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College Basketball Grab Bag: Ben Simmons Is Awesome, And So Is Purdue's Frontcourt

Our weekly look at college basketball's weird and wonderful includes LSU's superfrosh, The Great Wall of Purdue, the joys of the Big Ten-ACC Challenge and Monmouth's world-beating bench.
Derick E. Hingle-USA TODAY Sports

Welcome to the VICE Sports College Basketball Grab Bag, where every week we'll round up the biggest news stories in the sport. Random stuff, too, because it's college basketball. Enjoy!

The best player on a bad team

Year after year, we're used to seeing the country's best one-and-done players play on some of the best teams. Last season, Karl-Anthony Towns played for Kentucky, and Jahlil Okafor and Tyus Jones played for Duke. In a bit of an outlier, D'Angelo Russell played for Ohio State, but the Buckeyes still made the NCAA Tournament. The previous season, Duke featured Jabari Parker and Kansas showcased Andrew Wiggins.

This season, the best player in college basketball—and possibly the best freshman in years—is dominating the sport as part of a pretty awful team. Top-ranked recruit Ben Simmons is averaging 19.9 points, 14.9 rebounds and six assists per game for LSU, and yet the Tigers are 4-3, with losses to Marquette, NC State and Charleston.

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Read More: Mick Cronin Is Back And Counting His Blessings

Before you say that Simmons can't be that good if his team is bad, know this: that would be an incredibly stupid thing to say. Simmons is basically the only reason his team isn't much, much worse, and single-handedly led the Tigers to a win over a pretty good North Florida team, with 43 points, 14 rebounds, seven assists, five steals and three blocks in 37 minutes.

There are lots of players who have been called "the next LeBron" —Parker and Wiggins among them—but Simmons actually fits the profile. He's straight-up dominating college games, decisively and right away, as opposed to the other would-be LeBrons, who mostly just showed flashes. At 6-foot-10, Simmons is little bit bigger than LeBron, and while he's not the best jump shooter, his ball skills and court vision are impossibly good for someone his size. (Sound familiar?)

How does anyone stop this?

LSU still has a full season against a weak SEC to get things together, but the Tigers already seem to be in danger of missing the NCAA Tournament. That would be a shame. Still, don't let a thus-far mediocre supporting cast cloud what you think of one of the best players in the country. Or just watch Ben Simmons play, and get ready to believe.

Purdue and it's awesome frontcourt could win the national championship. Really!

Just two years after finishing dead last in the Big Ten, Purdue has rolled to a 7-0 start, with a neutral site win against Florida and a road win against Pitt. In doing do, the Boilermakers have been the most drama-free team in the country, winning all their games by 13 points or more.

The pieces are all in place for Purdue to make a national title run, largely due to an awesome frontcourt that features two seven-footers and a five-star recruit.

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Perhaps we should have seen this coming: last year, the Boilermakers improved greatly throughout the season and made the NCAA Tournament behind timely guard play and centers A.J. Hammons and Isaac Haas. This year, Haas is playing like one of the best players in the country, and five-star big man Caleb Swanigan has so far lived up to his billing.

The Boilermakers often play two of Hammons, Haas and Swanigan at once, and those combos give opponents fits at both ends of the floor. Teams have a 36.1 percent effective field goal percentage against Purdue's intimidating frontline—the best figure in the nation—and the Boilermakers are blocking an implausible 13 percent of the shots they face according to KenPom.com. (This is my yearly plug: subscribe to KenPom. It's amazing.)

Meanwhile, Purdue's offense ranks No. 11 nationally in efficiency according to KenPom, because it's pretty hard to to inefficient when you have three tall guys who can just place the ball in the hoop.

Purdue already has shot up the national rankings, and it's tough to see them losing until a brutal stretch against Butler, Vanderbilt, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Michigan. The Boilermakers should be favored in each of those games. How they fare will tell us a lot about how good they really are, but for now, Purdue looks like the best team in the Big Ten, and a true national championship contender.

Large and in charge. — Photo by Mark L. Baer-USA TODAY Sports

The ACC-Big Ten Challenge is the best part of the college basketball offseason

The Big Ten extended its non-losing streak in the ACC-Big Ten Challenge to seven years on Wednesday night, winning the event to improve its record in that time to 5-0-2. The conference still has some catching up to do after the ACC won the first 10 Challenges, but regardless of who wins, this series is terrific for college basketball.

The sport's non-conference season often lacks fun match-ups at home sites. There are good neutral site games, but those environments are watered-down by definition. By contrast, the made-for-TV Challenge gives us match-ups we would otherwise never see. Florida State playing at Iowa—a game that featured 21 lead changes—never happens without ESPN. Indiana at Duke and Louisville at Michigan State probably don't happen, either.

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In the heart of college football season, this yearly series gives us two days of incredible college hoops. We need more events like it.

Best week: Monmouth

Monmouth gets this award due in part to its bench celebrations:

The Hawks also had a really good week on the court. They lost a close one to Dayton, but also beat both Notre Dame and USC. They beat UCLA earlier in the season as well, which means Monmouth might actually be for real. At the very least, they're really entertaining.

Worst week: Indiana

Hey, Indiana made this list last week, too! On one hand, losing at Duke is nothing to be ashamed of; on the other, losing by 20 and giving up 94 points definitely is. Duke showed Indiana just how far it is from the nation's elite, and despite the program's yearly recruiting successes, the Hoosiers could maybe (possibly? somehow?) be in danger of missing the NCAA Tournament.

That said, congrats on beating Alcorn State.

Chillin' in Maui: The VICE Sports Tom Crean Photo of the Week. — Photo by Brian Spurlock-USA TODAY Sports

Guarantee game of the week

Are you a bad team who needs a win? Play an animal.

I don't think an antelope should be allowed to play a Division-I basketball team in a game. — Rodger Sherman (@rodger_sherman)December 3, 2015

Random ranking

This week, we're ranking the five best games of the ACC-Big Ten Challenge

1. Wisconsin 66, Syracuse 58 (OT): Wisconsin is having a down year, but the Badgers still handed a very good Syracuse team its first loss of the year in the Carrier Dome.

2. Michigan State 71, Louisville 67: This one was all Louisville early, but MSU rode All-American candidate Denzel Valentine to a victory to remain undefeated.

3. Iowa 78, Florida State 75 (OT): Twenty-one lead changes! This was a pretty sloppy game, but it sure was exciting.

4. Purdue 72, Pitt 59: There are plenty of other close games between bad teams, but it was a lot of fun to watch Purdue cook.

5. Duke 94, Indiana 74: Same as above, only for the Blue Devils.