Grand opening

Not a bad start to the season. No Top 25 teams lost, but I watched about 7 hours of basketball yesterday. Can't complain about that. We're still a week away from college basketball's marquee opening event — btw, The Field of 68 will be at The Champions Classic — so there isn't an obvious season storyline yet.

In the meantime, let's dive into Monday's news.

1. Blowouts, buzzer-beaters, and more

With more than 200 games on Monday — including the entire Top 25 — the odds pointed to a few favorites going down. Didn't happen. All but one team (more on them later), won by double-digits, and 16 logged victories by 20+ points.

Didn't matter if teams had injuries (Kentucky), new coaches (Duke and Villanova), almost an entirely new starting five (Illinois, Arkansas) or everyone back (Indiana, North Carolina), college basketball's opening day went as expected.

With a few thrilling exceptions.

Loyola-Chicago, a Top 5 team in the Atlantic 10, couldn't shake Fairleigh Dickinson. The Ramblers led by 12 early in the second half, only to find themselves trailing by two with 1.8 seconds remaining. Cue Sheldon Edwards.

Helluva pass by Tom Welch there. Looks like he's ready for the World Cup.

Edwards finished with a team-high 19 points off the bench as Loyola ended up winning 88-82 in OT. They weren't the only buzzer-beater of the night, though.

Belmont, now in the Missouri Valley, controlled most of its game against Ohio, only to have a double-digit lead shrink in the final seconds. That's when freshman Cade Tyson came calling.

Tyson finished with a team-high 18 for the Bruins, who could be a top 3 team in the MVC.

Stat stuffers:

• Caleb Daniels: 24 points, 10 rebounds, 4 assists.

• Cason Wallace (subbing for Sahvir Wheeler): 15 points, 8 rebounds, 9 assists, 2 steals.

• Jalen Wilson: 19 points, 11 boards, 7 assists.

• Trevion Brazille: 21 points, 11 rebounds, 1 assist.

• Azuolas Tubelis: 23 points, 7 rebounds, 6 assists.

• Hunter Dickinson: 22 points, 12 rebounds, 1 assist, 3 blocks.

• Coleman Hawkins: 23 points (including five 3s), 12 rebounds, 3 assists, 1 block, 2 steals. (Terrence Shannon led Illinois with 24 points.)

• Jelly Walker: 38 points (5 of 9 from deep).

Most nights, Walker would've led all scorers. but UNC Asheville's Drew Pember dropped 40 in the Bulldogs' big win at UCF. His final line — 40 points, 9 rebounds, 3 assists, 2 blocks, 2 steals, all on a whopping 42 percent of his team's possessions — was the best of the night.

In all, 11 players topped 30 points. Twenty seven (27!) teams hit triple digits, led by Eastern Kentucky (137-52 over Miami Ohio-Middleton), App State (142-74 over Warren Wilson) and Bryant, whose 147-39 win over Thomas saw seven players hit double-digits. (More mid-major takeaways are here.)

That's enough from me for one night. I'll let Rob Dauster and Jeff Goodman recap even more of the night — including interviews with Jon Scheyer, Donnie Jones, and Keyontae Johnson — in the first post-game AFTER DARK show of the year.

2. Beware those buy games

Every Top 25 team won, but not all of the power conference schools fared as well in their openers. The buy games that should be pseudo-exhibitions certainly didn't all play that way.

Start with No. 14 TCU, which trailed for most of its 73-72 win against Arkansas-Pine Bluff.

The Golden Lions hit 13 3-pointers and kept TCU off-balance throughout the game by being quicker and stretching the defense. The Horned Frogs didn't take their first lead until midway through the second half, and they needed Mike Miles, the Big 12 Preseason POY who left late with cramps, to hit the go-ahead 3-pointer with 52 seconds remaining to push them over the top.

“Knowing that no matter who we play, every team in the country is going to come at us,” said Emanuel Miller, who led TCU with 19 points, 15 in the second half. “We’re seen and perceived as one of the best teams in the country, so we’re going to get every team’s best. Credit to [Arkansas Pine Bluff], they came out playing hard.”

That was the nearest thing to a Top-25 upset. No. 9 Creighton also trailed in the second half before closing on a 16-3 run to win by 12. For actual losses that'll sting come March when the NCAA Tournament seeding committee is evaluating profile, here's a rundown:

• Ten years ago, Andy Enfield became a hot coaching commodity with Florida Gulf Coast and "Dunk City." Monday, he was on the other end of getting dunked as USC got run out of their own building in the second half of a 74-61 loss.

• Florida State had just eight scholarship players due to injuries or suspension, but were still 18-point favorites against Stetson. Didn't matter. They trailed by as many as 18 in an 83-74 loss, and now prep for a Friday game at UCF. The silver lining? UCF lost at home against UNC Asheville...

• Oklahoma's 52-51 loss to Sam Houston State was the opposite of FSU's. The Sooners led by 14 points with less than 10 minutes remaining but hit just three of 10 shots down the stretch. OU was a 16-point favorite.

