Welcome Back to Real Hoop
By setting our watches to the House of Highlights twitter account posting 6 tweets about the Lakers in a game that they lost, we know that the NBA season has been in full swing for a few weeks by now. Even if you subscribe to the idea that the season doesn’t truly begin until their Christmas Day spectacular, you can’t deny that SportsCenter is deep within their model of purely featuring the big market names and teams doing menial basketball tasks.
One lie I’d love to hear from Lebron, however, is how plugged in he is to the Real start of the basketball season, because tonight, November the Seventh in the year of our lord 2022, the true demons and heroes of basketball wake from their slumber and begin a 5 month trek of heartbreak and misery towards Houston, Texas. Where March Madness is solved in April, where 363 teams enter and only 4 can end their season with a win, where a handful of 5'10" white guys take a nation by storm for a few early spring weeks. College Basketball is upon us, and even in this season’s infancy, there is some monumental contests that can steer this season.
Akron (-4) vs. South Dakota State
South Dakota State is entering this season on a minor Cinderella Hangover. The Jackrabbits were a popular upset pick in last season’s NCAA tournament before Ed Cooley and the machinery that was 5-Seed Providence dismantled their 99th percentile NCAA offense and a 21 game win streak entering March. Behind their second best PPG was 6'7" guard (!!!) Baylor Scheierman. The emotional leader of fiery Summit League champions rode Tornado Alley south and transferred to Creighton this Summer. The only other players on last year’s roster to average over 10 points per game graduated, leaving Zeke Mayo and Luke Appel as the only returning starters. In the gunslinging Summit League, we can still expect shots to be put up from our boys in blue and yellow, but if they’ll go in is up for debate.
SDSU (the real one, who cares about those San Diego weirdos) will be traveling to the midwestern metropolis of Akron, Ohio to face a Zips team who had their own surprising postseason. Beginning their 2021–22 campaign by winning the MAC tournament as a 4 seed, they only lost by 4 to a national 4 seed in UCLA. Now, as 4 point favorites to open their season, they welcome a nuclear reactor of a basketball team into the Cradle of Coaches, the Rust Belt, where men are broken as quick as they are made, the Mid-American Conference.
Saint Mary’s (-9.5) vs Oral Roberts
Let it be known that I have am trying to be real analyst who creates staying power with my writing, so I will not refer to Oral Roberts as B***job Bobs in this write-up.
I can’t help but be excited about the shipment of another Summit League squad to the foreign lands of another mid-major to open our season. In this matchup, the bible thumping sharpshooters that are the Oral Roberts Golden Eagles go to pray with the Saint Mary’s Gaels of the Power 6 conference, the WCC.
Saint Mary’s is coming off an impressive year that was overshadowed by the happy Dog Dad Mark Few and Gonzaga. While the slightly-above-mid-major earned a fraudulent 1 seed, Saint Mary’s and San Francisco earned at large bids, while arguments could be made that BYU and Santa Clara were snubbed from a chance at the tournament as well. A five bid conference tests my limits for interest, but Saint Mary’s has a redeeming quality that will always keep them on my radar. Interestingly enough, the NBA’s top Australian players (who aren’t huge Point Forwards that shoot at unheard of levels), Patty Mills and Matthew Dellavedova, are both former Gaels. It will be a cold day in hell before I don’t find myself tuning in to the Aussie-to-US gritty point guard pipeline.
The reigning 5 seed will not be facing a cupcake like the Indiana Hoosiers they played last March. In fact, the only other team next to South Dakota State that doesn’t seem to blend in with last season’s top 5 leading offenses is their conference rival, Oral Roberts. I dove deep on these two teams and the ghost town that is the Summit League last spring, but everything in that thesis remains true, and I can’t wait to see how it all manifests.
What we know for sure is that Senior guard Max Abmas (pronounced A-smits???), who was vaulted into the public ethos when he scored 29 points in his Golden Eagle’s 15–2 upset of Ohio State, is returning after averaging over 26 points a game last year. It can be argued that we were in the midst of a pandemic and playing college basketball should have been the least of our worries when Ohio State was upset by Abmas and Abmas alone, but hindsight is 20/20. At this point, Abmas is aiming to create a spot for himself in the upcoming NBA draft as a reliable shooter, and one-off games like this out of conference showdown should be huge to cement his case as a three-and-D guy with longevity.
Other games that have caught my eye tonight
Warren Wilson @ Applachian State
Edward Waters @ North Carolina A&T
Bob Jones @ Wofford
Sarah Lawrence @ Yale
Basically, if your school is just a normal person’s name, I will watch you get demolished in basketball by a team that will, in turn, be demolished by a nationally ranked team in 2 weeks time.
It’s always a great time of year when you can scroll through any app or website that provides scores and need more than two hands to count the amount of teams without uploaded logos, so savor it. Let’s have a season.
