The best and worst from college basketball’s first month

Though it feels like we just got going a short while ago, the 2017-18 college basketball season is already a month old. In five weeks we’ve seen stunning falls from grace, surprise rises to prominence, and a handful of players we’d known only from highlight videos become bona-fide college hoops stars.

If you’ve fallen behind at all, here’s everything you need to know about an exciting first month of the season.

The Wildcats’ 11-0 resume isn’t quite as strong as we would have expected it to be at the start of the season, but that’s not their fault. The Battle 4 Atlantis tournament completely fell apart from day one, leaving Nova to face the unranked trio of Western Kentucky, Tennessee, and Northern Iowa while No. 18 Purdue and No. 2 Arizona ended up squaring off in the seventh-place game.

Still, no team has looked more complete through the season’s opening month than Jay Wright’s. Jalen Brunson is making everyone who pegged him as a National Player of the Year candidate look good. Mikal Bridges is making everyone who pegged him as one of the season’s breakout performers look even better. Omari Spellman is proving to be the force inside that the Wildcats were lacking at times a season ago.

At the moment, there’s no reason to think Villanova won’t be a No. 1 seed on Selection Sunday for the third time in four years.

This is supposed to be Arizona’s spot. I get it. The Wildcats went 0-3 in the Battle 4 Atlantis and became the first team since 1986 to go from No. 2 in the AP poll to unranked in one week. Even with that being the case, Zona has since pulled off consecutive victories over an overachieving UNLV team, a top 10 Texas A&M squad, and an Alabama team that seems more likely than not to make the NCAA tournament. Sean Miller also has sophomore guard Rawle Alkins back in the fold, which means the Wildcats are nearly back to being 100 percent.

Putting Arizona here would have been easy. It also would have meant putting a team in a spot where no one expects them to be a couple months from now.

Instead, the honor goes to Saint Mary’s, a team whose slide from the top 25 has received significantly less attention. Returning nearly every key piece from a team that won 29 games in 2016-17, this was supposed to be the Gaels’ year to rule the West Coast Conference. After surprising losses to Georgia and Washington State, that no longer seems like a given.

Saint Mary’s now finds itself in the unenviable position of having next to no margin for error. Their non-conference schedule is abysmal, and Dayton’s ugly start means that the Gaels have no chance of entering conference play with a resume win already in their pocket. If SMC doesn’t find a way to get it done against arch-rival Gonzaga, then winning the WCC tournament could wind up being their only possible ticket to the Big Dance.

While Arizona and Saint Mary’s both got some deserved attention here, it should be noted that there were more than a few worthy options. Northwestern, USC, and Minnesota shouldn’t escape this section without being mentioned, and they won’t, because they just got mentioned.

There have been plenty of spectacular crams through the season’s first five weeks, but none that made America get up from its collective chair like Kerwin Roach’s against Duke.

There are valid arguments to be made for Jalen Brunson, DeAndre Ayton, and a handful of other players, but no one has been as consistently spectacular through the season’s first month than Marvin Bagley.

It isn’t rare to see a freshman arrive on the college basketball scene with the level of hype that Bagley had in the fall. It is rare to see said player rise above that hype. Bagley enters the weekend averaging 21.3 points per game and 11.3 rebounds per game, and is shooting 67.2 percent from the field on two-point attempts. He’s also been at his best when the lights have been the brightest, posting a combined 64 points and 30 rebounds in Duke’s narrow PK80 victories over Texas and Florida.

This is going to be one of the more exciting Player of the Year races in recent memory. Bagley is the pace-setter, but there are a number of strong closers who are stalking closely at the quarter pole.

Many people rolled their eyes when Young’s game was liberally compared to that of Stephen Curry’s throughout the summer. The doubters have dwindled significantly after an opening month that has seen Young lead the nation in scoring at 28.8 points per game. That number isn’t the product of a self-over-team mentality either. Young ranks third in the nation in assists at 8.8 assists per game.

Oklahoma is an overachieving 7-1 thanks in large part to Young’s production. Both the Sooners and their young star have an opportunity to capture even more of the country’s attention when they face No. 3 Wichita State on Saturday.

The 2017 installment of Feast Week was loaded with thrillers, none better than the double-overtime thriller between Florida and Gonzaga at the PK80. The heavyweights exchanged blow after blow in front of a raucous crowd that gave the game the feel of an NCAA tournament regional final. The only disappointing thing about the contest was that it ended around 1:30 a.m. on the East Coast.

Sure there have been some remarkably lopsided scores and some games between non-power conference teams that were played at a much lower level than this one. Whatever. It’s fun to rip on Virginia and Wisconsin for being boring so we’re doing it.

There are a number of worthy candidates in this category, but we have to go with Lexus Williams snapping the nation’s longest home-court winning streak in unbelievable fashion.

Marvin Bagley, FR, Duke

Jalen Brunson, JR, Villanova

Trae Young, FR, Oklahoma

DeAndre Ayton, FR, Arizona

Jordan Murphy, JR, Minnesota

With an unblemished record and double-digit wins over Xavier and at Kansas, it’s not hard to make the case that Arizona State has the best resume in college basketball. The combination of their prolific scoring and sometimes suspect defense is going to make ASU one of the most fascinating teams to follow during conference play.

In keeping with the tradition of “Coach of the Year” translating to “Coach of the Team That Played the Most Above Preseason Expectations.” Not that Hurley doesn’t deserve to be here. No one saw Arizona State being a top 25 team after the season’s first month, let alone being a team with a legitimate claim to be ranked No. 1.

Maybe this is just me, but seeing things like a CBS game between Indiana and Michigan on Dec. 2 has completely screwed up my internal college basketball clock. It leaves me confused, angry, and wondering why the hell the neighbors still have their Christmas lights up. Expect similar confusion on March 4 when the Big Ten championship game goes down and then I freak out an hour later wondering why the NCAA Tournament Selection Show hasn’t started.

Yes, this is just an excuse to post a video of The Havocs.

Laugh all you want, no conference has had a better opening month than the Southeastern. Kentucky might be a step or two below where we expect them to be, but the rest of the league has picked up the slack. Florida and Texas A&M (despite recent losses) are both legitimate top 15 teams, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Missouri could all wind up being tournament teams, and even the bottom of the conference is loaded with teams far more formidable than they’ve been in years past.

They might not be able to keep up with the ACC, Big 12, or Big East in a couple months, but as of this moment, no league is riding higher than the SEC.

Statistically there have been bigger upsets this season than Boston College taking down Duke, but none shook the sport as violently as this one. This was a BC team that had won just six ACC games over the last three seasons taking down college basketball’s superteam in the conference opener for both. The lights going out when the Eagle fans stormed the court was a nice touch.

Also, no other upset gave us the chance to look at the ACC standings and see Duke in last place for a couple of weeks. So there’s that.

The Maui Invitational gave us a great title game and the Battle 4 Atlantis gave us a taste of March chaos, but no early season tournament gave us more than the PK80. Please, please, please make this an annual thing.

The Hawkeyes haven’t won much on the court, but this is a flawless social media triumph.

Easy winner.