• Temple led Wagner by five with 43 seconds left, but Jahbril Price-Noel hit a 3 in the final three seconds, then scored the final points of the game in a 76-73 OT win.

• Rhode Island and Cal didn't enter the season with significant March hopes. Those hopes didn't get any help Monday as the Rams lost to Quinnipiac and UC Davis beat the Bears.

On the night, the Big East and the Big Ten were the only two power conferences to see all their teams win.

3. Nobody had better day than Jarod Haase

Stanford held off Pacific, 88-78, Monday afternoon, but it got an even bigger win shortly thereafter thanks to 2023 recruit Andrej Stojaković.

Stojaković, a 6-6 wing who's viewed as a consensus Top 25 prospect, is a skilled scorer and shot-maker, which probably isn't a surprise to anyone who watched his dad, Peja, play in the NBA. Also like his dad, he's not an explosive athlete but offsets that thanks to his combination of savvy and skill.

He's the second 2023 commit for the Cardinal, along with 4-star guard Kanaan Carlyle. It's a massive win for Stanford and coach Jarod Haase, who has never made the NCAA Tournament in six seasons at Palo Alto and has only finished above .500 in Pac-12 play once. It seems unlikely that wing Harrison Ingram will stick around after this season, but Stojaković should be a more than capable replacement.

Also in recruiting news:

• Rodney Brown, a 3-star wing, will re-commit to Cal.

• On3.com declared big man Aaron Bradshaw the top player in the class of 2023. The Kentucky prospect tops their newly updated Top 150 rankings.

4. Hartford's season off to rough start*

There's an asterisk there because Hartford's opener is today against Sacred Heart. But when your coach resigns the day before your first game, that's a rough start.

John Gallagher sent a letter Monday to school President Greg Woodward, explaining in great detail why he'd take such a drastic step. Among his listed reasons:

• The school declined to provide an athletic trainer for a scrimmage at Dartmouth last month. When a player was injured during the game, there was no school medical staff to attend to him.

• He didn't have the means to purchase meals for players while on the road, and no other options were made available.

• An ongoing lack of support for the program, including the removal of scholarships.

Read his full letter here. He's been with Hartford since 2010, going 169-207 in that span and is the winningest coach in school history.

The school issued a statement as well:

Hartford, which won the America East Tournament and the automatic NCAA tourney bid in 2021, is in the process of re-classifying to D-III. That'll take effect in Sept. 2025.

They have not yet named an interim or replacement coach.

5. Naismith Award vs. The Almanac

The preseason Naismith Trophy list dropped Monday, filled with names even casual hoops fans would recognize. Tshiebwe. Bacot. Timme. Sasser. And with 50 names, it's a pretty good cross-section of names across all conferences.

We ranked the Top 100 players in The Almanac. As you'd expect, there are a LOT of crossover names. However, there are eight players who made the Naismith list that weren't in the Almanac's Top 50. First one to spot them all and tags @mikemillerF68 with the answer wins a free subscription to The Field of 68 Daily.

A worthwhile challenge

Most conference challenges have a standard formula: Grab most of the league's programs, pair the high-profile programs and get some TV and streaming eyeballs. Then you move on with the rest of the season.

But the Mid-American and Sun Belt threw a nice wrinkle into that formula: A home-and-home series.

Neither league captures significant attention on its own, so this creates a compelling story for games that would normally be overshadowed by power conference league games. They won't lead SportsCenter, but give the leagues credit for adding some extra juice to the noncon.

Diamonds in the rough

After a day with more than 200 games, there are just 10 games on Tuesday, and only half of them involve teams from power conferences. The "best" game might be Mercer at East Carolina (7 pm ET, ESPN+), but I'm more interested in how many minutes Zach Edey plays in Purdue's home opener vs. Milwaukee (6:30 pm ET, Big Ten Network). Can the Panthers slow him with their own 7-footer, senior Moses Bol?

Best of rest (all times ET):

• Rider at Providence, 6:30 pm (Fox Sports 1)

• Montana at Duquesne, 7 pm (no TV)

Need daily betting insights? Don't miss our Best Bets show, streamed every day at 1 pm.

Poised for breakout(s)

Nearly everyone's played a game, but odds are you couldn't watch 99% of the matchups last night. So which players should you monitor going forward? John Fanta, Rob Dauster and Terrence Oglesby have some thoughts.

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Links as you check those Powerball tickets.

• A lawsuit alleges a Coppin State assistant coach catfished a player, then blackmailed him into videotaping a sexual encounter, then published the video when the player resisted further demands for sex.

• New Mexico State senior Xavier Pinson has been cleared to play this season.

• Jose Lopez says he'll be eligible by December for West Virginia.

• No such luck for Honor Huff, though. The Chattanooga guard — a first-time transfer — was denied his appeal by the Southern Conference.

• Ex-Syracuse AD Jake Crouthamel, a founding father of the Big East, died Monday.

• A report about the Pac-12 adding San Diego State is premature, The Athletic reports.

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