The 2023-24 men's college basketball season has only just begun. We're 10 days into the 154-day journey to crown the next national champion.

But we've seen enough to jump to conclusions that may fly in the face of preseason expectations.

After months of offseason portal watching, injury-update checking and exhibition-box-score dissecting to concoct a "definitive" ranking of teams heading into the season, most of it goes straight into the trash as we have knee-jerk reactions to early surprises and upsets.

Did we all have Maryland and Michigan flip-flopped as the projected third-best and third-worst teams in the Big Ten?

Is James Madison going to matter for once?

Will Louisville ever matter again?

And if it weren't for all of Purdue's embarrassing losses to double-digits seeds in the NCAA tournament, would we be talking about Zach Edey as one of the greatest college basketball players of all time?

Lots of juicy overreactions to talk about.

James Madison Might Go Undefeated

James Madison has made the NCAA tournament only twice in the past four decades. The Dukes' lone tournament victory came in a play-in game in 2013.

They entered this season 1-32 all-time against AP Top 25 opponents. They had never once been ranked.

Those latter two factoids changed in a big way on the first night of the 2023-24 season when they waltzed into the Breslin Center and stunned the No. 4 ranked Michigan State Spartans with a 79-76 overtime victory. MSU shooting 1-for-20 from three-point range had a lot to do with that, but JMU punched the Spartans in the mouth early on and battled back from a six-point deficit midway through the second half, earning that colossal upset.

After a subsequent double-overtime victory over Kent State, JMU entered this week's AP poll at No. 24. And those were the two most difficult games on the Dukes' entire schedule.

They don't have a single game left against a team that entered Wednesday rated in the KenPom top 150. They do have four games with a win probability below 60 percent, but they are currently projected to win each of their remaining contests.

There is one game missing from that schedule, though. JMU will likely face KenPom No. 119 Fresno State in the championship of the Cancun Challenge on Nov. 22. But if the Dukes can escape Mexico with a zero still in the loss column, let the undefeated watch officially commence.

The Early Award for Biggest Disappointment Goes To: Maryland

The vast majority of the early-season tournaments will take place over the course of the next 11 days. But there is already one tourney in the books, and the Asheville Championship delivered quite the stunner.

Given the respective preseason KenPom rankings of the four teams participating in that one, it should have been No. 22 Maryland over No. 152 Davidson and No. 51 Clemson over No. 90 UAB in the semifinals, followed by the Terrapins defeating the Tigers in the championship game.

Instead of going 2-0, however, Maryland left Asheville with a pair of losses to mid-majors.

Inconsistent offense was a major problem for the Terps last year. They were a perfect 19-0 when scoring at least 68 points, but they were 0-10 when held to 63 points or fewer. It looks like that trend is going to continue, as they were held to 61 in the loss to Davidson and 63 in the loss to UAB.

The big unknown for Maryland heading into the season was who would step up alongside returning top scorers Jahmir Young, Julien Reese and Donta Scott. But the Terrapins couldn't even get that whole trio to show up in Asheville, let alone a supporting cast.

Scott was held to four points against Davidson while Reese managed only five points before fouling out against UAB. And aside from highly touted freshman DeShawn Harris-Smith, no one else rose to the occasion.

Maryland plays at Villanova on Friday in what already feels like a critical game for both teams, as the Wildcats are coming off a shocking early loss of their own against Penn on Monday. If that game bumps the Terps to 1-3, it will be a very steep uphill climb to get back into the NCAA tournament conversation.

The Early Award for Most Surprisingly Good Team Goes To: Michigan

Give us at least another 10 days before we say we're all the way in on Michigan being a second-weekend-of-the-NCAA-tournament team. We'll have to see how the Wolverines fare in the Battle 4 Atlantis—where they'll open with Memphis before possible matchups with Arkansas and North Carolina—before we get too carried away here.

But in the spirit of knee-jerk reactions, Michigan looks a lot better than expected.

The Wolverines lost all three of the leading scorers (Hunter Dickinson to Kansas; Kobe Bufkin and Jett Howard to the NBA) from a team that went just 18-16 last season.

For about six weeks, they thought they were getting North Carolina transfer Caleb Love to fill some of that scoring void. But after an admissions issue, he landed at Arizona instead.

They signed only one freshman, George Washington III, who was never expected to make a major, immediate impact. For them to even be competitive in the Big Ten, let alone on the national landscape, they were going to need guys like Dug McDaniel, Terrance Williams, Will Tschetter and Tarris Reed to make considerable leaps, while also getting big-time production out of transfers Nimari Burnett (Alabama) and Olivier Nkamhoua (Tennessee).

So far so good on those fronts, as that sextet did all of the heavy lifting in the statement win over St. John's at Madison Square Garden on Monday night. Burnett scored 15 of the team's first 16 points before McDaniel took the game over, finishing with 26 points, seven assists, six rebounds and a pair of steals in the 89-73 victory.

That impressive performance came on the heels of opening wins in which the Wolverines scored 99 and 92 points. They reached 92 just once in the entire 2022-23 season.

