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Late Night Snacks: The Marathon is on, but Doug McDermott, Shabazz Napier shine brightest

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GAME OF THE NIGHT: BYU 112, Stanford 103

All these new fouling rules? This is why they’re put into the game. So college basketball looks more like this than rugby.

Now, I’ll freely admit that the score of this game was almost entirely a result of the way that BYU plays. They love, love, love to get up and down the floor, even if it comes at the expense of being able to get stops, and on the nights where Matt Carlino and Tyler Haws get it going, they can do things like score 110 points.

But my point is that this was a game where two teams were able to penetrate without having a hand on their hip and they were able to cut through the lane without getting hip-checked three times. There was plenty of freedom of movement, and while we can’t expect every college basketball game to have final scores with more points than an average NBA game, anything is better than some of the 37-36 slugfests we were stuck with last year.

IMPORTANT OUTCOMES:

1) No. 6 Arizona head coach Sean Miller has been experimenting with his lineups early on this season. In the opener, Gabe York started at the two, pushing Nick Johnson to the three and Aaron Gordon to the four. On Monday night, Kaleb Tarczewski was back into the starting lineup, meaning Gordon was out on the perimeter. It didn’t matter much; Gordon finished with a double-double for the second straight game, going for 14 points and 10 boards on 6-for-8 shooting. Brandon Ashley added 16 points and seven boards in the 91-57 win over Long Beach State.

2) No. 19 Gonzaga lit up Colorado State, hitting 14 threes en route to a 93-61 win. Gary Bell Jr. led the way with 24 points on eight triples of his own.

STARRED:

1) Dougie McBuckets went all Dougie McBuckets on poor UMKC, finishing with 37 points. 34 of those points came in the first 24 minutes of the game. The Bluejays ended up winning 96-70.

2) No. 19 UConn handled Yale this afternoon 80-62, picking up their second win of the season. And star point guard Shabazz Napier looked every bit of an All-American, finishing with 14 points, 11 boards and 10 assists. He’s now averaging 16.0 points, 9.0 boards and 8.5 assists. Not bad.

3) Billy Baron went off for 27 points for Canisius in a season-opening win over South Dakota. He scored 13 of that 27 in the final 10 minutes.

STRUGGLED:

1) Napier was awesome. UConn’s big men weren’t. The six front court players that saw time for the Huskies on Monday afternoon gathered all of three defensive rebounds. They didn’t get a single offensive rebound among them. Yale, on the other hand, had 22 offensive rebounds. Not good.

2) Rhode Island shot 30.8% from the floor and 2-for-15 from three while committing 20 turnovers in a 31 point loss to SMU. Star point guard Xavier Munford was 1-for-11.

3) Rion Brown was 3-13 on Monday. He’s not shooting 6-for-23 from the floor and 2-for-9 from three on the season, a big part of the reason that Miami has not been taken to overtime by teams projected to finish near the bottom of the SoCon and the NEC. At least the Hurricanes beat Georgia Southern.

NOTABLES


  • Kent State went into Philly and knocked off Temple, 81-77.
  • Trae Golden had 16 points for Georgia Tech in a win over Delaware State.
  • C.J. Washington went for 18 points and 10 boards as UAB knocked off Rutgers at home, 79-76.
  • Oklahoma’s high-speed ways earned them another win on Monday, as Buddy Hield led the Sooners with 23 points in a 95-82 win over North Texas.