’Greetings, faithful readers and those realizing we exist for the first time, and welcome to another edition of Shot Takers.

Dana O’Neil and I are here to definitely talk about practice.

Specifically: the official opening of men’s college basketball practice for the 2023-24 season. It is obviously a ceremonial moment. Teams have been teaching skills and installing schemes since summer school began. But, as of Monday, things have a deadline. There are actual games to play on the horizon. Six weeks until opening tipoff.

Advertisement

Things are real.

So it’s time for The Athletic’s resident men’s college hoops opiners to reenter the chat, and answer questions that someone totally, verifiably asked them.

What team has your uninterrupted curiosity for 2023-24?

Dana: Ah, talking ’bout practice. I was on the set of Philadelphia’s Daily News Live during that tremendous Allen Iverson moment. Saw AI heading to his car afterward and my colleague, Dick Jerardi, rolled down the car window and said, “My man, that was tremendous.” Iverson gave him a peace sign and kept walking.

I miss moments like those. But I digress … Think there are a lot of really interesting teams heading into this season but I’m going with Kentucky. The seat isn’t necessarily hot under John Calipari, but it’s not comfortable. The last few years have not been up to the Wildcats’ standard, and this team is immensely talented but pretty young. Antonio Reeves and Tre Mitchell offer some experience, but Kentucky’s success or failure is going to be largely decided by DJ Wagner and company — and in recent years, freshmen have not been the secret to winning in March. These freshmen are not your typical freshmen, but will it work, especially under the klieg lights of a very anxious Big Blue Nation?

Anyone have your interest piqued, Mr. Hamilton?

Brian: So many options, but I’m going with a spot near and dear to your heart, my friend — Michigan State. It’s now three years in a row that the Spartans haven’t finished in the top 25 of the final KenPom.com rankings or the national polls. It’s three years in a row with double-digit losses. And — you may not realize this, please stop us if you’ve heard this before — but it’s been 23 seasons since Tom Izzo won his lone national championship. He’s now 68 years old. I have no earthly idea what the man would do other than coach basketball, so the idea of retirement is hilarious to me. But time waits for no man. Even one who might contractually obligate Michigan State to have his taxidermied corpse positioned along the sideline at every game through the end of time.

GO DEEPER

Kansas, Marquette, Duke and Purdue lead our men's college basketball preseason Top 25

It’s also the last season before the Big Ten expands by four. That has the potential to not only create logistics that make Izzo implode into a pile of dust, but also to grind down every team in the league before the postseason even starts. You only get so many shots. Michigan State has a very good shot at another Final Four run. I just don’t know when such a good shot will come around again.

Advertisement

Different version, similar question: What coach are you most interested in for this season?

Brian: The default here is Matt Painter, as he walks the path only previously trod by Tony Bennett, with the hope that the destination is the same next April. But that’s a little too easy. (Which means, surely, Dana will go that route.) So I turn my gaze to Hubert Davis. If North Carolina is a chaotic, disjointed mess again, that might be the end of Davis’ tenure and quite possibly the end of the stay-in-the-family head coach-hire mentality in Chapel Hill. Them’s the stakes, and they are large.

I don’t think North Carolina will be bad. I can’t see how North Carolina could be bad, given the depth Davis will have at his disposal and parts that should — should — coalesce better than the ones from 2022-23. So then the question is how good is good enough? Usually the answer at a place like this is holding up a trophy with confetti falling at the end of the season. But will Tar Heels nation look at on-floor progress and recruiting successes take a longer view, and afford Davis more patience? Big season. Lots in the balance.

GO DEEPER

UNC has 7 newcomers. How will they fit in to Hubert Davis' roster?

Dana: I am going Off Broadway — to Queens. I am fascinated to see what Rick Pitino can do to rejuvenate St. John’s. He is our Deion Sanders. When he was hired, he said that he didn’t think most of the players on the roster were good enough, and he has since shown them the door with no apologies.

The Red Storm are entirely retooled with 11 — ELEVEN — new players joining the team in the last six months. Ten came via the portal. Will it work? I have no idea, but it will be fascinating to watch.

