Full credit to USC's Andy Enfield and Kansas State's Jerome Tang for being comfortable and confident enough to schedule a real game on the opening day of the college basketball season. Without them, we would've had exactly zero contests featuring a ranked team and a point spread lower than 15.5 on Monday.
Yes, one of them was guaranteed to start 0-1.
That's never ideal for a projected NCAA Tournament team. But I still appreciated both men being willing to legitimately test their squads from the jump and provide an interesting television product that's good for the sport on the season's first night because so few other coaches seem willing to do it, for whatever reason.
Final score: USC 82, Kansas State 69.
The Trojans got 24 points, eight rebounds, five assists and three steals from Boogie Ellis, who was my personal pick in the preseason to be the Pac-12 Player of the Year. The 6-foot-3 super-senior took 14 shots and made half of them. His backcourt mate, five-star freshman Isaiah Collier, added 18 points and six assists while the Trojans cruised to a 13-point victory after leading by as many as 19 in the second half.
"I thought Boogie and Isaiah really controlled the tempo in the first half," Enfield said. "Isaiah got downhill and was able to get to the rim, made some great passes. ... I was proud of the six assists and 7 of 9 from the field. Very efficient."
With the win, the Trojans are up to No. 11 in Tuesday morning's updated CBS Sports Top 25 And 1 daily college basketball rankings, primarily because Michigan State took a humbling loss Monday after opening the season at No. 5. The Spartans were upset by James Madison at the Breslin Center despite closing as 16.5-point favorites. The final score was 79-76, in overtime. The biggest issue was that Michigan State missed 19 of the 20 3-pointers it attempted.
"I don't know if I have ever seen us shoot that poorly," said Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame coach Tom Izzo.
Several years ago, I established an automatic 10-spot drop for any ranked team that takes a head-scratching loss in November because if you start ranking schools based on nothing but resumes this early you can't have a school that's 0-1 with a loss to James Madison ranked at all, and especially not ranked ahead of James Madison. Most would agree, and I certainly learned a while back, that being that stringent this early leads to goofy rankings. So rather than drop Michigan State all the way out after what will likely prove to be just one fluky loss, I've instead hit the Spartans with an automatic 10-spot drop that pushed them down to No. 15. That's the punishment for a first questionable loss at home -- but a second would obviously lead to Michigan State's removal from the Top 25 And 1, provided Izzo's team doesn't have enough quality wins to help offset it when or if it arrives. The Spartans' next game is Thursday against Southern Indiana. After that, it's Tuesday's showdown with Duke in the Champions Classic.
Top 25 And 1 rankings
Rk | Teams | Chg | Rcrd | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  | Hunter Dickinson finished with 21 points and eight rebounds in Monday's 99-56 win over North Carolina Central. The Jayhawks' next game is Friday against Manhattan. | -- | 5-0 |
| 2 |  | Zach Edey finished with 16 points, 11 rebounds and four blocks in Monday's 98-45 win over Samford. The Boilermakers' next game is Friday against Morehead State. | -- | 4-1 |
| 3 |  | Kyle Filipowski finished with 25 points and seven rebounds in Monday's 92-54 win over Dartmouth. The Blue Devils' next game is Friday against Arizona. | -- | 3-1 |
| 4 |  | FAU returns all five starters - among them leading scorer Johnell Davis - from a team that won the Conference USA regular-season title and league tournament before advancing to the Final Four of the NCAA Tournament. The Owls open the season Wednesday against Loyola Chicago. | -- | 3-2 |
| 5 |  | Kam Jones finished with 20 points and four assists in Monday's 92-70 win over Northern Illinois. The Golden Eagles' next game is Friday against Rider. | 1 | 5-0 |
