SI:AM | The First Major Upset of the College Hoops Season

Plus, how the USMNT decided to go all in on youth.

Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I hope, unlike Nick Young, you realized that the NBA was off last night for Election Day.

In today’s SI:AM:

👶 The historically young USMNT

🏈 Analyzing the latest CFP rankings

😡 The Astros owner’s insult to his manager and GM

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A statement win in Columbus

While the college basketball season started Monday, there haven’t been that many marquee games. Only two games thus far in men’s and women’s Division I have featured two ranked teams: The No. 21 Creighton women beat No. 23 South Dakota State, 78–69, on the road Monday, and last night, the No. 5 Tennessee women were dominated by No. 14 Ohio State in Columbus. Buckeyes fans stormed the court after the win.

The Buckeyes won 87–75, but that 12-point margin doesn’t tell the whole story. Tennessee turned the ball over a staggering 29 times against Ohio State’s full-court press, compared to 15 for OSU. Jordan Horston, one of Wilton Jackson’s preseason player of the year candidates, had a team-high 20 points and 13 rebounds for Tennessee but also led the way with seven turnovers. (You can watch the highlights here.)

“The game went kind of the way we wanted,” Ohio State coach Kevin McGuff said after the win. “We wanted to make it very much up-tempo. We wanted to press them, to speed them up and not let them get comfortable in the half court. I thought we were kind of doing that; we just weren’t making any shots in the first half, so we couldn’t get into the press enough.”

According to ESPN, it was the first time that a women’s team ranked in the top five lost its season opener to a team ranked outside the top five since 2008. That was the most notable result from the first two days of games, but here are some other outcomes that caught my eye.

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Men’s: Georgetown 99, Coppin State 89 (OT)

Patrick Ewing’s time at Georgetown might be running out. The Hoyas went winless in conference play last season, running up a 21-game losing streak before barely squeaking by lowly Coppin State (No. 277 in Kevin Sweeney’s rankings) last night.

Women’s: Oklahoma 105, Oral Roberts 94

It looks like Wilton and Ben Pickman were right when they wrote in their preseason rankings that Oklahoma (who they put at No. 14) has “what should be a high-powered offense.” The Sooners had five players score at least 13 points in their season-opening win, although they probably would have liked to have held Oral Roberts, a mediocre Summit League team last year, to fewer points. (Shout out to Golden Eagles sophomore forward Tirzah Moore, though. She had 25 points and 17 rebounds.)

Men’s: Houston 83, Northern Colorado 36

I don’t care who you’re playing. When you hold a team to 36 points on 25.6% shooting, that’s impressive. Houston is a national title contender (coming in at No. 3 in Sweeney’s preseason rankings) thanks to a combination of returning stars and highly touted freshmen. Upperclassman guards Marcus Sasser and Jamal Shead are joined by Jarace Walker and Terrance Arceneaux, who could jump right to the NBA after their freshman seasons. The Cougars should have no trouble in their next game (Friday against Saint Joe’s), but keep your eye on their Nov. 20 trip to Eugene to face No. 21 Oregon.

The best of Sports Illustrated

In today’s Daily Cover, Brian Straus looks at how the USMNT was rebuilt ahead of the World Cup:

Young men may not be ready for the rigors of a World Cup qualifying campaign, not to mention the unique stress of the tournament itself. They may think that straggling in shortly before sunrise, even with the next match three days away, is O.K. There’s a reason, after all, that the average player age of World Cup winners is just under 27. [Coach Gregg] Berhalter and his staff knew they were laying a foundation designed to underpin something far larger than that Gold Cup. They planned to use youth as the foundation of a team that could compete in Qatar.

Pat Forde is glad the College Football Playoff committee gave TCU the proper respect. … In waiting to extend contract offers to GM James Click and manager Dusty Baker, Astros owner Jim Crane showed he “could not be bothered to treat his highest-ranking employees like human beings,” Stephanie Apstein writes. … After their worst defensive performance yet, “the Lakers’ season is slipping away,” Chris Mannix writes. … Jeff Jones spoke with Jon Hamm about the hype video he narrated to promote Trea Turner’s free agency. … These are the matchups, spreads and odds for SI Sportsbook’s Perfect 10 contest for Week 10.

Around the sports world

Brittney Griner has been transferred to a Russian penal colony. … Former UFC heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez, who has been charged with attempted murder, was granted bail. … Kyrie Irving and Adam Silver reportedly met yesterday. … Oilers winger Evander Kane was taken to the hospital after being cut on the wrist by a skate blade. … Massachusetts governor-elect Maura Healey, who became the first openly lesbian governor in U.S. history, is also a former Harvard basketball player. … California voters shot down ballot measures to legalize sports betting.

