It’s not exactly a hot tip-off

The college basketball season started Monday.

You might have missed that.

One of the sport’s problems -- though granted, it’s less of a threat than the brief time the best players are on the stage before they’re off to the NBA -- is that the season begins with a slow trickle.

Did you even notice?

The season started with two games Monday and made few big headlines outside Memphis, where freshman guard Derrick Rose, a potential NBA lottery pick in June, had 17 points, six assists, five rebounds, two blocks and only one turnover in 25 minutes in the third-ranked Tigers’ romp over Tennessee Martin in the 2K Sports College Hoops Classic.

Rose then gave an assessment of his game reminiscent of Tiger Woods’ immodest but exacting grading curve.

“C, C-plus,” he said.

Other teams -- along with the rest of the highly anticipated freshmen -- are making their debuts in dribs and drabs.

No. 1 North Carolina doesn’t play until Nov. 14, one of the eight teams in the preseason top 25 that don’t play at all this week.

At least in Los Angeles the start of the season will come in a one-two punch.

UCLA freshman Kevin Love appears Friday night against Portland State. (And by the way, one of the last public remarks Lute Olson made before taking a leave to deal with a personal matter was to call Love “the best outlet passer as a big man I’ve seen since probably Bill Walton.”)

Then USC freshman O.J. Mayo plays Saturday afternoon against Mercer -- though you could do a lot better than to go against college football.

Yes, college basketball: It’s the sport that ends with a bang but starts with a whimper.

Everybody knows what March Madness is about, even if it is something of a misnomer because the Final Four is now in April.

But when does the season begin?

UCLA Coach Ben Howland talked about how it used to be shortly after Thanksgiving, a traditional, seasonally identifiable date.

Hardly anybody knows anymore.

“I feel we’re missing an opportunity to brand college basketball,” said UCLA Athletic Director Dan Guerrero, who holds influential roles on the NCAA basketball committee and the College Basketball Partnership, a group that includes Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski and NCAA President Myles Brand and has discussed how to improve the college game and how to make the beginning of the season a focal point.

“Frankly, the road to the Final Four starts now. It doesn’t start come tournament time,” Guerrero said.

There’s even more confusion because exhibitions are now against other schools, not pseudo all-star teams, a situation the NCAA put a stop to because of ethical concerns.

So when Grand Valley State, a Division II team, beats Michigan State in an exhibition, people do a double-take, wondering if it was a real game.

“The exhibition games are starting to blur in with the start of the season,” Guerrero said.

Though the idea of creating a clear and traditional start of the season is a talking point, it is complicated by the difficulty of the NCAA’s dealing with the so-called “exempt” early-season tournaments and other issues.

Even with an early-season tournament of its own after taking over the National Invitation Tournament, the NCAA has made little headway, changing the name of that event from the Preseason NIT, which some people confused with exhibition games, to the NIT Season Tip-Off.

Alas, the NIT Season Tip-Off doesn’t tip off until Monday, a week after the first games.

Olson’s pause

There was an initial shock in the news of Olson’s leave of absence because of a personal matter, though it was diminished by Olson’s announcement that it “isn’t a health scare,” and by assistant coach Kevin O’Neill’s expectation the leave will neither be lengthy nor signal the end of Olson’s 25 years at Arizona.

“As I said, he is the head coach, this will be his 25th year and next year will be his 26th year,” O’Neill said.

Clearly the personal issue is serious to Olson, and he asked that people “respect my family’s privacy.” But any impact on Arizona’s team would seem limited at this point.

That’s in part because O’Neill is easily the most accomplished assistant in the Pacific 10 Conference, and Olson already had largely put the direction and tone of this season in his hands, asking him to “shore up the defense,” after Arizona fell sharply back in the Pac-10.

O’Neill, 50, was an assistant at Arizona for three seasons before leaving in 1989 to become the coach at Marquette, where his 1994 team reached the Sweet 16. He was later the coach at Tennessee and Northwestern. He also has been an NBA assistant with the New York Knicks, Detroit Pistons and Indianapolis Pacers and spent one season as the Toronto Raptors’ coach.

Players Jawann McClellan and Chase Budinger have talked about more demanding practices, and already Arizona Athletic Director Jim Livengood has called O’Neill’s impact “incredibly positive.”

O’Neill and Livengood emphasized that Olson plans to return. But with Arizona’s longtime coach now 73, it’s not unreasonable to imagine the transition to the next coach might not be far off, unless he pulls a Joe Paterno and coaches until he’s 80.

Olson’s move to bring in O’Neill could indicate not only determination to counter UCLA’s rise, but the recognition his own retirement might come more suddenly than he plans, whether it’s because of a health issue or his own decision.

But the program Olson has built at Arizona survived the leave he took during his first wife’s struggle with terminal cancer in 2001, and many of his colleagues expect this leave to have little impact.

“I expect Lute back in a short period of time, so there’s nothing to really say,” Howland said. “Kevin will be fine, but since I don’t expect it to be a long absence, not much will change.”

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Times staff writer Diane Pucin contributed to this report.

robyn.norwood@latimes.com