| 6 |  | Damian Dunn finished with 18 points and three rebounds in Monday's 84-31 win over Louisiana-Monroe. The Cougars' next game is Saturday against Texas A&M Corpus Christie. | 1 | 2-1 |
| 7 |  | Alex Karaban finished with 22 points and seven rebounds in Monday's 95-52 win over Northern Arizona. The Huskies' next game is Saturday against Stonehill. | 1 | 4-0 |
| 8 |  | Creighton returns the top three scorers - among them preseason All-American Ryan Kalkbrenner - from a team that advanced to the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament. The Bluejays open the season Tuesday against Florida A&M. | 1 | 4-0 |
| 9 |  | Norchad Omier finished with 20 points and 10 rebounds in Monday's 101-60 win over NJIT. The Hurricanes' next game is Friday against UCF. | 1 | 3-0 |
| 10 |  | Tramon Mark finished with 16 points and three assists in Monday's 93-59 win over Alcorn State. The Razorbacks' next game is Friday against Gardner Webb. | 1 | 3-1 |
| 11 |  | Boogie Ellis finished with 24 points and eight rebounds in Monday's 82-69 win over Kansas State. The Trojans' next game is Thursday against Cal State Bakersfield. | 1 | 3-1 |
| 12 |  | Jaedon Lee finished with 27 points and 10 rebounds in Monday's 83-57 win over Cal State Fullerton. The Aztecs' next game is Friday at BYU. | 1 | 2-1 |
| 13 |  | Dalton Knecht finished with 17 points and three rebounds in Monday's 80-42 win over Tennessee Tech. The Vols' next game is Friday against Wisconsin. | 1 | 4-0 |
| 14 |  | Hayden Hefner finished with 19 points and four rebounds in Monday's 78-46 win over Texas A&M-Corpus Christi. The Aggies' next game is Friday at Ohio State. | 1 | 3-1 |
| 15 |  | Michigan State missed 19 of the 20 3-pointers it took in Monday's 79-76 OT loss to James Madison. The Spartans' next game is Thursday against Southern Indiana. | 10 | 4-1 |
| 16 |  | D.J. Wagner finished with 13 points and four assists in Monday's 86-46 win over New Mexico State. The Wildcats' next game is Friday against Texas A&M Commerce. | -- | 4-0 |
| 17 |  | Kylan Boswell finished with 18 points and five rebounds in Monday's 122-59 win over Morgan State. The Wildcats' next game is Friday at Duke. | -- | 2-1 |
| 18 |  | Baylor returns three of the top six scorers - most notably double-digit scorer Jalen Bridges - from a team that earned a No. 3 seed in the NCAA Tournament. The Bears open the season Tuesday against Auburn. | -- | 3-1 |
| 19 |  | Gonzaga returns three of the top seven scorers - among them Anton Watson, who averaged 11.1 points and 6.2 rebounds last season - from a team that advanced to the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament and adds prominent transfers Ryan Nembhard, Graham Ike and Steel Venters. The Zags open the season Friday against Yale. | -- | 4-0 |
| 20 |  | Ithiel Horton finished with 17 points and five rebounds in Monday's 88-56 win over Incarnate Word. The Longhorns' next game is Friday against Delaware State. | -- | 3-1 |
| 21 |  | Aidan Mahaney finished with 15 points and five assists in Monday's 107-28 win over Stanislaus State. The Gaels' next game is Thursday against New Mexico. | -- | 4-0 |
| 22 |  | Armando Bacot finished with 25 points and 13 rebounds in Monday's 86-70 win over Radford. The Tar Heels' next game is Sunday against Lehigh. | -- | 2-1 |
| 23 |  | Terrence Shannon finished with 16 points and five rebounds in Monday's 80-52 win over Eastern Illinois. The Illini's next game is Friday against Oakland. | -- | 3-0 |
| 24 |  | Eric Dixon finished with 15 points and six rebounds in Monday's 90-63 win over American. The Wildcats' next game is Friday against Le Moyne. | -- | 3-3 |
| 25 |  | St. John's returns Joel Soriano and adds notable transfers Daniss Jenkins, Jordan Dingle. RJ Luis and Glenn Taylor under first-year coach Rick Pitino. The Red Storm open the season Tuesday against Stony Brook. | -- | 4-0 |
| 26 |  | Grant Nelson finished with 24 points and seven rebounds in Monday's 105-73 win over Morehead State. The Crimson Tide's next game is Friday against Indiana State. | -- | 3-1 |