Pitino was the most obvious no-brainer hire in this last carousel, the perfect antidote to what ailed St. John’s for years. Namely, ordinariness. He already has people in the city interested in the team again and is leaning on his well-heeled alums to make NIL deals worthwhile. This year might be the short plan to success, but there is a long-term run at play, too.

Advertisement

And, lest we forget, the man can coach.

To maximize anger in the comment section, what team does everyone love that you don’t?

Dana: Go big or go home, right? Kansas. Hear me out.

Do I think this team will be formidable, and potentially very good? Yes. But I don’t get the near-consensus No. 1 ranking to start the season. Last I checked, the Jayhawks did lose Jalen Wilson and Gradey Dick, their top scorers, from a year ago. And who exactly is replacing Dick as the go-to 3-point dude?

Bill Self also has to integrate Hunter Dickinson, which has tantalizing potential. He, however, has not proven to be the most integratable human being, has he?

I’m not saying that Kansas doesn’t deserve to be in the conversation, or even in the top 10, but there are a lot of very good teams this year — Marquette, Duke, Michigan State, Purdue — and I’m not buying the all-in runaway love with KU.

Brian: I certainly don’t hate UConn, but I wonder if we’ll be talking about how much the Huskies missed Andre Jackson Jr. come next March. Unlocking Jackson was the most critical coaching achievement of the entire season, because it pretty much led directly to a national title for Dan Hurley. Weird to say about a player who finished fifth on his team in Win Shares, but I saw what I saw in the regional and the Final Four last spring. I don’t think my eyeballs deceived me.

The Huskies have top-shelf talent in the starting five. Donovan Clingan might even out-Edey Zach Edey. This will be a team justifiably in everyone’s top 10 or even top 5 to start the year. I just think the search for connective fiber as strong and high-quality as Jackson is more difficult than people realize.

Who’s the most intriguing player in the country?

Brian: I’ll take the layup and go with Caleb Love. Everyone could ride the roller-coaster happily as Love, theoretically still developing as a sophomore, helped drive North Carolina to being 20 minutes away from a national championship. That was more than tolerable, because you expected the junior-year version to be more refined. It was not. It was hard to watch a guy miss nearly 100 more 3-pointers than he made. The transfer snafu that bounced Love from Michigan to Arizona felt like piling on. (We are talking about an actual human being here, which people often tend to forget.)

Advertisement

Still … Arizona is a pretty sweet landing spot, stylistically. And then you note Love actually improved his shooting from 2-point range significantly (45.5 percent after hitting 38 percent as a sophomore) while posting a career-low 12.5 percent turnover rate. An icon of efficiency? Maybe not. But there was at least some growth. And if Tommy Lloyd imbues Love with the correct shot-selection coding, the result could be lots of points. Lots of points. Or it could be more of the same. Hence: Intriguing.

Dana: I’m going with the courageous Hunter Dickinson. Every sport needs a villain, and Dickinson is — intentionally or not — pretty good at it. He did not merely just leave Michigan; he managed to insult everyone there upon exiting — explaining that people in Kansas were super nice, while those back in the Midwest were not. He also labeled his decision to leave the Wolverines as “courageous.’’ Because a cross-country tour where you get to pick your next college and weigh your hefty NIL options requires true daring.

hunt gettin’ after it 💪#LevelUp x @H_Dickinson24

— Kansas Men’s Basketball (@KUHoops) September 13, 2023

And then he landed at Kansas, which, I mean, that’s a pretty sweet featherbed of a landing.

I say all of this but also hope that Dickinson never stops being himself. We complain when athletes are dull, so we ought to embrace those that are decidedly less so. He’s kinda like Drew Timme with an edge, and I am here for it.

He is, of course, uber-talented and is joining a very talented team in the very nice town (as opposed to the meanies in Ann Arbor) of Lawrence, Kansas.

All of which will make this quite fun to watch.

What are the odds Zach Edey repeats as national player of the year?

