Fifty fun facts on the college basketball season

No need to stop and take a shower for this year’s 50 things to know about the college basketball season. We don’t care how dirty you are.

Duke has a new coach, Jay Wright has a new job, and find out why they’re giving out boxing lessons in Arizona. North Carolina is the No. 1 team, but there’s plenty of parity and uncertainty out there, which will only add to the mayhem.

Let’s get into it.

1. Best moment of Kentucky’s preseason intrasquad scrimmage in October was the photo of the coal miner who sprinted to the game after work to be with his young son and mother. Michael McGuire said he would have missed half the game if he had stopped to shower, so he sat in the stands covered in coal dust, which struck a nerve with Wildcats coach John Calipari. Calipari, who tweeted that his own family’s roots “started in a coal mine in Clarksburg, WV,” pledged tickets and VIP treatment to a real game at Rupp Arena for the McGuires.

2. Coach Cal also used McGuire’s dedication as a teaching moment for his players. “I talked about hard, backbreaking work that’s honorable work — but that he makes time for his son, even when he knew he couldn’t shower,” Calipari said. “It didn’t matter what he looked like, he just wanted to be with his son.”

3. The Wildcats, the first victims of St. Peter’s stunning NCAA Tournament run last season, are led by reigning national player of the year Oscar Tshiebwe. It’ll be 40 years in the spring since anyone has repeated as the player of the year — most notably Ralph Sampson in 1982-83.

4. Tshiebwe is restricted from NIL opportunities in the U.S. as an international player on a student visa from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. But a loophole allowed him to make around $500,000 when Kentucky visited the Bahamas for exhibition games in August, according to The Athletic.

5. St. Peter’s was picked to finish eighth in the MAAC. Shaheen Holloway is now the coach at Seton Hall and a number of the Peacocks’ potential returning players transferred, including twin brothers Fousseyni (6.9 ppg last season) and Hassan Drame (6.0 ppg), who are now at La Salle.

6. Iowa State was going to get some help from Temple transfer Jeremiah Williams, but Williams injured his Achilles tendon in October and will miss the season. The Cyclones still have center Osun Osunniyi, the Mainland High grad who was the Atlantic 10′s defensive player of the year the last two seasons while at St. Bonaventure. Iowa State was picked to finish eighth in the 10-team Big 12.

7. Gonzaga’s Drew Timme and Kentucky’s Tshiebwe were unanimous Associated Press preseason All-Americans. They were joined on the first team by North Carolina’s Armando Bacot, Indiana’s Trayce Jackson-Davis, and Houston’s Marcus Sasser.

8. Houston is coming off a season when it went 32-6 and got within one step of the Final Four despite missing its two best players for most of the season. But Sasser (17.7 ppg) and Tramon Mark (10.1 ppg) are healthy again and the No. 3 Cougars are in the top five for the first time since the Phi Slamma Jamma days of the 1980s. A local look at this year’s Cougars arrived Friday, when they played St. Joseph’s in the Veterans’ Classic at Annapolis, Md.

9. This is the record 10th time North Carolina has been ranked No. 1 in the preseason by the Associated Press, and the first since 2015-16, when the Tar Heels went on to lose to Villanova in the national championship game on Kris Jenkins’ buzzer-beater.

10. The Tar Heels return four starters after losing the championship game to Kansas (when they gagged a 15-point halftime lead). Star Armando Bacot, the ACC’s preseason player of the year, put that fluky title-game ankle injury behind him by doing some acting over the summer. He appeared on the Netflix series Outer Banks, which will be released next year.

11. If Villanova beats Iowa State on Thanksgiving (3:30 p.m., ESPN2), it is likely to play North Carolina the following day (5 p.m., ESPN) in what would be the sixth game for new Wildcats coach Kyle Neptune. Jay Wright didn’t see the No. 1 team until his fifth season, when the Wildcats beat Rudy Gay and UConn on Feb. 13, 2006.

12. Baylor is ranked No. 5 despite nearly a complete overhaul. Spurring the optimism is how the Bears performed in the Globl Jam international tournament over the summer. Freshman Keyonte George had 37 points when they upset host Canada in the semifinals before losing to Brazil in the championship. George, a 6-foot-4 guard, is the highest-ranked recruit in program history.

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13. Xavier, which hasn’t been to the NCAA Tournament since 2018, brought Sean Miller back. Miller’s first coaching job was with the Musketeers (2004-09), when he led X to the dance four times in five years. He had a checkered tenure at Arizona from 2009 to 2021.

