Biggest Disappointments of the 2020-21 Men's College Basketball Season so Far
Look no further than men's college basketball's blue-blood programs for evidence of how disappointing things have been for some teams in the first few weeks of this season.
Kentucky is unranked. Duke really doesn't deserve to be ranked. Indiana and North Carolina both lost to Texas and both already have multiple losses. UCLA had a 15-point loss to San Diego State and a triple-overtime scare against Pepperdine.
At least Kansas looks fine?
The good news for college basketball's slow starters is there's still plenty of time to turn things around. This isn't Major League Baseball, where you can lose a pennant in April. Nor is it college football, where a season-opening loss can haunt an otherwise solid team for months. Turn a corner by mid-January, hit your stride in March, and you can still win a national championship.
Having said that, there are quite a few teams we were expecting much more from during this first month or so of the campaign.
Kentucky Wildcats
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Might as well start out with the biggest disappointment of all.
In some ways, Kentucky's early struggles are understandable.
Aside from the opener against Morehead State, the Wildcats have played a much tougher schedule than usual. In most years, the first four weeks of Kentucky's schedule consists of the Champions Classic and six to eight games at home against mid-majors going nowhere fast. This year, John Calipari scheduled an old, tough mid-major (Richmond), a road game against Georgia Tech and a home game against Notre Dame in addition to the Champions Classic.
While I can appreciate that neither Notre Dame nor Georgia Tech was expected to be great this year, that's way more formidable than last year's seven-game stretch in Rupp Arena against Eastern Kentucky, Evansville, Utah Valley, Mount St. Mary's, Lamar, UAB and Fairleigh Dickinson.
And the 'Cats have played that tougher schedule without a single player who was on the roster last season. With that much change during COVID times, it's little surprise they have been decidedly less than crisp in the early going.
That said, the entire team is shooting poorly and has not taken good care of the ball, and that is a massive concern for a Kentucky team that is more guard-dependent than usual. Because while this program hasn't been much better than the national average in three-point shooting or turnover aversion over the past eight years, it usually has a dominant force or two in the paint who can change the game on both ends of the floor. Maybe Isaiah Jackson gets to that point by the end of the year, but that paint presence has been lacking thus far.
Kentucky did at least show some serious signs of life in the second half against Notre Dame, clawing all the way back from a 53-33 deficit to almost win the game at the buzzer. But then they turned around and lost by double digits to North Carolina, resulting in the program's first five-game losing streak since the 1989-90 season. With the rivalry game against Louisville on deck, things might get even worse before they get better.
Memphis Tigers
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The good news for Memphis is that its star player wasn't forcibly removed from the team three games into the season this year. Not that we ended up getting an NCAA tournament anyway, but I'll always wonder how doggone good the Tigers might have been last year with more than 69 minutes of James Wiseman.
The bad news is Memphis still isn't winning many games.
The Tigers are 5-3 overall, but let's just say that three of those wins—home games against Arkansas State, Central Arkansas and Mississippi Valley State—aren't going to impress the selection committee.
In the Bad Boy Mowers Crossover Classic, Memphis started its season with a great first step, crushing Saint Mary's by 17 points. The Tigers opened the subsequent game against Western Kentucky with an 18-8 lead midway through the first half when things came unraveled. They lost that game and the next one to VCU. And this past Saturday, they let one slip away in the closing minutes against Auburn.
Against the Hilltoppers, Memphis simply got manhandled in the paint by Charles Bassey. Considering Bassey is a former McDonald's All-American now playing his third season of college basketball while Memphis' starting center, Moussa Cisse, entered that game with 20 minutes of collegiate experience, we probably should have seen that one coming.
Against VCU and Auburn, Memphis couldn't buy a bucket and was too sloppy, turning the ball over 37 times between those two contests. The Tigers also coughed up the ball 20 times against Central Arkansas. Too many turnovers was a frequent significant issue for this young team last year, and it appears that is still going to be a problem that flares up from time to time.
But the real disappointment is that Memphis already blew most of its key opportunities. The Tigers are only scheduled to play one game against the only AAC team currently ranked in the KenPom Top 50 (Houston). Going 1-3 against their only noteworthy nonconference opponents puts the Tigers squarely behind the 8-ball. Unless they win that road game against Houston in February, they can probably only withstand one or two other slip-ups in league play if they want to make the NCAA tournament.
Kansas State Wildcats
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To be clear, no one was expecting Kansas State to compete for a national championship this year. Just about everyone had the Wildcats projected for ninth or 10th place in the 10-team Big 12.
But there's a fine line between "maybe the worst team in a great conference" and "almost certainly the worst team among the six major conferences."
Kansas State tripped over that line when it lost by 13 points to Fort Hays State.