Brian: I’m old enough to remember when it was a metaphysical lock that Oscar Tshiebwe was going to give us a player of the year encore, because how could he not? Edey, of course, became the answer to that question. So I’m inclined to believe someone else will have a breakout or standout season for a very good team, and that individual will seize a lot of momentum while we see more of the unstoppable same from Edey. Will the Big Maple’s numbers be worthy of a repeat? Almost certainly. He didn’t shrink this summer. But there’s a reason nobody has managed this feat since Ralph Sampson’s preposterous streak of three NPOYs in a row in the early 1980s. A shiny new object typically grabs everyone’s attention.

GO DEEPER

College basketball’s most dominant force can’t change who he is. Can he change perceptions?

Dana: Part of me says impossible, mostly because as the reigning NPOY Edey is not only competing against everyone else in the country; he’s competing against himself. He could be every bit as impactful as he was a year ago — and odds are will be — but everything he does will be viewed through the prism of last season. Is he as dominant as last year? Are his numbers considerably better or just the same? And let’s face it. Plenty of people argued a year ago that he wasn’t better than everyone else; just taller.

Advertisement

All that said, I absolutely think he can do it. The reason: If Purdue is going to do what I predict it will (see below), Edey is going to have to be even better than a year ago.

All right, time to embarrass yourselves: Give us a Final Four prediction that surely will be wrong. Feel free to pick a national champion to enhance the wrongness.

Dana: Let me put my blindfold on and just start throwing darts at a map. , believe it or not, I did not think Florida Atlantic or Miami or San Diego State would make the Final Four a year ago. I’m not sure I thought UConn would until about February.

Also if anyone says they had those four teams — they sit on a throne of lies.

But let’s just do this, shall we? Michigan State, Texas A&M, Gonzaga and Purdue.

My flawed rationale: The Spartans are ancient, overloaded with experience and with arguably one of the better backcourts in the country via A.J. Hoggard and Tyson Walker. They’ve got depth on the bench, some explosive freshmen — Coen Carr might frighten people — and a guy who knows a thing or two about coaching in March.

Someone much smarter than me — an ex-coach I talked to a few days ago — is really high on Buzz Williams’ squad. I poked around a bit, and can see why. Tons of experience back with four starters, the addition of Jace Carter and a team that loves to defend. Plus no one is really talking about A&M in the SEC — all the attention diverted to Kentucky and Tennessee. Nice sneaky spot for the Aggies.

Gonzaga probably makes little sense after Timme, but that is exactly why it makes sense. College basketball is nonsensical. Adding Ryan Nembhard gives the Zags what they didn’t have a year ago — a solid point guard. I’ve said Anton Watson is underrated for years, and adding Graham Ike adds scoring punch. It would be just like the Zags to make the Final Four when no one thinks they will.

Advertisement

And finally, Purdue. I am all in on the Boilermakers making like Virginia. Like, all in. They’ve owned the humiliating first-round loss. Matt Painter hasn’t ducked a single question about it, but it isn’t just simple motivation. Purdue is good; like, really good. Were it not for the NCAA Tournament troubles, everyone would see and admit to that.

So why not? Let’s throw it back to 2019, and go for the 1-seed upset victim to the national title.

Brian: It is highly, highly amusing to even consider this task, given what we saw unfold last spring. If you can’t get a prediction anywhere close to right with an entire regular season’s worth of data to work off — as was the case with everyone filling out a bracket in March — how in the world is it possible with an entire regular season of unknowns ahead?

But, hey, maybe we’re a couple of blind squirrels here, Dana. Give me Kansas, Duke, Purdue and Saint Mary’s. The first three are ultra-chalky — Rock-chalky, if you will — but they’re also teams loaded with experienced talent. Some of the Blue Devils aren’t exactly ancient, but one year of seasoning should be sufficient. Saint Mary’s is my flyer, but at some point Randy Bennett is going to have one of those years, right? And why couldn’t it be the year when he also has experienced talent, fueled by a guard like Aidan Mahaney, who has the sort of shot-making flair to put together a breakthrough season and crash that player-of-the-year discussion?

Anyway, if either of us goes even one-for-four here, I call that a win. The good news is that we’re once again in the spot to make picks that go horribly wrong. College hoops is upon us. Buckle up.

(Top photo of Michigan State’s AJ Hoggard shooting over Purdue’s Zach Edey last season: Justin Casterline / Getty Images)