One of the highlights of ESPNU’s Midnight Madness basketball coverage was watching North Carolina freshman Jackson Simmons score numerous easy baskets. And that is probably the perfect summary of the Friday night event. Simmons is not about to become a top of the rotation player for the Tar Heels. But Midnight Madness isn’t about the stars. Midnight Madness is a chance to meet some new faces and let some less heralded players grab the spotlight for a few minutes. Even if Jackson Simmons doesn’t see a minute of action for the Tar Heels this year, his hard work in practice will almost certainly be important. And for one night, we got to salute him and the many players like him around the nation.

Other than meeting these new players, the only other real value in the first scrimmage of the season is to see some fun dunks and sweet three point shots. In the case of dunks, you could do much worse than to keep your eyes focused on Syracuse’s James Southerland. I loved that ESPNU began the Syracuse segment with a Southerland windmill dunk, because that is such an under-rated visual masterpiece. But what I really enjoyed were the dunks that players would have no business attempting in the regular season. At the end of the Syracuse segment, Scoop Jardine attempted a one-handed, barely cleared the rim dunk, that would probably earn a benching in the regular season due to its low percentage. But as he grinned and walked off the court, the exuberance was clear. College basketball is back. 

These scrimmages are not a chance to learn anything real about the players. I’d like to write something about how Duke’s Quinn Cook might be the underrated penetrating guard the Blue Devils need. But that’s just silly. Just because Cook drove to the basket effectively in a scrimmage does not prove much at all. But even if there is not a lot to be learned from the live action, I certainly want to thank ESPN for providing some real basketball in the four-hour telecast. Because without the occasional basketball games, the in-studio infomercial would be a little bit too much talk.

For a while, I wanted to keep track of all the errors. At one point Doug Gottlieb said that a team had “arguably the best two point FG% defense in the nation.” Um, I’m pretty sure that’s a factual question. You can’t argue who has the best FG% defense. I also heard three different pronunciations of Creighton’s Gregory Echenique’s name. But the last thing I want to do is criticize Gottlieb. On Friday he once again proved that he is one of the most informed analysts in the industry. I smiled as Gottlieb pointed out that:

- Vanderbilt’s defense could hold them back from living up to expectations this year

- Kansas might be the Big 12 favorite, but he is not sure if Tyshawn Taylor is committed enough to be a leader

- Josh Pastner has a lot of talented players but he still is learning what it takes to be a head coach

Maybe I am just happy because these are all things that I have echoed in the last few months, but you can really tell that all these ESPN guys do their homework. Gottlieb will always rub some people the wrong way because instead of writing columns that say “Wooden Award Snubs”, he writes columns that say “Guys who do not deserve to be on the Wooden Award Watch List”. When you write and speak about basketball from that perspective, you are always going to have people who dislike you. But if you can step back from being a fan, and really listen to what he says, his criticisms are almost always spot-on.

The night’s comedy came from ESPNU’s attempt to get Andy Katz to keep talking about Big East expansion over-and-over again, like it was a “breaking” story at 11 PM on a Friday Night. But even if the Air Force talk got a little old, Katz once again had the best interviews across the board. He got Vanderbilt’s Kevin Stallings to say his team should win the NCAA title. (You never want to say that in November.) And he had Jamie Dixon explain how Pittsburgh has become one of the most efficient offense teams in the nation. (The tempo free stats really are taking over.)

But despite all of Katz interviews, the only real news of the evening was Bill Self confirming that Ben McLemore and Jamari Traylor will not be eligible for Kansas this season. Indeed, Friday Night was not about news, it was about hype. It was about Rick Pitino trying to hype Boise St. in the Big East. It was about Tom Izzo hyping a game on an aircraft carrier. And it was about Baylor trying to hype a team that finished 7-9 last season, as the Big 12 favorite. The hype is here, but the games are still three weeks away.