Fort Hays State is a Division II team, so that game technically doesn't count against the Wildcats' resume as far as the selection committee or KenPom.com are concerned. Yet, we all know Kansas State got blown out by what isn't even a good D-II team. FHSU was 0-3 on the season heading into that game.
Granted, we already knew there were issues in Manhattan, Kansas. Prior to that loss, Kansas State was 1-3 with home losses to Drake, Colorado and UNLV—each by double digits. Even though that game against FHSU did not count against Kansas State's KenPom ranking, it had already dropped from No. 114 to No. 152.
Perhaps that loss was something of a wake-up call, though?
Kansas State then won two consecutive games, including a nine-point road victory over Iowa State that was quite unexpected. For now, we're chalking that one up to the blind squirrel theory, because Kansas State lost by 31 to Baylor its next time out. Plus, the Cyclones have been disappointing in their own right, starting out 1-4, including getting run out of the gym by Iowa. That 105-77 loss was the most lopsided blowout (in either direction) in the 50-year history of that rivalry.
It wouldn't be that shocking if neither Iowa State nor Kansas State wins a single game against the rest of the Big 12.
Boston College Eagles
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Much like Kansas State, it's important to point out that no one was expecting greatness from Boston College this season.
The Eagles haven't even managed a .400 winning percentage in ACC play in any of the past nine seasons, and they were an overall sub-.500 team in all but one of those years. From that already struggling team, they lost four of last year's six leading scorers.
For some reason, though, they scheduled aggressively.
Boston College opened the season against Villanova in the Empire Classic and was expected to draw either Arizona State or Baylor the subsequent night. When Baylor had to drop out of the event, Rhode Island took its place and ended up losing to both Arizona State and Boston College.
That one unexpected game against the Rams still stands as BC's only win. So, had it not been for a COVID outbreak within Baylor's roster, the Eagles would probably be 0-6 instead of 1-5, as they subsequently lost to St. John's, Florida, Minnesota and Syracuse. The St. John's and Minnesota games were close. The Florida game was a 20-point loss. The Syracuse game was a 38-point loss at home.
Hard to see this getting better any time soon, and even harder to envision the same coach on the sideline a year from now.
Jim Christian was already very much on the hot seat. Boston College never even sniffed the NCAA tournament in his first six seasons as the head coach, and I imagine the Eagles were at least contemplating a change until the pandemic resulted in almost every major-conference team just standing pat. (Wake Forest was the lone exception to the rule, and even the Demon Deacons waited until late April to fire Danny Manning.)
Barring a drastic turn of events, the Eagles are going to win fewer than 33 percent of their games and then hit the reset button.
Arizona State Sun Devils
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Boston College has been the most disappointing team from the Empire Classic, but Arizona State isn't far behind.
Things starting out innocuously enough for the Sun Devils. They won three of their first four games, and the loss—by nine on a neutral court against Villanova—was a forgivable one.
Since then, however, they lost by 12 at home to San Diego State, needed a late three-pointer to survive by one point at Grand Canyon and got smoked by UTEP at home.
Though they opened the season at No. 18 in the AP Top 25, the Sun Devils had perhaps the most glaring Achilles' heel of any ranked team: no frontcourt presence. The backcourt trio of Remy Martin, Alonzo Verge and Josh Christopher has been, predictably, great. Each of those three guards is averaging north of 15 points per game.
But replacing Romello White (transferred to Ole Miss) in the paint was always going to be a challenge, and it has become an insurmountable issue since freshman Marcus Bagley suffered a lower-leg injury in the fourth game of the season.
In the loss to San Diego State, ASU shot just 7-of-24 from inside the arc while the Aztecs went 19-of-36 and won the rebounding battle. In the loss to UTEP, the Miners committed 20 turnovers, but they made up for it by out-rebounding the Sun Devils by 20. (It was also an uncharacteristically atrocious night from three-point range for Arizona State, which made just one of its 18 attempts.)
And, y'all, UTEP isn't even a good rebounding team. In their last game, the Miners were pummeled 46-25 in the rebounding department by Arizona. That just goes to show how much work Arizona State needs to do.
Even before they lost Bagley indefinitely, things weren't going great. The Sun Devils have now been out-rebounded in six consecutive games—a streak that began with Villanova completely owning the glass against them.
This is maybe still an NCAA tournament team, but Arizona State is nowhere close to living up to the preseason hype of being the highest-ranked team from the Pac-12.
Washington Huskies
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Two years ago, Mike Hopkins finally put Washington at least slightly back on the map. With an old roster made up primarily of Lorenzo Romar's recruits, Hopkins coached the Huskies to 27 wins and their first NCAA tournament appearance in nearly a decade.
