Men’s college basketball, women’s college basketball – there’s no shortage of college ball, every night.
Don’t worry, we’re here to help you figure out what you missed but shouldn’t have. Here are all the best moments from the weekend in college basketball.
A rough ranked weekend for USC
Both of USC’s basketball teams on the men’s and women’s side have had a pretty good season so far, with both entering the weekend ranked — the men at No. 24 and the women at No. 17, with the latter even handing No. 20 Nebraska its first loss of the season to cap off the 2025 portion of their schedule. This weekend, though, was a rough one. Both the men’s and women’s teams lost, and not by a little: combined, the Trojans were outscored 176-112, with the men crushed by No. 2 Michigan, 96-66, and the women routed by No. 4 UCLA, 80-46.
Now, to be fair to both teams, these were heady assignments. Michigan is ranked No. 2, but as FOX Sports’ college basketball analyst Casey Jacobsen has been saying in his rankings for a while now — and supported by the NCAA Evaluation Tool, or NET — there is basically no reason for it to not be No. 1. The Wolverines defeating USC by 30 also matches up with their average margin of victory for the season, over everyone. UCLA, meanwhile, might not be the No. 1 or even No. 2 team in women’s college basketball, but it’s already seen its steel sharpened against the likes of Texas and South Carolina, and has only recently gotten back to full strength with the sister of star senior Lauren Betts, Sienna Betts, coming off the bench to keep their height and rebounding advantage active even as starters sit.
No one has solved Michigan yet, however; USC not being up to the task, unable to shoot better than 34%, isn’t an indictment of the Trojans so much as a reminder of how absurdly good the Wolverines have been. They dropped 96 points on a ranked team and won by 30 points even with star transfer and senior forward Yaxel Lendeborg limited to 18 minutes due to an injury scare, and the bench playing a combined 96 minutes. Four different bench players reached double-digits in scoring, by the way.
UCLA’s Lauren Betts scored 18 points with 12 rebounds, 2 steals and 3 blocks in 30 minutes, and while the boxscore doesn’t fully show it, she is just a dominating force underneath against teams that do not have an answer for her length — she’s 6-foot-7 with the range to go with it, able to practically cut teams off underneath if they lack an answer for getting around her with sheer speed and coordination. That’s a lesson Penn State learned last week despite the presence of the usually overpowering senior center Gracie Merkle, and it’s one that USC just had forced on them over the weekend.
These Big 12 teams are undefeated no more
A week ago, there were a dozen undefeated women’s teams in Division I. Before the weekend, that figure had dropped to seven thanks to a slew of high-profile losses and upsets, including but not limited to LSU getting a reminder that its many vanquished Quad 4 non-conference opponents were not the same as what it would face come 2026 and conference play. The weekend was just as brutal to a few of these remaining undefeated teams, which all picked up their first losses of the season, too. And all three teams are in the Big 12, as well.
Arizona State was the lone unranked team among the seven remaining undefeated squads, and also the one that had faced the least resistance so far, given the Sun Devils had just one Quad 1 matchup behind them, as well. Against BYU on Saturday, Arizona State fell, 71-62, and in the process fell all the way back to 44th in NET, right in front of the Cougars.
BYU is now 13-2 and 2-1 in the Big 12, while Arizona State is 15-1 with the same record in conference play. The Sun Devils just couldn’t compete from behind the arc, shooting 4-for-14 compared to BYU’s 10-for-39 barrage — inaccurate, yes, but the volume was high, and the extra 18 points there made up for Arizona State sinking nine additional free throws.
No. 8 TCU went down, as well, after getting outplayed in overtime against Utah. While TCU was up 39-34 at the half and down by just two heading into the fourth quarter, the Utes went on a 6-0 run from over the course of 55 seconds in the middle of OT. Despite fifth-year guard Olivia Miles doing her best to keep TCU in it — she scored 8 of the Horned Frogs’ 10 points in the frame, and managed a career-best 31 overall — Utah managed to drop 20 points in the same five minutes, ending TCU’s undefeated season and giving both a 2-1 record in Big 12 play.
