Three big things. Well, four and a half, if you like Iowa State.
College Basketball Begins
The college basketball season is underway, with Washington State and Alcorn State slinging rocks over on Pac-12 Network right now while on ESPN3, Manhattan plays something called Manhattanville, which sounds like a school Steve Masiello made up. Let’s get an accreditation check on Manhattanville, please. (Serious note: Here’s the Wikipedia page. Some cool stuff on there.)
The beginning of the season’s always loaded with games where, so long as there isn’t a big upset, the game will have been meaningless in the national picture. There’ll be a few big upsets, and we’ll talk about those in hindsight, but aside from more specialized rooting interests (we’ll get to the massive Iowa State/Kennesaw State matchup below), there are three ones tonight we know are good.
The two big ones are on ESPN and at Madison Square Garden. Kentucky/Duke, where two programs try to bounce back from woeful campaigns last year, loaded as usual with young talent; and Kansas/Michigan State before it, where Bill Self evidently doesn’t like Remy Martin and Michigan State would be in Kentucky and Duke’s bounce-back shoes if they hadn’t won the narrative game last March heading into Selection Sunday. 7:00 PM EST and “9:30 PM EST” (I’d imagine Duke/Kentucky’s starting late).
The third is, as has been mentioned elsewhere on this site, Louisiana Tech @ Alabama. Louisiana Tech is led by Kenneth Lofton, Jr., who led USA Basketball’s U19 team to World Cup gold in Latvia this summer. He’s 6’7”, he’s 275 lbs., he’s from Port Arthur, Texas, and he’s a college basketball cult hero ready to become an American cult hero come March. Louisiana Tech’s next game of any note isn’t until after Thanksgiving, so if you don’t want to watch everyone bow to Coach K between games in New York, turn on SEC Network at 9:00 PM Eastern for Lofton vs. Oats.
MLB Free Agency Is Underway
Free agency is moving, mostly just with qualifying offers so far. There’s a lot of uncertainty this offseason—the CBA’s being renegotiated, a lockout’s a strong possibility, nobody wants to run baseball ops for the Mets (seriously, they’ve stopped looking). Still, qualifying offers have to be offered (there were fourteen), and Andrew Heaney signed with the Dodgers yesterday at a rather cheap rate ($8.5M/1 year, Heaney was worth 1.0 fWAR in 2021 but projects to be better than that). The GM meetings are going on, so keep your ears open. We’ll try to keep you abreast.
Tonight’s College Football Playoff Rankings
We dove into this yesterday, but the short version of what happened over the weekend is:
- Michigan State lost to Purdue, making the Big Ten almost certainly just a one-bid league at best.
- Wake Forest lost to UNC, further thinning the ACC’s tiny chance.
- Baylor lost to TCU, a marginal shakeup but a shakeup nonetheless.
- Everyone else of note won, with some (Alabama) doing it more narrowly than others (Georgia).
The biggest thing to watch tonight might be where Purdue lands. We have a decent idea of where the Power Five teams stack up and what they all probably have to do, but Cincinnati’s an unknown, and Cincinnati’s résumé is largely dependent upon their win over Notre Dame, while Notre Dame’s résumé is leaning heavily on their wins over Wisconsin and Purdue. Purdue climbing into the top 20 should be the expectation. If they can rise higher, it’ll bode well for the Bearcats.
Iowa State’s Football Situation
Iowa State throttled Texas on Saturday, which was exciting and also made the loss to West Virginia sting that much harder. The deal with Iowa State now is that for this to be a season that ends somewhere within the realm of the original expectations, the Cyclones need to make another Big 12 Championship, which can happen either by winning out, including beating Oklahoma in Norman, or by going 2-1 and having Oklahoma State go 1-2 (Pokes’ remaining schedule: TCU-H, Texas Tech-A, Oklahoma-H). The Cyclones play Texas Tech in Lubbock on Saturday, which is about as easy of a game as playing West Virginia in Morgantown.
Iowa State’s Basketball Situation
We haven’t paid much attention to Iowa State basketball over the offseason, which means I believe we haven’t talked about Javan Johnson transferring out, Blake Hinson transferring out, or Xavier Foster getting kicked off the team (Foster’s reportedly being investigated for sexual assault, and while the legal process seems to be ongoing, our best wishes are of course with the alleged survivor).
The result is that only ten scholarship players remain on the roster, one of which is stud freshman Tyrese Hunter; three of which are returnees George Conditt IV, Tre Jackson, and Jaden Walker; and six of which are transfers. KenPom has the team finishing 13-17 overall (it doesn’t account for the TBD game) but just 4-14 in the Big 12, where it projects them as the worst team overall, the worst team offensively, and the worst team defensively. It’s a rebuilding year, and it starts tonight in Ames against Kennesaw State.
Kennesaw State isn’t much. Iowa State’s somewhere around a 15-point favorite. Winning comfortably is the goal. This is one of seven buy games on ISU’s non-conference schedule, with the rest of the slate made up of Oregon State, Xavier, Memphis or Virginia Tech, Creighton, and Iowa (plus Mizzou in the Big 12/SEC Challenge). Memphis, Xavier, and Iowa are likely tournament teams. Virginia Tech’s on the bubble. Creighton’s in NIT-land. Oregon State’s trying to prove that March wasn’t a fluke, but projections on them are somewhat grim. Missouri’s kind of bad. The dream’s probably to go 9-3 over November and December, but the easiest path to that is beating Oregon State and either Iowa or Virginia Tech (the Iowa game’s at home, VT would be on a neutral court) while also taking care of business against all the cupcakes, starting tonight.
The game’s on ESPN+, if you want to pay five dollars per month. Tip is at 7:00 PM Cyclone Time.
