolf in the paint and stormed past Cleveland State 101-53. Wolf had a 19-13 double-double.
Louisville began the Pat Kelsey rejuvenation mission by mashing Morehead Stead 93-45. The Cardinals hadn’t won a season opener by that margin since 2001, when they had a new coach named Rick Pitino. Kelsey has the defense primed for his debut, forcing 21 turnovers and holding Morehead State to 23 percent shooting. Louisville joined in a 15-0 opening day for the ACC.
For the most vivid game of change, there was Indiana State vs. Florida Atlantic. Both have been recent national darlings, with FAU in the Final Four two years ago and Indiana State in the NIT championship game last season. But both paid the price of success, meaning their coaches left for greener pastures, and many of their players transferred up the ladder. Indiana State returned only 2.8 percent of its scoring from last season, FAU only 3.4 percent. Clearly, Indiana State has more rebuilding to do as FAU rolled 97-64.
The most conspicuous face missing from last season?
Welcome to West Lafayette. Purdue has not lost against a non-conference regular season opponent since 2020, and a big reason — a very big reason — was Zach Edey, who missed one game in four seasons. Now the two-time national player of the year is a Memphis Grizzly, and the Boilermakers took the court without him against Texas A&M-Corpus Christi Monday. As a reminder of what he helped do, the national runner-up banner was unveiled before tipoff.
But Purdue is still the Sequoia National Park of college basketball. When 7-4 freshman Daniel Jacobsen and 7-2 Will Berg both played in the first half, it was the 11th consecutive season Purdue put someone 7-2 or taller on the court. The Boilermakers plainly have progress to make if they wish to stay atop the Big Ten. Between their 16 turnovers and 10 missed free throws, they left the door open for the Islanders, who were within three points with under seven minutes left before falling 90-73.
“It’s great but a new season’s started right?” coach Matt Painter said of the celebration of 2024. “We’re not walking around the mall waving our Final Four banner. We’re trying to do something in 2025 here and do something special. That didn’t look special to me out there. It looked like we’ve got a lot of work (to do).”
He didn’t like the turnovers, or the missed chances on offense, or the defense. Purdue was outscored 46-38 in the paint, which didn't happen often in the Edey years. “We’ve got to be able to score I don’t care if you’re 18 or you’re 24,” Painter said.
Jacobsen made an impact his first game with 13 points, seven rebounds, three blocked shots and a very Edey-like seven fouls drawn. “Obviously a big man at Purdue he has plenty of people to look at and learn from,” teammate Trey Kaufman-Renn said. Indeed, Painter has been down this road many times, of trying to work a new big man into the Boilermakers formula.
“I told them afterward it’s like watching a movie and you’ve seen it before but you don’t know how it ends,” he said. “That’s the game of basketball for us. We’ve got to relearn some things, and that’s our returning players. They’ve got to learn to embrace our younger players better. They weren’t here when Zach Edey was a freshman. They weren’t here to see his struggles. They weren’t here when I said throw the ball inside to him and they thought I was crazy.”
He’ll be counting a lot on faces from last spring’s march to the title game, such as Big Ten preseason player of the year Braden Smith and shooter Fletcher Loyer, who had 21 points. “There’s going to be bumps in the road. It’s a matter of us sticking together and figuring things out,” Loyer said. “We didn’t win back-to-back Big Ten championships just cruising down the road. It was tough. We fought every day, we got better as the season went along, we pushed each other.”
Smith ran the show with 15 assists Monday but that’s not the number on the stat sheet that caught his attention. “You can say 15 assists but I’m looking at the six turnovers and I’ve got to be better at that,” he said.
With faces old and new, the team that finished second last season has begun again. The team that finished first, Connecticut, starts Wednesday. It’s college basketball season.