The top five...

… plays in the NHL last night:

5. Jake Allen’s save on a penalty shot.

4. The Senators’ slick passing on this goal.

3. Ilya Mikheyev’s speed on a goal in transition.

2. Mitch Marner’s no-look goal.

1. Reilly Smith’s overtime game-winner to help the Golden Knights improve to 12–2.

SIQ

Former Tigers reliever Joel Zumaya, who turns 38 today, once missed part of the ALCS with a strange injury. How did he get hurt?

• Walking his dog
• Making dinner
• Taking a shower
• Playing video games

Yesterday’s SIQ: Since the Colts moved to Indianapolis, who are the only coaches to win more games than Frank Reich (40)?

Answer: Tony Dungy (85 wins) and Chuck Pagano (53). That’s it. (Ted Marchibroda won 41 with the Baltimore Colts and 30 a decade later after the move to Indy.)

I bring this up as a reminder of how damn hard it is to be a successful NFL head coach. Unless you have an outstanding quarterback (like Dungy with Peyton Manning and Pagano with Andrew Luck), it’s incredibly difficult to achieve consistent success.

Reich was the 11th noninterim head coach the Colts had since moving to Indianapolis. Since the move, the Colts are 324-292-1. If you exclude games started by Manning (141–67) and Luck (53–33), they’re 130-192-1. That’s 62 games below .500.

Reich’s team is terrible this year, ranked dead last in scoring with 14.7 points per game. That’s not what you want from a coach with an offensive background. But he was set up to fail by a front office that gave him a diminished Matt Ryan as his starting quarterback. Reich was able to work some minor miracles in his first four seasons (like posting a 9–8 record with a top-10 scoring offense led by Carson Wentz last year), but he wore out his welcome this year.

If anybody knows how hard it is to win in the NFL, it’s Reich. It’s a lesson Jeff Saturday will learn sooner rather than later.

From the Vault: Nov. 9, 1987

Ronald C. Modra/Sports Illustrated

Let’s turn back the clock to happier times for the Colts. Just before the 1987 trade deadline, Colts general manager Jim Irsay (he had yet to take over as owner from his dad, Bob) pulled off what was, to that point, the biggest trade in NFL history, acquiring Eric Dickerson from the Rams. Here’s how Austin Murphy described the deal in that week’s SI:

​​Follow this: Indianapolis traded the rights to rookie linebacker Cornelius Bennett, a No. 1 draft choice out of Alabama whom it had not been able to sign, to Buffalo for running back Greg Bell and the Bills’ first-round draft picks in 1988 and ’89 and their second-round pick in ’89. The Colts then sent all they’d received from Buffalo, along with their own first-round draft pick in ’88, their second-round choices in ’88 and ’89 and running back Owen Gill, to the Los Angeles Rams, who in turn packed Dickerson off to Indianapolis.

Counting the draft picks as bodies, eight players were traded for Dickerson. The NFL hadn’t seen a deal approaching this since ’59, when the general manager of the Rams, a rash youngster named Pete Rozelle, sent the rights to nine players to the Chicago Cardinals for Ollie Matson, a future Hall of Famer.

(As big as the Dickerson trade was, it was surpassed two years later by the colossal 18-piece Herschel Walker trade.)

Dickerson, the NFL’s reigning rushing champion, had wanted out of Los Angeles amid a pay dispute. Just before the trade deadline, the younger Irsay approached coach Ron Meyer to ask whether he thought the team should try to get Dickerson. Meyer, who had been Dickerson’s coach at SMU, was in. So the Colts put together that massive trade package and then gave Dickerson what he wanted: a four-year contract worth $5.3 million.

The Colts had been among the worst teams in the NFL in recent years, going 21-67-1 from 1981 to ’86. But in Dickerson’s first game in blue, Indianapolis beat the Jets to improve to 4–3 and get above .500 for the first time since leaving Baltimore after the ’83 season. The team went on to finish 9–6 (its Week 3 game against the Cardinals was canceled due to the player strike) and make the playoffs.

But, as you might expect, trading all those picks to build around a running back approaching the end of his prime had a negative long-term impact on the Colts. Dickerson led the NFL in rushing again as the Colts went 9–7 in 1988. They followed it up with seasons of 8–8 and 7–9 before a disastrous 1–15 season in ’91, Dickerson’s final year with the team. That playoff appearance in ’87 was Indianapolis’s only one from 1978 to ’94.

Check out more of SI’s archives and historic images at vault.si.com.

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