 November 11, 2008 11:44 am TMM Season 5 Previous  •  Next  Good
Morning Hoops Nation: November 11  DURHAM, N.C. -- So this is
how it began. No, the picture above is not of Cameron Indoor
Stadium hours before the first game, this was the first game.
The 2008-09 season tipped off in relative silence, televised
subregionally, radio only. The first 40 minutes of college
basketball's new year were played out in front of thousands of
empty gray seats.  In the Durham pod of the Coaches vs. Cancer
mini-tourney, the game that rewarded the winner with a shot at
the Duke Blue Devils, Georgia Southern held off Houston 65-63
with a superior inside presence, baseline-driving the Cougars to
death and flummoxing their shooters with alternating zone
stacks. The win triggered an e-mail to hundreds of Mid-Majority
readers, some of whom openly wondered what had made this an
"upset."  A team from the Southern Conference, a low-budget,
Football Championship Series league full of tiny southeastern
schools, beat a squad from Confer