UNC-Kansas men’s basketball had what Champions Classic lacks: Home cooking

There were a few years where the Champions Classic essentially kicked off the college basketball season, which the teams may not have necessarily enjoyed but certainly got things started with a bang. That’s not the case this year, with Duke having played twice already before Tuesday night’s big game with Kentucky in Atlanta.

But in the first or second week of the season, the rotating showcase of four of the sport’s biggest programs is still one of the highlights of the beginning, having cemented that place even as two of the four celebrity coaches who helped make it that way — Mike Krzyzewski and John Calipari — have moved along.

It remains the most famous of the big neutral-site spectaculars, and there’s room for a few of those. A few. But over the past decade, the Champions Classic spawned countless imitations that don’t have the same prestige or sizzle, and too many good nonconference games are being played in sterile, sparse arenas and not enough in front of the frenzied home-gym crowds that make college basketball great.

There’s absolutely no question that the best game of the season so far was North Carolina going back to the birthplace of North Carolina basketball, as Kansas fans like to joke. The basketball itself might not have been any different if that game had been played in Kansas City or New Orleans, but the spectacle was completely different at Allen Fieldhouse, a showcase for the best of the sport.

The sport needs more of that. Duke goes to Tucson later this month to complete its home-and-home with Arizona, and while it wasn’t exactly a nail-biter, Baylor going to Gonzaga late last Monday night was a perfect way to wrap up the opening day of the season. When Duke plays at Army next year, it’ll actually go to West Point instead of booking Madison Square Garden. That’s the way.

The multi-team holiday tournaments like the Maui Invitational and Battle for Atlantis are part of the landscape now, and that’s fine. They make for good TV and many fans enjoy making a vacation out of it. But too many games that were once played in front of students and alumni on home courts are now being played in front of financiers and sponsors in NBA arenas.

North Carolina and Kentucky once played on each other’s home courts for 13 out of 14 seasons starting in 2000, but the last five regular-season meetings have been played in Las Vegas, Chicago, Cleveland and Atlanta under the auspices of CBS. This year, the Tar Heels play UCLA instead, at MSG. (They’ll also play Florida in Charlotte, a venue that makes quite a bit more sense, and host one big game at the Smith Center — an NCAA tournament rematch with Alabama in the ACC-SEC Challenge.)

Because Duke and North Carolina are such big draws and all but guaranteed NCAA tournament spots, they’re often operating on a different plane from most of the rest of the college basketball world. It’s a little tougher for the other ACC schools, many of which have to balance revenue opportunities and NET implications when cooking up a schedule, let alone programs outside power conferences. The lure of whatever neutral-site matchups promoters can conjure up is strong.

That’s how N.C. State’s biggest nonconference games a year ago were all played in a vacuum: a half-empty casino gym in Las Vegas for the win over Vanderbilt and the gong-show loss to BYU, an after-hours meeting with Tennessee in San Antonio. The Wolfpack didn’t play a single NCAA tournament-caliber team at home, and it was sent on the road to Mississippi for the ACC-SEC shindig.

That’s not to pick on N.C. State; the financial imperatives of the sport dictate scheduling like that, and it certainly didn’t diminish from the Wolfpack’s postseason performance. (After that BYU street-fight, with all the ejections and scuffles and whatnot, there’s not much the ACC or NCAA tournament can throw at you that seems novel.)

But there’s also a way to thread the needle with a mix of venues, and N.C. State is doing it this season. The Wolfpack also goes to Lawrence for the first leg of a home-and-home, gets a Final Four rematch with Purdue in the first game of a four-team tournament in San Diego and hosts Texas in the ACC-SEC.

You’d maybe like to see one more quality opponent in the Lenovo Center, but other than that, it’s a schedule that makes sense. There’s a happy medium out there for everyone, that pays the bills and tests the team without ignoring fans or hurting the health of the game.

And then there’s this: The NCAA rewards teams for going on the road come selection time. Why not do it more often?

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