Louisville Somehow Got Even Worse Than It Already Was

Last season was an unmitigated travesty for Louisville basketball. The Cardinals went 4-28, posting what was by far their worst winning percentage in more than eight decades.

To some extent, though, first-time head coach Kenny Payne was given a mulligan for that one. Chris Mack left that program an even bigger mess than what he originally inherited, leaving Payne with no hope of immediate success.

But despite bringing in three high-major transfers and one of the better recruiting classes in the nation, Louisville might be even worse in Payne's second (and perhaps final) season.

The Cardinals lost an exhibition game to Kentucky Wesleyan—a D-II program picked to finish in the bottom half of its conference. And things haven't gotten much better since then.

They almost lost their season opener at home against UMBC, allowing 93 points to a team which subsequently scored 59 in a home loss to Marist. Though they survived by one point, the closing sequence—frantically sprinting down the court to get up a contested shot with 12 seconds left in a tie game and then fouling with a two-point lead with two seconds remaining—was the polar opposite of composed, well-coached basketball.

Louisville proceeded to lose its next game at home against Chattanooga, trailing by as many as 21 points in the second half of that embarrassment.

The Cardinals do at least have more than one player capable of scoring this season, but this sure looks like the worst power-conference defense in the country in the early going.

With "honorable" mentions to DePaul, Georgetown, Notre Dame and California, Louisville is well on its way to a second consecutive season as the worst high-major program.

Keshad Johnson for Transfer of the Year

In the next week or so, we'll put together a way-too-early ranking of the best transfers of this men's college basketball season.

But Keshad Johnson is the clear early front-runner for the top spot on that list.

Over the previous four seasons, Johnson played at San Diego State in a slow-paced, defensive-minded program. He averaged only 7.7 points per game last year, but he started all 39 contests and was an indispensable piece of the team that made it all the way to the national championship game.

Now with Arizona, Johnson is playing for one of the most uptempo teams in the nation, but he still brings that SDSU-like intensity on defense. In just 19 minutes in the season-opening annihilation of Morgan State, Johnson had three blocks and three steals.

In the subsequent road win over Duke, he was arguably the Wildcats' MVP. He led the team with 14 points and tied for a game-high eight rebounds while logging 34 minutes and keeping Mark Mitchell from making much of an impact.

It just felt like he was everywhere all of the time, which figures to be a season-long trend.

Johnson scored 14 or more points only four times last season, but he has hit that mark in each of Arizona's first three games. That includes scoring a career-high 17 points (in 19 minutes) in Monday's victory over Southern.

He is leading the Wildcats in points, rebounds and blocks as they assert themselves as possibly the best team in the country. We'll see if he can feast on Michigan State's frontcourt on Thanksgiving.

The Block/Charge Rule Tweak Is Working

Spoiler alert: This is entirely anecdotal.

I have no clue how many block/charge collisions there have been this season, what percentage of them have been called in which direction, how that rate/percentage compares to previous seasons or where one would even begin such a data deep dive.

But just from watching the early games, it sure feels like the referees got the memo about no longer rewarding secondary defenders for trying to draw charges at the last possible millisecond.

Now, that doesn't mean the charge is dead. Duke was still able to draw two charges in the second half of its game against Arizona, and we all know that any scientific study of the state of charges drawn in men's college basketball has to begin at Cameron Indoor Stadium.

If you lower your shoulder and try to bowl over a defender in the post, it's still going to be an offensive foul. And it is still possible for a secondary defender to step in front of a driver with a full head of steam and create a turnover.

Thus far, however, it has to be a pretty blatant charge to go the other way.

All of those questionable calls from years past where one ref blows the whistle because there's a collision, but then all three officials just kind of look at each other for a few seconds before deciding who the foul is against? Those situations are almost unilaterally—and, again, I'm speaking anecdotally from the tiny percentage of all D-I games that I've seen thus far—and not hesitantly being called fouls against the defender.

Because of that, fewer buckets are being waved off, more free throws are being awarded, aggressive drivers are less likely to get into early foul trouble and overall scoring has increased considerably.

We shall see whether that officiating will stay consistent throughout the season and whether scoring will remain elevated once we're talking about conference games as opposed to blowouts of non-D1 competition. But we're off to a good start.

Zach Edey Has Gotten Even Better; Remains Overwhelming Favorite to Repeat as NPOY

After winning all of the National Player of the Year awards last season, you'd think there wasn't much room for improvement in Zach Edey's game. After all, he was already the first player to average at least 22 points and 12 rebounds per game in a single season since Blake Griffin in 2008-09.

But through three games, Edey has maintained his double-double dominance while also making considerable strides in three other areas: blocks, free throws and assists.

The biggest one is the blocks, which you'd think would have always been a huge part of this 7'4" giant's game. But after averaging fewer than 3.0 blocks per 40 minutes in each of his first three seasons, Edey has become a shot-blocking machine with 11 rejections in three games (5.7 per 40 minutes).

He did have 13 games with at least three blocks last year, including six in the season opener. It's not like he never blocked shots in the past. However, it looks like the main message he received while going through the draft process was that he needs to be able to impact the game on defense if he expects to play in the NBA as a big man with no range. He's out to prove he can do just that. (And he has committed only two total fouls in the process.)

