NEW YORK -- You probably won't believe this, but enough student/ath-uh-leets avoided getting suspended by the NCAA for playing nerfbucket against the pizza delivery guy, hooking up with the local street darling, riding in a taxi that didn't belong to them or borrowing a few thousand large from Lowlifes-R-Us that we could actually start the college basketball season last week.

	Welcome to college hoops, Mr. Fraser.

Not that the teams were whole, mind you, or wholly non-susceptible to the usual opening-night jitters at Madison Square Garden. "When I first went out there, I said 'wow, this is college!' " said Villanova freshman Jason Fraser, who, like every other contestant, was missing teammates due to injury, illness or the NCAA's 800-pound rulebook.

But when the four fairly delicious games of the Coaches vs. Cancer Classic concluded sometime following Carson Daly's bedtime on Friday night, the infant season already had offered up some indelible moments to remember, some weird failures to forget and the sense of satisfaction that the event was totally safe from declassification. At least until the NCAA catches the tape of Texas' James Thomas with his burnt-orange underalls barely holding up his parachute game shorts. As Thomas kept tugging his lower uniform up so that it would cover at least half his enormous butt, the inevitable rib came from beyond the baseline: "Hey, Tex, put on ya pants!" Whoops. That's gotta be a 15-game suspension right there.

Luckily for Syracuse -- since the upstate school's veterans all must have fallen off the bus somewhere on the New York State Thruway -- Carmelo Anthony wasn't declared immediately ineligible for being too awfully terrific right out of the box. In his very first varsity half against Memphis on Thursday, the heralded 6-foot-7 rookie exploded for 21 points, 8 rebounds and enough fundamentals along with the spectacs that the joke was he would be "one and done" alright -- one half and gone to suit up for the pitiful Knicks the next day.

"I hardly ever trap," Tigers coach John Calipari said, "but I told my guys on the bench, 'this is ridiculous, the kid is going to get fifty!'" So Cal collapsed waves of Memphians all over a frustrated Anthony most of the second half to such a degree that the rookie from Baltimore (how soon will 'Cusians be wailing "MELLO 'MELO!") was limited to seven shots, six points and giving up the ball mostly to a little freshman guard named Gerry McNamara, who kept casting off from trifectaville (missing 11 of 15 shots overall) as Memphis came from behind to win, 70-63.

"Two more years!" a guy shouted at Anthony at one point. Then when 'Melo humbled himself by missing a breakaway dunk (not to mention his last five free throws): "That's what the second year's for!"

	The Orangemen shouldn't get too comfortable with having Anthony on their roster.

"I wanted to carry the team on my back. But I got to have help," Anthony said afterward -- obviously with a wandering allusion to the Orangemen's erstwhile point guard Billy Edelin, who has been at Syracuse for what seems like fourteen years but has never bounced a real ball in a real game yet.

Edelin lost all of last season when Syracuse suspended him after he was accused of sexual misconduct by two co-eds. No criminal charges were ever filed and the DA even blasted the school's judicial system. Then, while he was a non-student, Edelin played in a dozen games, mostly in a Monday night league going four on four against the town of Dewitt's best 40-year-olds who hadn't previously OD'd on pilsner and chicken wings. Oh yeah, sometime during that period, the house Edelin was living in burned down. The good news: The NCAA didn't lock him up for lack of asbestos fireproofing. The bad news: The NCAA did declare him ineligible for -- of course -- 12 games. Which is more than NHL goons get for poking guys' eyes out with a stick. More than NFL headhunters get for sending guys to permanent hospitalization. More than Winona Ryder got!

"I'm sure it (the beer-bellied shirts-and-skins experience in Dewitt) really benefited him," a disgusted Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim said of Edelin, who cannot join the Syracuse team until January 17. Which means Memphis' somewhat wizened and confused Chris Massie, 25 -- who announced for the pros, played in a pre-draft camp, changed his mind, didn't make his grades and is academically ineligible -- will return for Memphis before Edelin returns for Syracuse.

Not that the boys from Beale Street have exactly whipped the rulesmakers into submission. Calapari's point guard, the significantly swift Antonio Burks, also missed the opener as part of his own three-game suspension for renting a car without a credit card -- illegal for someone under 25. (Too bad he wasn't Massie.) Wham! Can't Play. Turn in your keys and mileage -- oh yeah, and your jock---at the counter.

Despite missing Burks and Massie in New York, however, Cal's Memphis pals -- famously bereft of their own one-and-done Dajuan Wagner -- resembled one of those tough, gritty, get-after-it outfits Calipari made his reputation on at Massachusetts. "I've absolutely killed these guys in practice, been mean and nasty and terrible … just so they wouldn't be scared in a situation like this," he said.