14. Xavier created room for Miller when it fired Travis Steele near the end of last season. Jonas Hayes took the interim job and led the Musketeers to the NIT championship. (Hey, just like Rob Thomson!). “We have a hungry group,” Miller said. “We haven’t been to the NCAA Tournament in four years. … This is a program that went to 16 of the previous 18 NCAA Tournaments. I don’t think anyone has to remind our [players] what we’re trying to accomplish.

15. Hayes parlayed that NIT run into the Georgia State job, the first head coaching chance of his career.

16. Keep your eyes peeled for a terrific early-season game when No. 4 Kentucky plays at No. 2 Gonzaga (in Spokane) on Nov. 20. Gonzaga also could play No. 1 North Carolina in Portland a week later, depending on how things shake out in the Phil Knight Invitational tournament.

17. Jay Wright’s first game as a CBS analyst will be Dec. 7, when Penn visits Villanova on CBS Sports Network. He’ll make his studio debut on Dec. 17 during a CBS tripleheader.

18. TCU is ranked in the preseason (No. 14) for just the third time ever. The previous two times (1998-99, 2018-19) it did not make the NCAA Tournament. Last season, the Horned Frogs won an NCAA Tournament game for the first time in 35 years and this year will try for consecutive NCAA bids for the first time since the 1950s.

19. Manhattan could be a disaster this year. The Jaspers, picked to finish second in the MAAC by the league’s coaches, fired coach Steve Masiello on Oct. 25, reportedly over contract issues. This led to several players’ bolting for the transfer portal, most notably MAAC preseason player of the year Jose Perez. Manhattan does not play any City 6 schools this season.

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20. No. 363? Hartford. The Hawks, who made it to the NCAA Tournament in 2021, are in the process of dropping down to Division III and are competing this year as an independent. They cannot offer scholarships. Hartford plays at Penn on Black Friday and hosts the Quakers on Jan. 23.

21. John Gallagher, a St. Joe’s grad and former La Salle assistant, had been Hartford’s coach since 2010-11 but resigned on Monday. Gallagher is suing Hartford’s Board of Regents vice chairman alleging he was misled about the move down to D-III. He said he would have taken an offer to be an assistant at Oklahoma, but wanted to stay at Hartford because he felt he was building something.

22. UCLA was picked to win the Pac-12 for the third consecutive year. The Bruins finished second last season and fourth two seasons ago. Jaime Jaquez and Tyger Campbell are the Bruins’ studs. “We’ve got two horses this year,” coach Mick Cronin said. “We’re going to ride them.”

23. UCLA also has a pair of freshmen who were McDonald’s All-Americans: Amari Bailey and Adem Bona. Bailey played at Sierra Canyon High School with LeBron James’ son, Bronny. Bona was born and raised in Lagos, Nigeria, but left his family when he was 13 to learn the fundamentals of basketball in Turkey. His journey to Westwood was a winding one.

24. Stanford’s Harrison Ingram is the first Pac-12 freshman of the year to come back for his sophomore season in 10 years. That’s remarkable.

25. Alabama’s Jahvon Quinerly is on the Cousy Award watch list as one of the nation’s top point guards. Quinerly, a Villanova reserve as a freshman in 2018-19, was still dealing with an ACL injury he suffered in last season’s NCAA Tournament and missed an exhibition game on Oct. 29. He averaged a career-best 13.8 points last season but had just a 4:3 assist-to-turnover ratio.

26. Arizona center Oumar Ballo is selling “Trust The Ballo” shirts for $35. Ballo was among the Mali players who boycotted FIBA World Cup African qualifiers over the summer because they said the country refused to reimburse them for travel and other expenses. It sort of explains charging 35 bucks for a T-shirt.

27. Ballo is one of three 7-footers in the Wildcats’ rotation, plus 6-foot-11 Azuolas Tubelis. Arizona’s up-tempo system can be a challenge for the big fellas, so the Wildcats had their big men take up boxing to help build conditioning. “It was tiring,” Ballo said, “but definitely worth it.”

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28. Selection Sunday is March 12, New York, Louisville, Ky., Kansas City, Mo., and, for the first time, Las Vegas are hosting regionals, and Houston is the site of the Final Four.

29. Jon Scheyer is in his first season as Duke’s new coach, stepping in for Mike Krzyzewski. Scheyer tabbed Philadelphia native Amile Jefferson as his assistant head coach. Jefferson, who went to Friends’ Central, played for Duke from 2012 to 2017 and is the program’s all-time leader with 150 games played.

30. Delaware, which reached the NCAA Tournament last year for the first time under Martin Ingelsby, was picked to finish third in the CAA. The Blue Hens won the conference tournament last year as the No. 4 seed. They play at Duke on Nov. 18.

31. Jameer Nelson Jr., who transferred from George Washington and led Delaware in scoring last season, was named first-team preseason all-conference. Hofstra’s Aaron Estrada, who is from Woodbury, was named the league’s preseason player of the year.

