Gonzaga Dominates Baylor in Season Opener, Wins by 38

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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.