The players arrive and depart at blinding speed now. Coaches get hired, move onward, get fired, get replaced. More than ever it feels like college basketball has ingested a heaping pile of steroids: ever bigger, ever broader, with absurd amounts of money on the table now. 

Which is why, Monday evening, it was so important — so vital — to see a player use the backboard while taking a shot, and one more time out of the television there came … 

“… with a kiss!” 

In that moment, there was no need to concern yourself even a little with the serious matter that litter the landscape of college basketball. All that mattered, for a little while, was that we were at the start of another season, and we were riding shotgun with an old friend.