College Basketball Week 2: 5 biggest takeaways

While the college basketball season isn’t yet deep enough into the season to make daring proclamations, huge plots have emerged.

With a little more data now available to us, the college basketball picture is slightly less cloudy. Then again, few teams have even played five games, so it isn’t like we are removed from the small sample-size portion of the season.

That doesn’t mean a few notable things have failed to emerge. While they all rest in the realm of narratives, rather than rooted with factual information, it doesn’t change the fact important stuff has happened. The kind of stuff that will make this season as fun as binge-watching The 4400 on Netflix, if we are to be honest.

Grayson Allen is back!(?)

College basketball is better when the polarizing Grayson Allen is putting up numbers. Him playing awful, while rewarding for some, just doesn’t get people all hot and bothered. Some might hate to admit it, but people love when Allen gets them all hot and bothered. He’s the person we want to be outraged over. For various, and mostly nefarious reasons. Whatever. He’s a good talking-point and we humans like to talk.

Through four games, the Duke Blue Devils guard is averaging 21.8 points per game on 53 percent shooting from both the floor and beyond the arc.

He’s done this, at least so far, without incident.

No tripping. No crying. No Coach K suspending him indefinitely for one game. He’s just out here being a bucket making marvel.

Allen never embraced the role of the villain so many wanted him to be during his career. That’s fine. While the sport would be best served with Allen accepting his dirty play, using it as some form of motivation, it actually no longer matters if he’s cool with being portrayed as the villain. He just is.

Last offseason, the entire Allen clan went on a media tour in an attempt to paint the guard in a better light. His mother would say he’s misunderstood, Coach K would call him a good kid, and most old guard media didn’t want to believe he was anything other than a player who made a few poor choices.

All the giggles.

It is what it is. People within the Duke bubble will believe Allen to be a victim of circumstances, with folk outside of that fictional world claiming him to be the devil reincarnated. He’s neither of those things. Allen rests somewhere in the middle.

All of that being said, with Allen playing well this season, there’s reason to think that Duke will not only be excellent this season, but the senior might make a run at National Player of the Year Honors. That’s a legit gasp situation, as Allen felt like he was actually regressing last season.

There’s still a long way to go. Four games isn’t enough of a sample to say Allen will be this consistently great the rest of the way. Even with that being so, it does feel like enough data to claim that “he’s back.”

What is he back from? Being a ho-hum third (sometimes fourth) option on last year’s Duke team. He’s currently playing the role of alpha, and he’s doing so beyond expectations.