NCAA Basketball: 8 takeaways from the first week of the 2018-19 season

NCAA Basketball is back and the first week of the season is nearly in the books. What are the biggest takeaways from this week’s action?

It’s so nice to have college basketball back in our lives, isn’t it?

The first week of the season is in the books and plenty of statements have already been made. Duke made the statement with a dominant win over Kentucky (and the Wildcats followed that up with a narrow win over Southern Illinois and, no, it’s not time to panic yet) and several other marquee games allowed teams to pick up high-profile wins.

Florida State blew out Florida at home, Texas fought back to beat Arkansas in overtime, Auburn handily beat Washington, Buffalo (who’s a very, very good team) ousted West Virginia in Morgantown, and Furman went on the road to upset Loyola-Chicago in the closing seconds.

It’s become natural in today’s sports world to view everything through what I call the “football lense” where everyone overreacts to one game. This is done with football analysis because there’s a week between games and there are so few of them, making everything mean a little more.

That’s not the case with college basketball – and it’s important to treat it differently. It’s vital to remember that it’s still extremely early in the season. Teams will get better (some will get worse) and be much different versions of themselves by March.

But, this has been our first chance to get a look at who these teams will be in 2018-19, and we have learned some new things already. Here are my eight biggest takeaways from the past week in this edition of the Rauf Report.