A guide to the 2017-18 college basketball season for diehard college football fans

I know why you’re here. I don’t really understand it, I absolutely don’t approve of it, but I accept it.

I know you only watched bits and pieces of the Maui Invitational because it was an alternative to Thanksgiving family interaction. I know you’ve only seen Trae Young in brief highlight videos on YouTube. I know you have, at best, a very limited understanding of who Pantelis Xidias is.

I know you’re only here because college football is over. It’s cool. You’ve been missing out, but it’s cool. That overtime was crazy.

Thankfully, we at SB Nation college basketball have been living and dying with every dribble that has occurred since the evening of Nov. 10, and we’re here to answer every question you would have asked if you hadn’t been so consumed with SEC rage for the last five months.

Hit me with some questions.

Uh, well you’re actually joining the fray at a bit of an awkward time for that. Sixty percent of the teams in the AP poll lost at least once last week, including four of the teams ranked in the top five. We’ve had three different No. 1 teams, and all three have been knocked from that pedestal after being beaten by an unranked team.

Villanova is 14-1 and back on top of both the polls for the second time this season. West Virginia and Virginia, two teams that also have just one loss, each got votes for the top spot from the AP this week as well. Duke and Michigan State have each lost twice, but both are still safe bets to be in contention for No. 1 seeds a couple months from now.

It’s actually “Trae.”

It is.

A freshman point guard at Oklahoma, Trae Young has been the biggest thing in college basketball for the season’s first two months. Even though he wasn’t a top 20 player in the class of 2017, Young enters the second week of January leading the country in both points (29.4 points per game) and assists (10.2 per game). The only player in the history of Division I to lead the nation in both of those categories at the end of a season was Dick Groat, who averaged 26.0 points and 7.6 assists per game at Duke during the 1951-52 season.

Because of his size, feel for the game, lightning-quick release, and propensity to pull up from just about any spot on the court, Young has already drawn numerous comparisons to Stephen Curry. Like Curry, Young also figures to have an opportunity to make an even bigger name for himself come March. Oklahoma went just 11-20 last season and wasn’t supposed to do anything overly significant this year. Thanks in large part to Young’s play, the Sooners are currently 12-2, ranked in the top 10, and looking like they’ll be a top-five seed come NCAA tournament time.

Yes. Young’s brilliance has taken some attention away from just how good freshmen like Duke’s Marvin Bagley III and Arizona’s DeAndre Ayton have been.

Bagley, the top-ranked player in the class of 2017, has been every bit as good as advertised. The versatile 6’11 big man is averaging 22.5 points and 11.5 rebounds per game for Duke, and has had four games this season where he’s scored 30 or more points and grabbed 10 or more rebounds.

Ayton is a physical freak who is also averaging better than 20 and 10 (20.4 points, 11.6 rebounds per game). He might be getting more attention if Arizona, the No. 2 team in the country to start the year, hadn’t gone 0 for 3 at the Battle 4 Atlantis in November. They ripped off a nine-game winning streak after that, but were dealt an upset loss by Colorado over the weekend. Still, yeah, Ayton is really, really good.

Markelle Fultz is a rookie in the NBA now. He was the No. 1 pick in the draft last year.

That is completely understandable. You’re not alone.

My guess is Michael Porter Jr. of Missouri, the guy who was the No. 1 player in the 2017 class before Bagley reclassified.

Yes, reclassifying is very weird, but we don’t have time to get into that.

Well, it’s a little tough to explain.

Porter started Missouri’s first game of the season, but played just two minutes before being pulled because of a mysterious injury. That injury kept him out for the next week and then later kept him from even sitting on the bench because Missouri said it was too uncomfortable for Porter to sit, so he had to watch the games lying down in the locker room.

Eventually, it was announced that Porter would have microdiscectomy surgery of the L3-L4 spinal discs. It was also announced that the procedure would keep him off the court for three to four months, basically meaning that Porter’s college career lasted an entirety of two minutes.

ALTHOUGH, for the last couple of weeks, Porter has been making vague social media posts hinting that he might be back for Missouri before the end of the season. It could be a worthwhile cause for Porter. The Tigers are 11-4 with a couple of decent wins and no atrocious losses. Porter’s return could be what gets them back into the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2013.

OK. Unnecessarily demanding and also not a question, but OK.

Umm, actually the SEC sort of might be pretty good at basketball this year. Kentucky doesn’t look quite as formidable as they have in years past, but Florida, Texas A&M, Tennessee, Auburn, Georgia, Mississippi State, Arkansas, Missouri, and Alabama all have the potential to make the tournament and potentially make some noise once they’re there. It should be an extremely competitive conference, and one of the most fun leagues to follow for the next two months.

I wouldn’t go quite that far.

The Big 12 currently has four teams ranked in the top 12 and five in the top 16. The league posted the best combined record in non-conference play, and each member of the league is currently at least four games above .500.

It does not appear to be a sure thing this year, but if Kansas does win at least a share of the Big 12 regular season for the 14th year in a row, it would break a tie with UCLA for the most consecutive league titles all time.

Yeah, probably.

We’ll start with William & Mary’s Oliver Tot, who had played 18 minutes without recording a single stat before doing this:

And then we’ve got a little bit of Stanford’s Daejon Davis for your brain:

And then we’ll wrap things up with this different buzzer-beater from Florida’s Chris Chiozza:

Pitino was fired just before the start of the season after an FBI probe into college basketball revealed that one of his assistants had been working with Adidas to funnel money to a recruit. Former player and assistant David Padgett is serving as Louisville’s interim head coach.

We don’t have time. Here’s a summary of every team, coach, and player that has been affected.

Gonzaga’s pretty good.

Even better.

Nope.

It’s possible. The conference on the whole isn’t especially great, but both Michigan State and Purdue would seem to have a realistic chance at winning six straight in March. They’ll also have an extra week to prepare for the Big Dance. The Big Ten is playing its conference tournament at Madison Square Garden a week earlier than the other power conferences are playing their league tournaments.

Only in New York.

Also possible, but less likely. Arizona State has been one of the most pleasant surprises of the season, but lost its first two Pac-12 games. Arizona is still one of the most talented teams in the country, but hasn’t been able to put it all together just yet. Gonzaga, as mentioned earlier, is good again, but they don’t seem to be quite as built for March as they were a year ago.

We’re not doing this.

It’s pointless to pick a Final Four when so much of who makes up the Final Four is based on tournament draw. I could wind up picking three teams that all end up in the same region on Selection Sunday.

Duke, Michigan State, Villanova, and ... someone wild ... give me Seton Hall.

We’re done here.