But they put together a sub-.500 record last year, and they are well on their way to doing the same this year after a pitiful 1-5 start.
The season-opening loss to Baylor was to be expected. It would have been nice of the Huskies to stay within 30 points of a team they beat in their first game last year, but alas. They never had any hope against the Bears.
Much more disturbing was the subsequent 57-42 loss to UC Riverside—a program which, in 20 years at the D-I level, has never won so much as 18 games in a single season. It'd be one thing to lose a close game to a hot-shooting-on-that-night Highlanders team, but that 15-point blowout in a rock fight was easily one of the most embarrassing results in the past 20 years of Washington basketball.
Washington then fell to 0-3 with a loss at Utah, in which the Utes—playing in their first game of the season—went on a 55-25 "run" that spanned more than half the game.
The Huskies did then finally win a game against Seattle, but they turned right back around and dropped to 0-2 in Pac-12 play in a home loss to Oregon. And then they pretty much no-showed the home game against Montana to drop to 1-5 overall.
In fairness, Washington has had to try to replace all three of its top players from last year. Isaiah Stewart and Jaden McDaniels both did the one-and-done thing, and Naz Carter has been suspended from the team since mid-October. In its current state, this team is pretty much Quade Green or bust. That doesn't make the situation any less disappointing, though.
The ACC's Usual Suspects
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In the preseason AP Top 25, Virginia checked in at No. 4, Duke was No. 9 and North Carolina was No. 16. (Hey look, fellow math nerds, a sequence of perfect squares!) That made them the three top candidates to win the ACC, which almost always comes with the reward of a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament and a spot at or near the top of the list of teams who might win the whole shebang.
Through the first few weeks of the season, though, we're not picking up that sort of vibe from any of these squads.
Virginia is the only member of the trio that hasn't already accumulated multiple losses, but the Cavaliers certainly have not impressed. They blew out both Towson and St. Francis (PA), and that's nice. Neither of those teams ranks in the KenPom Top 200, though.
Virginia also lost to San Francisco and needed overtime to avoid a home loss to Kent State. Yikes.
The San Francisco game was probably an anomaly. The Dons were on fire from three-point range, doing 64 percent of their scoring from beyond the perimeter, yet Virginia still had a chance to win at the buzzer. The Kent State game was more troubling, because the Golden Flashes didn't shoot well and four of their five starters fouled out. Virginia simply played a neck-and-neck, no-obvious-excuses game against a team that the MAC coaches projected for a seventh-place finish this year.
The Cavaliers have since needed to postpone or cancel games against Michigan State, William & Mary and Wake Forest while in a COVID pause. Thus, in addition to the early struggles, they're also missing out on key opportunities to improve.
North Carolina lost a great game against Texas in the championship of the Maui Invitational. Then, the Tar Heels impressively bounced back from an early 16-point deficit against a very good Iowa team, briefly taking the lead midway through the second half before running out of gas. We're not overly concerned with their two losses. They clearly already look better than last year's 14-19 disaster. But two losses in the first five games will always be a little troubling in Chapel Hill.
Duke, on the other hand, might be the most Jekyll and Hyde team in the country this year.
It has been literally one-quarter of a century since the last time the Blue Devils won fewer than 66 percent of their games in a season, but they've been a disjointed mess at times.
They shot below 23 percent from three-point range in each of the home losses to Michigan State and Illinois. Mike Krzyzewski has tried a whole bunch of different lineups, but none of them seem to work for an extended period of time. And now he has to work on lineups sans Jalen Johnson, arguably the team's best player, who is out indefinitely with a foot injury. (Why does Duke always seem to have foot injuries?)
They didn't have anything close to a normal offseason to work through these issues. Home-court advantage simply doesn't exist without the Cameron Crazies. And to make matters worse, they canceled the rest of their nonconference games and now need to figure things out on the fly in the ACC.
They did get out to a promising start to ACC play with a 75-65 road win over Notre Dame on Wednesday night. Duke shot 53.3 percent from three-point range and largely avoided the turnover issues that flared up in the first four games.
Are freshman DJ Steward, Jeremy Roach and Jaemyn Brakefield (combined 40 points and 7-of-9 perimeter shooting against the Fighting Irish) starting to turn a corner, or was this just a good night in what could continue to be a wildly inconsistent season?
Duke's next scheduled game isn't until Dec. 29, so we'll need to wait a bit to find out. Much like their nearby rivals, though, two losses within the first five games was highly unusual. That hasn't happened to the Blue Devils since they started 0-2 in 1999-00—and still ended up getting a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament.
Kerry Miller covers college football and men's college basketball for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter, @kerrancejames.
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