On Sunday, No. 10 Iowa State was upset by No. 22, Baylor, 72-70, to give the Cyclones their first loss of the 2025-2026 season. This isn’t a criticism of junior center Audi Crooks, who scored 26 points on 11-for-20 shooting with 10 rebounds for a double-double, but a reminder of just how absurdly good she’s been this year: as she failed to reach her NCAA-leading season average for points and had her five-game streak of at least 30 points scored snapped, Iowa State lost by just a pair. Not a coincidence, that: there’s a reason that the Cyclones were undefeated for as long as they were, and it’s that both Crooks and Addy Brown have been leading the charge. Here, Brown was limited to just 2 points on 1-for-7 shooting, so, despite 6 assists and 8 rebounds, Baylor effectively shutting her out from scoring was even more the difference than Crooks scoring “just” 26, though, junior guard Jada Williams did her best to make up the difference by tying Crooks with her own 26 points and 7 assists.
The self-own counter to Williams’ stepping up was the Cyclones’ bench, which combined for 4 points compared to Baylor’s 16. Sophomore guard Taliah Scott — who also had the game-winner — led the Bears with 21 points, a total buttressed by 13, 12, 11 and 9 points from four of the other leaders in minutes, and that was enough to give Baylor the upset.
Smith sets Big Ten assists record
When Purdue defeated Wisconsin in Big Ten action on Saturday, senior guard Braden Smith played his usually important role. He scored 14 points, right around his average for the year, while dishing out 12 assists, as well, helping the Boilermakers to an 89-73 victory. In the process, Smith set the Big Ten record for career assists, which now sits at 893, by passing Cassius Winston’s mark set with Michigan State back in 2020.
That should be no surprise to anyone who has followed Smith’s career, as he has led the Big Ten in assists in each of the last two seasons, and all of Division I men’s basketball in the 2023-2024 season, as well. Smith has also led the conference in assists per game in each of the past two seasons, and is tops in Division I in both assists and assists per game in the 2025-2026 season — he’s currently averaging a career-best 9.6 per game, facilitating Purdue’s offense as they aim to win the conference and secure a top seed in March.
Smith might have an even more significant accomplishment ahead of him, however, as far as personal ones go: he’s a mere 183 assists behind the all-time Division I mark of 1,076, set by Duke’s Bobby Hurley back in 1993. Smith has 135 assists now through 14 games, with 17 left to go in the regular season, and then the Big Ten tournament and, presumably for the current No. 5 team in the nation, some NCAA Tournament games, as well.
It’ll be a close race, but it’s one to keep an eye on, especially as Purdue attempts to navigate a conference that’s all over the poll.
Two 20-20 games in one weekend
There have been just 24 players to post 20-point, 20-rebound games in Division I women’s basketball since 2003, and over the weekend Murray State senior forward Sharnecce Currie-Jelks did it twice. On Friday against Illinois State, in a two-overtime W for Murray State, Currie-Jelks scored 21 points with 22 rebounds over 46 minutes, and then repeated the trick in another two-overtime victory over Bradley, in which she scored 24 points with 20 rebounds.
She’s the first player to achieve the feat of back-to-back 20-20 games since 2019, and just the third since 2003, and the two double-doubles gave her 11 for the season, tied for the D-I lead.
For the season, the Indiana transfer is averaging 20.5 points and 12.1 rebounds per game, both of which lead the Missouri Valley Conference. She’s second across all of Division I women’s ball in rebounds, tied with Texas A&M’s Fatmatah Janneh and behind Eastern Washington’s Kourtney Grossman.
47 points for Campbell
Your scoring leader for the weekend is Bowling Green senior guard Javontae Campbell, who picked up a career-best 47 points against UMass in a 101-100 nailbiter. The two faced off in Mid-American Conference play, and it took five minutes of high-scoring overtime to reach a conclusion.