32. Davidson has its first new coach in 33 years after Bob McKillop stepped down in June. He was replaced by his son, Matt McKillop.

33. Texas Tech, which still passionately hates Chris Beard for jumping ship to an archrival, lost nine of its top 10 scorers from last season’s Sweet 16 club. Jaylon Tyson is one of five transfers. He came from Texas.

34. No. 10 Arkansas also brought in five transfers, as well as three blue-chip freshmen. CBS Sports picked guard Nick Smith as its preseason national freshman of the year.

35. Like everything else in the world, the price for “flopping” has gone up. Now, players who exaggerate being fouled will be given a technical foul and opponents will shoot one free throw. Previously, warnings were given for flopping.

36. Sports Illustrated ranked all 363 teams and came up with Villanova at No. 13, Temple at No. 72, Penn at No. 140, St. Joseph’s at No. 193, La Salle at No. 208, and Drexel at No. 279.

37. Texas has moved into the Moody Center, a $385 million arena on campus. It replaces the Erwin Center, which was the Longhorns’ home since 1977. Texas coach Chris Beard called the facility “a game changer.” The Longhorns already have beaten Arkansas there in a charity exhibition (by 30!), and host Gonzaga on Nov. 16.

38. Pete Nance, the son of former NBA slam-dunk champion Larry Nance, played 107 games in four seasons for Northwestern, but none were in the NCAA Tournament. He has transferred to North Carolina.

39. Kenny Payne, a first-round pick by the 76ers in 1989, has his first head coaching job at his alma mater, Louisville. Payne turns 56 the day after Thanksgiving and already has had his first mini-crisis after the Cardinals lost an exhibition game at home by 10 points to Division II Lenoir-Rhyne on Oct. 30.

40. Attention, bettors: Coppin State played 13 of its 15 nonconference games on the road last season and lost them all (by an average of 15.8 points). This year, 14 of its 17 nonleague games are on the road.

41. Sam Sessoms, a Shipley School product who was Big Ten All-Academic last season at Penn State, is now at Coppin. He’s 225 away from 2,000 career points, which he could get before the first of the year.

42. Conferences are allowed to experiment with an extra TV timeout each half for the first stoppages under the 17-, 14-, 11-, 8- and 4-minute marks. “The rationale,” the NCAA says, “is to help the flow of the game so commercial breaks will not be taken when teams use their allotted timeouts.” Yeah, OK.

43. Indiana ended a five-year NCAA Tournament drought (which was an eternity for Hoosier fans), even if it meant the indignity of playing in the play-in game. Mike Woodson’s squad returns Trayce Jackson-Davis and boasts probably the best recruiting class in the Big Ten.

44. Woodson’s daughter Mariah had a little fun with Pop over the summer by posting a picture of him proudly admiring his landscaping. “My dad takes his yard so seriously,” she tweeted. “He won yard of the month in his neighborhood and hasn’t stopped showing me pictures of the yard [crying emoji].”

45. Creighton returns three double-digit scorers and added Baylor Scheierman, a transfer from South Dakota State whose NIL deal includes autographs starting at $46 and appearances for $81. Scheierman was the Summit League’s player of the year and the only D-I player to lead his conference in rebounds and assists.

46. The Bluejays are ranked ninth by the AP — their highest preseason ranking ever — and were picked to win the Big East for the first time. Creighton hosts Villanova on Feb. 4 and comes here on Feb. 25 in a game at the Wells Fargo Center.

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47. Kendric Davis could pull off an exacta that pretty much sums up where we are in college athletics here in the 21st century. Davis, the American Athletic Conference player of the year last season for Houston, is now at Memphis. So he has a chance to win back-to-back player of the year honors for two schools.

48. The Southern Conference is the only league that still requires players who transfer within the conference to sit out a season. So while VMI coach Dan Earl jumped to Chattanooga, guard Honor Huff, who was recruited by Earl to VMI and followed him to Chattanooga, must sit out a year. That seems unfair.

49. Real good to see Keyontae Johnson back. Johnson hasn’t played since his frightening collapse on Dec. 12, 2020, while playing for Florida. He was the league’s preseason player of the year and a projected lottery pick, but fell face-first at midcourt in the fourth game reportedly because of heart inflammation. He’s now at Kansas State, where teammate Nae’Qwan Tomlin told the Wichita Eagle that Johnson, “can go get a bucket whenever he wants one.”

50. The pick: Houston, UCLA, Kentucky, and North Carolina to reach the Final Four, with Houston winning it more because of Marcus Sasser than for what will be a decided home-court advantage. As long as they don’t put Lance McCullers Jr. in, that is.