All 25 ranked teams played on college basketball’s opening day, and while there were no marquee matchups, there were still insights to glean. You can’t win the national championship in early November, but the journey must start somewhere and even early-season tune-ups will wind up on your NCAA Tournament résumé months down the road.
College basketball featured immense personnel turnover even before the transfer portal era, but the advent of it loosened restrictions on player movement and has only accelerated the amount of change we see on rosters each season. In many ways, these early-season games can be the first look at overhauled on-court products even for programs with veteran coaches.
While No. 1 North Carolina and No. 2 Gonzaga feature some familiar faces, plenty of other hopeful national contenders look almost unrecognizable. No. 7 Duke returns just one rotation player from last season and is breaking a new coach in Jon Scheyer, while No. 10 Arkansas essentially has a whole new team.
As we reflect on the familiar and foreign sights that college basketball’s opening couple of nights provided, our writers are sharing which teams impressed the most for this edition of the Dribble Handoff.
Only one team from a top-seven conference already owns a win over another team from a top-seven conference — and that team is Memphis, which looked rock-solid in Monday’s season-opening victory at Vanderbilt. The Tigers led by double-digits 10 minutes in, and by as many as 19 points in the second half, before ultimately winning 76-67. In doing so, Memphis improved to 36-12 with DeAndre Williams in the lineup since his enrollment prior to the 2000-21 season. FYI: the Tigers are just 7-7 in that same span when Williams does not play, which is among the reasons it’s sensible to argue that even though five different five-star freshmen have enrolled at Memphis in the Penny Hardaway era, no player has been more important under Hardaway than Williams, a 26-year-old transfer whose college career began at Evansville.
Three of Hardaway’s first four teams at Memphis featured at least one five-star freshman, and those teams often disappointed early for a variety of reasons. This team is different, though. The starting lineup at Vanderbilt featured five players who are either seniors or super seniors. According to KenPom.com, the Tigers are literally the most “experienced” team in college…
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