Both the Falcons and Minutemen scored 34 points in the first half before exploding for 52 points a piece in the second, sending the game to overtime. There, the offensive barrage continued, with the two combining for another 29 points. Campbell had 4 points in OT, along with a defensive board and an assist, to help the Falcons to their hard-fought W. That might not seem like that much, but what it means is that Campbell scored 43 points — with 5 more rebounds and 7 more assists — in regulation. It was a monster game that also featured 20 makes at the line and 13-for-21 shooting from the field. Of those many free throws, Campbell hit three in a row with 5 seconds left in regulation to send the game into overtime in the first place, erasing the 7-point lead the Minutemen had built up in the half in the process.
Pretty good for a guy who was in juco before last season, whose most standout stat to this point was his MAC-leading 3.4 steals per game and averaging 15.6 points per before this.
St. John’s is in trouble
St. John’s was ranked No. 5 in the preseason poll, which is one of those things that happen when it’s unclear just how much losing key players is going to impact a team from one season to the next. The Red Storm are now 9-5 after losing a Big East conference game to Providence on Saturday, 77-71, are unranked and aren’t particularly close to getting back in there, either, per NET: St. John’s is currently 33rd there, and as it’s 1-4 against Quad 1 teams, there is little reason to think that will improve by much, either. The Big East might not be as loaded as the Big Ten or Big 12, but it’s also not last season for St. John’s.
Coach Rick Pitino is aware of this, too, as after the defeat against Providence he said that, “There’s not a team in this league that can’t beat us.” First thing that St. John’s has to do? Stop losing games in the closing minutes, as it did against Providence — the Red Storm were up 68-63 with 3:19 to go, but couldn’t hang on.
UConn handles Seton Hall despite slow start
UConn’s women came off of what keeps being called their “worst” game of the season — one in which it defeated Providence by 37 points while scoring 90 because of an uncharacteristically high number of turnovers — to a slow start against another Big East squad, Seton Hall. This is all relative, though: the Huskies and Pirates were tied, 11-11, with 1:42 left in the first quarter, and then UConn went on an 8-0 run to end the quarter before outscoring Seton Hall 19-7 in the second, then poured it on 29-7 in the third. The fourth quarter went to Seton Hall, but by that time most of the starters were already done for the day, with sophomore forward Sarah Strong, fifth-year guard Azzi Fudd, starting point guard KK Arnold and junior guard Ashlynn Shade were all on the bench for the remainder.
The No. 1 Huskies would win, 84-48, despite being outscored 22-17 in the final quarter, with Strong scoring 18 with 8 rebounds, 4 assists, 4 steals and a block in 18 minutes while Fudd scored 16 with a couple of assists and rebounds each in 25. Sophomore Jana El Alfy and Allie Ziebell did much of the damage off the bench, with the 6-foot-5 center scoring 10 with 6 rebounds in 17 minutes, while the guard Ziebell, back on the bench with Arnold returned from a nose fracture, dropped 12 with 2 assists and steals each in 18 minutes. Maybe not the kind of fourth quarter Geno Auriemma wants out of his Huskies, but Seton Hall is a top-50 team and the bench needs its minutes when the opportunity arises.
Baylor’s ex-NBA Draft pick debuts
It’s not often you hear a chorus of boos for a college player’s debut, but some fans aren’t thrilled about Baylor picking up a former NBA Draft pick in James Nnaji, a seven-foot freshman with international and NBA Summer League experience. The No. 31 pick from 2023 played 16 minutes off the bench for the Bears in a 69-63 loss to TCU, scoring 5 points with 4 rebounds and an assist in a game where Baylor leaned heavily on its starters. Those points included this big putback, which, along with the rebounds, is the kind of thing Baylor is hoping to get out of the big man in conference play.
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