On the free-throws front, Edey is both taking and making them at a ridiculous rate. He averaged 6.5 made free throws per 40 minutes in his first three seasons, converting at a 70.2 percent clip. He's at 12.5 and 80.0, respectively. Hack-a-Zach simply will not become a thing.

And while the increased assist rate may well just be a byproduct of a supporting cast making a much greater percentage of its shots, if Edey continues to average 3.1 assists per 40 minutes, opponents have to be aware that doubling him when he gets the ball in the post is likely to just result in a wide-open shot elsewhere.

This Probably Isn't John Calipari's Best Kentucky Team, But It Might Be the Most Fun

Because 7'0" Ugonna Onyenso and 7'1" Aaron Bradshaw are recovering from offseason foot surgeries and 7'2" Zvonimir Ivisic is waiting to be cleared to play by the NCAA, Kentucky has had no choice but to go smaller than it ever has under John Calipari.

It has been all sorts of fun to watch.

Even before the Champions Classic matchup with Kansas, the Wildcats were attempting three-pointers at an astronomical rate by Kentucky standards. Their 3PA/FGA ratio through two games was 39.4, after finishing each of the past 14 seasons at 32.4 or below.

Their plan for dealing with 7'2" Hunter Dickinson? Make enough threes to overcome his inevitable twos. And it almost worked. In fact, it should have worked.

Kentucky led by double digits early in the second half and had a chance to win late, even while freshmen Justin Edwards and D.J. Wagner combined to shoot a horrific 1-for-18 from the field and Antonio Reeves shot 3-for-17 from distance.

They took 50 percent of their shots from beyond the perimeter and almost got the win.

To be clear, relentlessly shooting threes isn't necessarily always fun. No one much cared when VMI was repeatedly leading the nation in three-point rate. But when Rob Dillingham and Reed Sheppard came off the bench and started cooking, that was "Monmouth Bench Mob" levels of entertaining.

It's likely going to go away once Bradshaw and/or Onyenso are healthy enough to play, but I hope Calipari remembers he has this option and uses it on occasion.

Michigan State's Dream of Winning a National Championship Might Already Be Dead

We have seen teams bounce back from a season-opening loss to win a national championship. In the early 2000s, it was practically a rite of passage, with 2001-02 Maryland, 2002-03 Syracuse and 2004-05 North Carolina each starting out 0-1 before winning it all.

But winning a national championship after starting out 1-2? That has only happened once in the past seven decades, when 1987-88 Kansas rallied from an 0-2 start in the Maui Invitational to win it all as a No. 6 seed.

So, after opening the season with a home loss to the Dukes of James Madison before losing to the Duke of Durham in the Champions Classic, can we already remove Michigan State from the list of title contenders?

That might be a bit overdramatic, even for a knee-jerk reactions article. But MSU's start is certainly troubling, and not just because of the atrocious three-point shooting.

Roster cohesion and veteran leadership is the biggest reason why we all loved the Spartans heading into the season, as they brought back five of their six leading scorers from last year. But aside from Tyson Walker finding a new gear of put-the-team-on-my-back-ness, did any of those guys actually get any better?

And what does it say about the state of this frontcourt that the best rebounder on the team is a 6'4" shooting guard? Or that the Spartans got outworked in the paint by a Duke team that got destroyed on the glass by Arizona?

The Spartans will inevitably start shooting better than 16.7 percent from three-point range. And hopefully Tom Izzo will realize that human pogo stick and spark plug Coen Carr needs to play more than 12 minutes against quality opponents. But this team has way more warts than expected, and it appears the Big Ten will run through Purdue once again.

Tennessee Might Be the Best Team in the Country

We kind of have to close out this knee-jerk reactions piece with a proclamation that a team outside the top three in the AP poll might be the best in the country. It's just what we do.

And Tennessee opening the season with three consecutive 80-point performances? That's a pretty big deal for a team that absolutely had a good enough defense to win a national championship last season.

Since Rick Barnes got that job nine years ago, the Volunteers have never been that consistently good on offense right off the bat. Plus, one of those games was on the road against Wisconsin, which allows an opponent to score 80 points once or twice per season.

But the Volunteers have found something special with their pair of up-transfers, Dalton Knecht and Jordan Gainey.

The former averaged 20.2 points per game last season for Northern Colorado, and he's sitting at 19.7 PPG three games into the Tennessee portion of his career. The latter was USC Upstate's leading scorer in 2022-23, and now he's averaging 12.3 points per game off the bench for the Volunteers.

But maybe the biggest news of all (pun definitely intended) is that the Jonas Aidoo and Tobe Awaka tandem at the 5 has been great, combining for 12.0 points, 12.3 rebounds and 3.7 blocks per game.

Lack of size was a legitimate concern for the Vols after losing Uros Plavsic, Olivier Nkamhoua and Julian Phillips, but early returns suggest they are going to be more than fine in the post and might finally have (at least) a Final Four run in them.