It wasn’t long after all those Florida schools switched off the lights on the BCS (Blowouts Captivate uS) that college basketball got about the business of showing college football how to match up teams and hold somebody’s interest. Nobody knows why most of the bowls always manage to live down to those diminished expectations and unhealthy TV ratings (Maryland? Please.) But perhaps the fact that the undefeated, untied and unexpurgated University of South Beach gridiron national champions were led by a guy who resembled your friendly neighborhood undertaker or, more precisely, one of his clients -- "Hey, Larry Coker, the mortuary called; they need your face back within 24 hours" -- had something to do with it. If the Coke-ster suddenly took over coaching duties for the K-ster on the hardwood at Duke, no terrified opponent would venture within five graveyards of Cameron Indoor Looney Bin.

Unfortunately for the Blue Devils, on hoops’ first wild weekend, they not only neglected to remain safe in the friendly confines but wandered obviously overconfidently along the suddenly treacherous trail that seems to be the entire state of -- yes, Florida. The result was Sunday’s shocking upset in Tallahassee, woebegone Florida State beating the defending national champs, 77-76, when Player-of-the-Year-in-Waiting Jason Williams missed two free throws, then got totally Noxemaed -- which is to say his driving shot in the lane was block-facialed into oblivion. (Fans of both Seton Hall and Kentucky must have been chuckling the loudest, Williams having received a favorable foul call on relatively the same play at the controversial climaxes of both Duke’s closest victories this year.)

Humpty Dumpty’s bewildering basketball fall downloaded just three days after that football Rose thing came up smelling like something far less and only a few hours after every other one of the nation’s quartet of undefeated hoop teams, Miami, Virginia and Oklahoma State, lost in similarly compelling upsets -- the latter two on their own home courts. When Kentucky and Illinois were also defeated on the same Saturday, that meant five of the top seven teams in the land had slipped on the sideline almost as quickly as it took Steve Spurrier (an old Duke coach, himself, by the way) to throw his visor into the ring in Washington, uh, Tampa, uh, Charlotte, uh, San Diego, uh everywhere, naturally, but Tallahassee.

Let us count the corpses:

Among other oddities provided by the weekend, it was the seventh straight year Virginia has lost its opener in the Atlantic Coast Conference, but the first time in 16 years Kentucky has lost its first game in the Southeastern Conference.

And, oh yeah, we almost forgot that debacle in the desert on Friday in which Oregon drove No. 15 Arizona absolutely quackers, 90-80, making that two victories in two weeks (and 23 of 39 trifectas) over Lute Olson’s children by a practically infanticidal 40 points.

"It’s fairly simple; they are just better than us," bemoaned Lute, who earned a rare technical foul, even nearly messing his hair while possibly recalling last season, when his ‘Cats whomped the Ducks in Tucson by 39.

Whether all of this signifies experience over youth, road trumping home, parity, revenge, post-holidays lethargy, conference stress, competitive balance, paper-breaks-rock-breaks-scissors or just what, it’s precisely the kind of results that make college ball so goofy, not to mention wonderful.

So what’s with South Carolina coach Dave Odom who, after a quiet, dignified stretch at Wake Forest, continues to bash his former school and league? Most recently Odom opined how his new digs, the SEC, was better, stronger, deeper, tougher and "more competitive" than the ACC. Really? Maybe he was foretelling another couple of Saturday scores, his present Gamecocks falling at (No. 3) Florida, 69-60 -- where the game was oh, maybe 100th on the news play list behind 99 stories about Spurrier -- while his former Demon Deacons pounded North Carolina in Chapel Hill, 84-62, the worst defeat for the hopeless homies ever in the Dean Dome. That, of course, would be virtually the same Wake Forest team Odom coached to 11 defeats in its last 18 games last year, including a humiliating NCAA tournament loss to Butler.

Last season Odom’s Wake team was itself undefeated and ranked No. 4 when the Deacs invaded the Hill and lost by a point, the result being the team -- as ESPN’s Jay Bilas described in a marvelous phrase -- "saw their own blood and were never the same." (Easy for some antediluvian Dukie to say -- at least before his ancestral 2001 champs witnessed some of their familiar red themselves flowing on Sunday in Tallahassee.)

The fact is, new Wake Coach Skip Prosser has managed to keep his future NBA’er by way of Lithuania, Darius Songaila, out of foul trouble and Jumpin’ Josh Howard pogo-bouncing over tall buildings so that the Deacs are an ongoing threat, whether in the diminished ACC or outside it. At the same time the visitors planted a flaming stake on sacred ground now patrolled by a significantly weakened Tar Heel crew, and "Carolinaholics" -- the word is from Prosser, who claims he is one -- must shudder at what atrocities the likes of Maryland and Duke will commit there this winter. With about a minute left on Saturday, Prosser was shouting a particularly weird but compassionate command at his Deacs: "No More Shots!"

No More Losses will now be the mantra down the road in Durham -- and waiting on a potential March matchup in the NCAAs with, let’s say, Kansas, the Blue Devils may very well go undefeated the rest of the way. With that new lineup featuring shotblocker Casey Sanders starting in the middle and the explosive Dahntay Jones coming off the bench, Krzyzewski is set for the Blue Devils crucible later this month -- Maryland, Wake Forest and Virginia within 10 days. But all of those games are at home. In the middle of that stretch the Blue Devils take to the unforgiving road again where -- mark it down, Jan. 24 at Boston College -- the formerly dream season may receive another rude awakening.

Meanwhile, the tried and true college dynasty showed up elsewhere on Saturday, at Knoxville, Tenn., in the road war cosmetics of the Connecticut Lady Huskies. Thankfully, though -- and thanks to CBS -- we got a thoroughly provocative view of how Lady Vol coach Pat Summit planned to upset the former/future NCAA champs. For, uh, at least twelve seconds at halftime a camera penetrated the locker room in which the Lady Vols sat at desks and Summit, business-suited in that hideous orange (hey, it ain’t her fault; Peyton Manning had to endure the same hue) chalk-talked away. "We’re not doing enough of what?" Summit calmly inquired as the camera panned past the desks, over the attentive players, to the far corners of the room where ... HEY! Who were all those civilians with all those nametags sitting behind the players? The place was more crowded than a Taliban foxhole. No wonder the Lady Huskies belted the home team, 86-72.

So let’s face it. There’s only one matchup anybody wants to see anymore. The Connecticut women. The Florida State men. Damn the BCS. Let’s get it on!

Curry Kirkpatrick is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail curry.kirkpatrick@espnmag.com.