Basketball - Opening Night

Last night was the opening night for the 2024/2025 NCAA Men's Basketball regular season!  I must confess, with how hectic the 2024 College Football season has been so far, I was caught somewhat off guard and my model is far from prepared for this new basketball season.  I'll be working to get that up and going so I can present some rankings sooner rather than later.

Opening Night Recap:

While I was only able to watch bits and pieces of a couple of the bigger games, I was definitely tracking some of the scores from around the country and here's what stood out to me after opening night.

First off, Gonzaga look dangerous!  They absolutely dismantled Baylor the entire game.  I'm sure they'll be a threat once again this year.  Purdue looked a little bit sketchy for a while against Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, but ultimately ran away with it late.  Speaking of Texas A&M, how about UCF?  Opening night court storming is always fun to see as the Aggies go down against the Knights.  Texas were another Top 25 team to go down last night against Ohio State in Vegas.  All other Top 25 teams who played yesterday won their respective games.  Alabama are worth noting after they absolutely disrespected UNC Asheville and more than doubled the Bulldogs' score.  They look very good for another deep run this season.  Houston and Cincinnati also doubled their opponent's score as Top 25 teams and Iowa State got close.  Lastly, shoutout to UNC Wilmington for putting up 143 POINTS against Mount Olive in their 143-91 win. I don't know how there are 244 points in a single game of college basketball, but welcome to college sports.

Lots of basketball to play.  This is only day 1!  I'll get my model up and running for this season and I'll begin releasing my weekly rankings as soon as possible.