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00:00Up 10 tilt that tipped off at 1130 p.m. Eastern Time out in Spokane. Sixth-ranked
00:10Gonzaga and eighth-ranked Baylor. One team looked like a top-ten team and a
00:16Final Four contender. The other certainly figuring out some new names. VJ Edgecombe,
00:22of course the very talented freshman from the Bahamas and some new starters
00:26for Scott Drew and Baylor. But the Zags, who bring back 75% of their production
00:32from a season ago, have not skipped a beat. 101-63, nearly a 40-point win for
00:41Gonzaga last night against the Baylor Bears. The Zags closed as a five and a
00:47half point favorite. An opening statement indeed. A total of 156 and a half does go
00:53over. Again, Joe, in today's era of college athletics, but certainly in
00:58college basketball, with now 364 Division One men's college basketball teams, with
01:05all the movement in the transfer portal and NIL, consistency, congruency, year-over-
01:12year is going to pay dividends, especially immediately to start a season.
01:18And so with the Zags returning all of their key and important players, Ryan
01:22Nembhard, orchestrating the offense, 11 dimes, Nolan Hickman back once again,
01:26Graham Ek back once again, Hickman leading the way with 17 points last
01:30night, Ek in double figures as well, Kalief Battle, one of the few transfers
01:35Gonzaga has from Temple, also finding double digits in that starting five. It
01:41looked great for Mark Few and company last night, maybe not his son Josh Few,
01:46who got posterized in the closing minutes of a blowout by VJ Edgecombe, but
01:51outside of that, a sensational start for Gonzaga last night, winning by 38.
01:57Yeah, and you know what, I got to give them credit here, Ben, because the
02:02opening night of college basketball is a lot like week zero of the college
02:07football season, right? You rarely get ranked versus ranked teams right off the
02:13bat. In fact, I think last year on the opening night, we didn't have anything
02:17even remotely close to that. It's usually all of these blowout centrals
02:22like we saw with a lot of the Blue Bloods playing. So the fact that they
02:27put this together, Scott Drew and Mark Few, you know, put this and made this
02:32happen between these two teams. I'm all for that. I loved it. I know it was a
02:36blowout, but I think more teams should do that, especially with the
02:40non-conference. That's a heck of a way to start the season. Even though it was
02:441130 last night, almost midnight on the East Coast, that was kind of must
02:49watch television. If you're a college basketball fan, the problem is there was
02:53clearly a better team on the court last night, and that was the Zags, and they
02:58will continue to be a top five team as far as I'm concerned all year long, Ben.
03:04It's another one of those years where the Zags, yep, you're not going to be
03:08able to fade them very often.