NCAA Basketball: 5 biggest takeaways from 1st week of 2022-23 season

The NCAA basketball season is underway and there’s already been intrigue and excitement across the country. Today marks the beginning of a new series entitled Loose Change, where I (Joey Loose) will give my two cents on recent news and happenings in college basketball. While we can’t possible comprehend or follow everything that’s happened, we’ll be doing our best to look at a few takeaways on a weekly basis about the sport of college basketball.

1. What We Learned from Gonzaga vs. Michigan State

One of the more exciting parts of the early college basketball season are gimmick games. There will be plenty of holiday tournaments in the weeks to come, but our initial treat was the Armed Forces Classic on Friday between Gonzaga and Michigan State. The two programs played on an aircraft carrier in what is quite possibly the only outdoor game of this basketball season. After Michigan State held a 7-point lead at the half, Gonzaga battled back, eking out a 64-63 victory over the Spartans.

Drew Timme was his usual impressive self, with 22 points and 13 rebounds, though he did miss half a dozen free throws. Even more impressively was how the Spartans played in this game. Seen as double-digit underdogs, they were the assertive team early, getting out to that nice lead in the first half before the Bulldogs stormed back. Four of their five starters were in double-digits, led by Mady Sissoko’s 14-point, 9-rebound effort in the close loss.

But what exactly can we gleam from these gimmick games? It’s not really shocking to see these teams down in the 60’s when the game was played outdoors, where both teams dealt with sun and wind factors very unusual for basketball. One thing we did learn was that this Michigan State team is a bit better than we might have anticipated. They don’t have the star power they’ve had in recent years; there’s no Cassius Winston leading the charge, but the players they do have might be capable of making some noise in the Big Ten.

We also saw that Gonzaga is certainly beatable. This program was virtually unbeatable two seasons ago, charging to the national title game with an unblemished mark. They lost three regular-season games last year, but returned a ton of talent and look like one of the certain favorites to cut down the nets in April. Were these struggles do the unusual playing conditions? Gonzaga shot poorly from beyond the arc, but their defense had another solid performance and we can’t really draw any significant conclusions just yet; let’s wait till they play Texas and Kentucky this week.