The Cram Session is a semi-daily melange of last night's most important hoops action. Some mornings are harder than others, but Mondays are the hardest of them all.

Monmouth 99, FIU 70; Tulsa 81, FIU 49: The most notable early season storyline -- which is not a very high bar, given that most noteworthy teams have been filling up on cupcakes for a week or so now -- has been the struggles of Isiah Thomas. Thomas had his players ready for his first game, a respectable loss to North Carolina in the Dean Dome. What Thomas likely wasn't ready for was his team's game at Monmouth Friday night. Monmouth is in New Jersey, and the Knicks fans in the building made sure Thomas knew it.

They chanted derogatory things about Thomas's sleeping pill overdose; they chanted about Anucha Brown Sanders; they chanted about Magic Johnson. ("Magic hates you!") Monmouth's students even rushed the court when the game was over ... after a 30-point win over FIU. Mean-spirited? Yes. Awesome? Also yes. And Isiah was OK with it, saying the students were in "good spirit," so I don't feel as bad about thinking it's funny.

Sunday night, Thomas was greeted far more respectfully in Tulsa, where fans politely cheered his name. Things didn't go any better for him, though, as his team was blown out 81-49 by Tulsa, and Thomas got into it with Tulsa head coach Doug Wojcik. Isiah thought Wojcik was trying to run up the score by leaving his starters in the game for too long and made a few gestures towards the opposing bench; Wojcik shrugged, later saying that games are "40 minutes long" and reminding the assembled masses that his team is currently two scholarships short, thanks to injury and suspension.

So, to recap: Two Isiah Thomas-coached FIU blowouts, two off-court incidents that overshadowed basketball. The Isiah Thomas experiment is off to a crackling good start.

Texas-San Antonio 62, Iowa 50: Oof. Everyone should have been prepared for Iowa to truly stink this year; the Hawkeyes went 15-17 in 2008-09 and have been decimated by offseason transfers, leaving Todd Lickliter one marginally talented player (Matt Gatens) and a whole bunch of people who probably aren't Big Ten basketball players. But who knew it would be this bad, this early? Sunday night, in front of a raucous Carver Hawkeye Arena crowd that looked like it barely cracked 500, Iowa mustered a mere 50 points on 60 possessions. Again, 50 points. On 60 possessions. At home. Against Texas-San Antonio. Iowa's effective field goal percentage was but 39 percent -- not good -- and they tracked the 26 percent mark in turnover percentage, which is also very not good. Whether this is a one-time, horrendously bad blip is yet to be seen, but given how bad this team appears to be, Iowa fans might want to brace themselves for more. It could get worse before it gets better.

Other semi-notable results: Davidson played Butler tight, leading at the half and eventually losing by 11 in Indianapolis ... Dayton and Creighton played one of the season's best mid-major matchups early, and Dayton justified the top 25 preseason hype ... Either Roy Williams and the Tar Heels are trying to be polite and not blow anyone out, or they're not playing particularly well right now ... and Texas had five players hit double-digit scoring in a blowout win over UC Irvine, including 21 points and 15 rebounds (!) from forward Damion James.

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