The roll call of eye-popping scores began with the start of the college basketball season. And there's a chance they won't slow down soon, for an important reason: this time, the names on the front of the jerseys tell less of a story than the names on the back.
The opening week's finals look like someone's idea of a joke. The opening acts, in exhibition season, should have warned everybody: LeMoyne 82, Syracuse 79, and Georgia Tech 84, Indiana (Pa.) 76 in overtime. Then, when the games counted: Texas-San Antonio 62, Iowa 50. Cornell 71, Alabama 67. Wofford 60, Georgia 57. Rider 88, Mississippi State 74. Cal State-Fullerton 68, UCLA 65 in two overtimes.
None of that includes Kentucky 72, Miami of Ohio 70, in Game Two of the John Calipari Era in Lexington; if not for freshman John Wall's heroics in, literally, the final second, that era would have been a carbon-copy of the start of the now-infamous Billy Gillispie Era (loss at home to Gardner-Webb in his second game).
Calipari, however, waited until Game Three to inadvertently get to the root of the November surprises: they shouldn't really be surprises. After seeing his team follow up its surrender of 15 3-pointers to Miami with 18 more in a win over Sam Houston State Thursday, the coach was steaming. "This may be, at this point, the worst defensive team I have had since 1988 (at Massachusetts),'' he said. "I was so mad a couple of times, my head almost popped off.
"I love my team, and we have a chance to be good, but we also have a chance of being bad if we don't start changing some things.''
Calipari, of course, had dropped broad hints since the start of practice that his freshman-laden, fourth-ranked team has a lot of learning to do, and that the win total might not match what Kentucky followers take for granted. The early upsets and narrow escapes by the big-name teams in the major conferences indicate that Calipari is far from alone. At a lot of programs, reputations precede accomplishments, even potential.
Take two of Kentucky's Southeastern Conference brethren who took early beatings -- both, realistically, should have been expected. Both Georgia and Alabama made well-documented coaching changes in midseason last year, brought in new head men this season, have gutted rosters, and are consensus picks to be among the worst in the conference this season. Losing to, respectively, Wofford and Cornell is par for the course.
"Honestly, I think we caught them at a good time, while Coach (Anthony) Grant is still trying to get his stuff in,'' Cornell coach Steve Donahue admitted after the win in Tuscaloosa. The two leading scorers that night, Ryan Wittman and Jeff Foote, were both seniors combining for 40 of the Big Red's 71 points.
Wofford, meanwhile, had five starters returning from a 16-win team last season; Georgia's roster features eight freshmen and sophomores, and one of the few seniors expected to lead, forward Albert Jackson, injured his left wrist in preseason practice and played only three minutes against the Terriers.
The examples abound. UCLA had suffered heavy talent losses the last two seasons, since the end of its run of three straight Final Fours. Iowa, meanwhile, has had a talent drain since head coach Steve Alford departed to New Mexico, and Todd Lickliter, the hot name from Butler at the time he was hired in 2007, is 0-2 after falling to Duquesne. Iowa, with nine freshmen and sophomores, next faces No. 3 Texas in a now much-less stellar matchup in the CBE Classic in Kansas City Monday.
Of course, the table was set for this kind of start to the season by the exhibition shocker heard 'cross the country, LeMoyne's victory in the Carrier Dome. And the pattern holds there, too: Syracuse lost four key players, including NBA draftee Jonny Flynn, and is importing a ton of newcomers. The Orange apparently learned fast, heading into Friday's Coaches Vs. Cancer Classic championship game against No. 6 North Carolina with three regular-season wins by an average of 31.3 points -- including Thursday's throttling of 13th-ranked Cal, whose coach, Mike Montgomery, had said going into the game, "I don't think any of us are as good as we are going to be later on.''
Syracuse's opponent Friday is in the same boat, and like Calipari, Roy Williams has gone past preaching patience and into pleading for it. As the games in Madison Square Garden approached, he wondered when he'd discover a go-to player down the stretch to replace the NBA-ticketed quartet of last season: "It'll be interesting to see who will do it when they're geared to stop you when the game's on the line.''And no one can explain what happened to defending SEC tournament champion Mississippi State, all its returning talent (some of it which dipped a toe into the NBA Draft waters last offseason) and its lofty preseason ranking. Rider does have four starters back from a team that won 19 games and played postseason ball (the CBI, for what that's worth). The Bulldogs have five starters returning.
Bulldog forward Kodi Augustus spoke for the entire college basketball nation when he said: "This is Rider. (We're) preseason ranked No. 18 in the country. We're not supposed to lose our first game, home opener. Wow. It's crazy."
That one, yes, is crazy. The others that seem so crazy at first glance ... not so much. If those scores surface two or three months for now, though, crazy would fit.
Of course, that's assuming another surprise evolves Saturday ... when Rider plays at Kentucky.
