NCAA Basketball: Early overreactions from Day 1 of 2021-22 season

ACC Basketball sees a trio of teams drop season openers

Sometimes early-season buy games aren’t buy games at all. For those that don’t know, buy games are essentially “guaranteed wins” where teams boost their home schedule with teams they pay to come lose what should be easy victories.

In this case, the No. 25 ranked Virginia Cavaliers, Pittsburgh Panthers, and Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets basketball squads saw their season-openers fall apart with early losses at home.

Virginia basketball could see their ranking go away following a 66-58 loss to the Navy Midshipmen. It’s Navy basketball’s first win over an AP Top 25 team since 1986, back when they defeated the Syracuse Orange in the 1986 NCAA Tournament to advance to the Sweet 16.

It’s an early notch for the Midshipmen to put under their belt while it has UVA basketball licking their wounds. Jayden Gardner still went for 18 points and 10 rebounds on 7-of-13 shooting and Kihei Clark had 12 points and two assists but as an offense, the Cavaliers just came up flat.

They were 4-of-16 from 3-point range and trailed 42-35 at the half after shooting just 2-of-8 from behind the arc. They got just five total points from their bench and scored just eight fastbreak points in a game where they led for a total of 2:18. Their offense was their biggest question mark coming into the year and it reared its head on the very first night of NCAA  basketball. They’ll need to find their third and fourth scorer before January arrives.

Georgia Tech basketball saw a 69-63 lead turn into a 72-69 loss against MAC basketball’s Miami (Ohio) as the mid-major pulled off an upset. In a game that saw six ties and 11 lead changes, Mekhi Lairy led the way for the Redhawks with 23 points including a putback rebound to give them the lead for good with 12 seconds remaining and two free throws to extend their lead to 72-69 to cap off a 9-0 run going away.

The Yellow Jackets have dropped two season openers in a row under head coach Josh Pastner, which could be part of the growing pains of life without Jose Alvarado. They still got 26 points on 4-of-6 shooting from 3-point range from Michael Devoe but as a team, they turned the ball over 14 times while dishing out just 11 assists and shot just 23.5 percent from 3-point land, including 0-of-4 in the second half. Those are some areas for them to improve upon heading into their game with Stetson on Friday.

Pittsburgh basketball took probably the biggest lumps of the group in their 78-63 loss to the Citadel Bulldogs on the opening night of NCAA basketball. Jason Roche went off for 27 points on eight made 3-pointers for The Citadel.

The Panthers weren’t completely dominated when breaking things down. Their bench just was abysmal in Game 1, putting up just five total points, though Onyebuchi Ezeakudo dished out three assists in 23 minutes. Losing Nike Sibande to a right knee ACL tear in their exhibition victory over Gannon on Nov. 1 could prove to be a big loss for this group.

They got a combined 47 points from their duo of Femi Odukale (20 points) and John Hugley (27 points) but outside of them, the rest of the team managed to produce just 16 points with sophomore William Jeffress going 1-of-10 and 0-of-5 from behind the arc.

While they did manage to dish out 14 assists on 23 made shots, they still shot 2-of-17 (11.8 percent) from behind the arc as a team. They’ll need to bounce back against West Virginia in the Backyard Brawl on Friday.