The complete set of capsules for the games tonight and tomorrow that will kick off the college basketball season for area teams is here.

I also got to talk to Eagles head coach Jeff Jones this week and asked him if his group this season reminded him of any previous team during his first 11 seasons.

“If you look real hard, the last time we were picked to be fifth, the last time we’d lost a lot of stuff and had a returning team was the year when [Garrison] Carr and [Derrick] Mercer were juniors and [Brian] Gilmore took a big step,” Jones said. “Is that likely to happen? I don’t know. I didn’t predict it back then so I sure as hell can’t predict it now. I like our kids. They’re working hard. They’re good kids. Are we among our more talented teams? No. We’re going to have to be efficient. We’re going to have to be opportunistic. We’re going to have to have Blake Jolivette and Troy Brewer and Charles Hinkle, and Daniel Munoz and Tony Wroblicky [the likely starting five] and probably others, everybody’s got to take a big collective step forward. If that happens, we could be pretty good.”

Both Jones and Richmond coach Chris Mooney have new contracts and lots of unknowns to contend with, but Jones thinks that’s about where the similarities end.

“They’re like a mid-major major with their facilities and resources,” Jones said. “They’re more closely aligned to an ACC school than they are to us even though 12 years ago we were in the same conference. But [Mooney] has done a real good job. I take the fact that he could’ve made the jump [to a bigger program], it was rumored, and the fact that he didn’t, and I think that probably shows that he’s got a lot of confidence that they’re going to continue doing extremely well.”