Tiger frosh Jeremy Hunt and Rod Carney (31 points between them) looked especially non-scared. But so did a 6-6 senior named John Grice, a former junior college transfer whom Calapari gave up on long ago when he played "stupid," was always late to practice, then got suspended for cheating. Well, along with his other classmates who had all the answers beforehand and also got caught, the guy copped a grade of 100 on a physics test! Talk about stupid? "I never thought John Grice would play here again," Calapari said. "I'm so proud of him. I'm so proud of our school for not throwing him out of school."

In honor of that, let's throw out a few award samplers from the rest of the Coaches vs Cancer celebration (Cancer, by the way, is getting it's pathetic ass absolutely kicked all to hell by the Coaches):

BEST TATTOO: Alabama's marvelous sophomore Mo Williams -- who suspiciously resembled as good a point guard as there is on campus as he scored 25 points in the Tide's 68-62 upset of Oklahoma. (Although 'Bama's dominance made it look totally unlike any sort of upset.) Amid all his other grafitti on both arms and legs, the cartoonish, top-hatted "Mr. Peanut" emerges from Williams' left bicep -- for a nickname he received on the playgrounds of Jackson, Miss. "Yeah, I've had it since tenth grade," said Mo. "Peanut. Because my head was shaped like one."

BEST SHOES: Another no-contest to the Tide. Antoine Pettway -- hard to believe the little junior guard is a former walk-on -- had 11 points and four assists over 21 off-the-bench minutes. But his bright scarlet kickers, looking for all the world like patent leather, glowinthedark accessories some of those pre-Giuliani ladies of the Great White Way might have lured tourists with, got most of the attention. Last season Pettway beat Georgia in a huge road win and scored at the gun to beat Florida for the SEC championship. That was after TV guys had long since been drawing circles on the screen around those neon red sparklies. "And now people call me Dorothy," he says. Hey, 'Toine. The shoes ARE you, babe.

BEST NAME: Dwyane Wade, Marquette's 6-5 All-America swingman whose versatility (17 points, five rebounds and four assists), maturity and leadership formed a case-by-case textbook for all the swaddling-clothed young Villanova freshmen in the Warriors' 73-61 victory. Fraser (remember, way above) recovered from his astonishment at being in college to record an impressive double-double -- and he paid tribute to Wade: "He uses his brains more than his talent. That's the hardest kind of player to go against … At least, that's my intake on the game." His what? Anyway, Wade's wife is named Siohvaughn and baby son is named Zaire. Right. As in the former African nation now known as Congo. "My wife liked the name, so we went with it," Wade said. The hope is Dwyane and Siohvaughn's next is a girl who takes up hoops at Marquette. We got the name and the nickname right here. Ivory Coast (To Coast) Wade.

	It's all about the buckets in Rucker Park.

BEST GET-BACK: T.J. Ford of Texas -- barely a sliver among a courtful of athletic oaks and elms during Texas' thrilling, March-infused 77-71 victory over Georgia. Already a passing legend after spending his rookie season as the first freshman in history to lead the country in assists, the slender Houston native worked last summer as a counselor at the ABCD camp in New Jersey. One night he ventured over the river to the storied Entertainers' League at Rucker Park -- where basketball is more performance art than physical sport and the crowd (and PA announcer) is the toughest challenge. "T.J. Ford from Texas!" bellowed the PA that night. "All-American … Led the nation in assists! … Can't Shoot!"

"They speak the truth up here," Ford laughed at the Garden after nonetheless shooting (10 of 19, 22 points), passing (8 assists), stealing (3 thefts) and controlling the final moments against not only the excellent Dawgs' fortifications but one of the best individual defenders in the SEC in Rashad Wright. And after being reminded of last summer … "The Rucker. The Garden. Same thing. It's just cement there, wood here. The fans, the media. In New York everybody knows basketball. I'd like to come back here some day." Cue the PA: "Can't ... Miss!"

And finally, THE "ASHAMED AND EMBARRASSED" MEDAL: Not to Kelvin Sampson's Final Four veteran Oklahoma Sooners for stinking up the place in the first half of a 68-62 defeat to Alabama. (That's what Sampson said all his previous Oklahoma teams would feel for playing such a poor period.) Not to player-of-the-year candidate Hollis Price who, until it was too late, looked totally unprepared for the quicksilver onslaught of 'Bama's Wiliams. And certainly not to the Okies' wondrous banger, Ebi Ere (24 points, 9 rebounds), the former Barton County CC jaycee hero whose lively efforts always recall his definitive comment about why he preferred junior college to his current situation, to wit: "You can take 100 shots … and no media." No, ironically this week's medal goes to the media: The New York Times which -- along with the Alabama Game Notes people -- Rodney Dangerfielded the Sooners' ostensibly well-known and hot coach into oblivion. The 'Bama Notes referred to him as Kelvin "Sampston." And the Times called him "RALPH SAMPSON."

Ah well, if you can't make it here …

Curry Kirkpatrick is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at curry.kirkpatrick@espn3.com.