Written by Matt Zemek at Bloguin
The first day of the college basketball season featured many buckets… including the buckets of very cold water which drenched a number of ambushed programs.
It’s always a part of early-season college basketball: New faces and new lineups in a sport played by only five human beings at a time will create November instability. That’s just the way it is.
This sport allows space and time to its participants with a 30-game schedule. Two losses will not disqualify a team from being able to compete for a national title; that’s football’s unique tension point. However, it’s not as though teams receive an endless supply of opportunities to correct their mistakes. The accumulation of too many setbacks — either bad losses or failures to accumulate big-poker-chip wins — will matter in March. This is the exquisite drama of the whole of the college basketball season, reminding us that November through February matter.
As we start what is essentially the “November Through February Matters” Tour, let’s start in two locales: Raleigh and Madison.
While several teams felt the sting of an opening-day loss, no two programs were hit harder than North Carolina State and Wisconsin.
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