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.
Don’t count LSU out just yet
It’s okay to say that LSU’s non-conference portion of the schedule was cupcake after cupcake. Kim Mulkey’s squad feasted in Quad 4 matchup after Quad 4 matchup, setting a record for consecutive games with at least 100 points scored with eight, then struggled to begin conference play, losing in back-to-back SEC contests against Vanderbilt and Kentucky.
Sunday’s game against No. 2 Texas was an even more significant test, then — if LSU was blown out of the building, well, it was about to fall a lot further in the poll than it just did after its first two defeats, which saw it go from No. 5 to No. 12. And you would be right to think that this was the Longhorns’ game to lose, as well, since they had already weathered storms from UCLA and South Carolina this season. Instead, we had some real intrigue added to the SEC picture, as well as the poll: LSU didn’t just avoid a blowout, but it defeated Texas, 70-65.
Junior forward Madison Booker was electric for Texas, with a game-high 24 points on 10-for-16 shooting with 7 rebounds, 2 steals and a block to go with it. She just didn’t get much assistance otherwise, however: senior guard Rori Harmon was limited to 2 points on 1-for-7 shooting, and she didn’t make up for that with a slew of assists, either, as she recorded just 3 of them. Senior center Kyla Oldacre once again dominated, with 16 points and 16 rebounds each in 26 minutes, but she and Booker were the only Longhorns pulling down boards: they combined for 23 of the team’s 35, with no one else logging more than 2.
LSU, led by junior guard Mikaylah Williams’ 20 points, 7 rebounds, 5 steals and 4 assists, matched the Texas bench in points, 20-20, kept up with them in the paint on points while outrebounding the Longhorns by 9. It should be pointed out, however, that this game was fairly down the middle in terms of control. The teams were tied after one quarter, then LSU built up a 13-point lead in large part thanks to strong middle quarters, but Texas nearly caught up again in the fourth by scoring 26 points. Its vaunted defense couldn’t slow LSU down enough, however, even though the Tigers shot all of 23% on threes and 39% overall.
So! Texas should not be penalized too harshly for losing to LSU here, while LSU now gets to point to a huge W that was absolutely vital in terms of its staying relevant anywhere near the top of the poll and conversation about the dominant Division I teams. Credit the Tigers for shutting down Harmon, because if the point guard was even at her averages — 8.7 points and 7.4 assists per game — LSU maybe doesn’t hold on. You can be sure that Texas will try to work around that the next time the two meet on Feb. 5.
Texas upsets No. 13 Alabama
It wasn’t all bad for Texas basketball over the weekend. The women’s team might have been upset by LSU, but the men’s team managed to upset Alabama, and in a far more stunning way. Alabama came into the game ranked No. 13, while Texas was not only unranked but sat 73rd in the NCAA Evaluation Tool — the Longhorns had been, at best, a bubble team to this point. And now Texas is a top-50 one thanks to a huge boost from shocking Bama… and on the road.
Jordan Pope led the way for the Longhorns, with the senior guard dropping 28 points and six 3-pointers on the Crimson Tide in his 30 minutes. Guards Dailyn Swan and Tramon Mark added 18 points each, and while no one Longhorns player stood out on the glass, each contributed at least 3 rebounds a piece, leading to a 48-38 advantage there over Bama. In the end, Texas outscored Alabama by 4 points both in the paint and in the final score: those rebounds, as well as the Longhorns going 10-for-24 from three as a team, won the game for them.
Alabama nearly caught up in the end, as it was down 13 and trailed for the vast majority of the game. The hole was just a little too big to climb out of, however, and getting outrebounded didn’t make that task any easier for them. Bama might have been ranked No. 13, but it’s also now just 1-2 in SEC play, tied with Texas.
Michigan shocked by Wisconsin
Michigan barely escaped with a win against Penn State last week, which at the time felt like an instance of a dominant team — on both sides of the ball — failing to execute as well as it could on offense but still grinding out the win thanks to its killer D. We ended our analysis wondering if that was going to be the last best shot for a while at someone taking down the Wolverines. Whoops.
Hey, that’s college basketball, baby. There really is no reason that Michigan should have lost to Wisconsin on Saturday, given how absolutely dominant the Wolverines are, but the defense just could not put away the Badgers like it has so many other opponents this season, leading to 54 second-half points for Wisconsin, and a W. It’s not like Wisconsin just got a little lucky, either: it shot 50% overall, for the entire game, and sank a season-high 15 threes in 33 attempts (45%). Michigan’s offense, like its defense, was just a little off, at 47% shooting and a not-good-enough 8-for-25 from three, and while the Wolverines kept things close by sinking 22-of-24 free throws, it just wasn’t enough to close the gap.
Now, Wisconsin might have entered the game unranked, but this isn’t some fringe squad. It was 53rd in NET prior to the win over Michigan, and now finds itself a top-40 team because of the dub. Michigan, meanwhile, is still just as dominant as it’s been all season long, but it was outplayed one night. If this becomes more than a blip and turns into a trend, well, it’s time to worry. But sometimes you just get beat. Undefeated seasons are a rarity for a reason.
The rest of the undefeateds stayed that way
While Michigan fell to Wisconsin over the weekend — and in turn fell in this week’s rankings from FOX Sports’ college basketball analyst, Casey Jacobsen — the other teams fighting to stay undefeated managed to keep that going. First up was Miami (OH) on Friday, with the RedHawks downing MAC rival Toledo in conference play to move to 17-0 on the season (and 14-0 against Division I opponents). No. 1 Arizona toppled TCU, 86-73, on Saturday, while No. 3 Iowa State took care of its bubble-team conference opponent, Oklahoma State, unlike Michigan with the Badgers.
No. 11 Vanderbilt continued to add to the difficulty of its schedule with a matchup against top-50 LSU, which it won, 84-73. The highlight of the bunch, though, was No. 10 Nebraska defeating Indiana in a significant Big Ten game. Indiana might not be ranked, but the Hoosiers are 34th in the NCAA Evaluation Tool, or NET, and Nebraska is playing its best ball in 60 years, which is also how long ago it was last ranked in the top 10. The Huskers defeated Indiana, 83-77, after coming back from down 16 points. The W extended their win streak dating back to last season to 20 games — the largest such active streak in men’s college basketball — and put them at 5-0 in the highly competitive Big Ten conference.
Senior guard Jamarques Lawrence showed up to play: despite averaging 10.5 points per game for the season, he scored a team-high 27 against Indiana while adding 5 rebounds, 3 assists and 3 steals. This helped cancel out a huge game by Indiana’s own senior guard, Lamar Wilkerson, who scored a game-high 32 points with 4 rebounds and 4 assists in 39 minutes. In the end, Nebraska turned the ball over few times and converted more turnovers into points, 11-6, and with everything else being basically equal, that proved the difference. What an exciting start to the year for the Huskers, but there are still a whole bunch of challenges lined up for them in Big Ten play, too.
Texas Tech survives Colorado
No. 14 Texas Tech got a scare on the road in Colorado, and almost entirely due to how it just couldn’t stop fouling the Buffaloes, comparatively. While Colorado fouled just nine times all game, the Red Raiders racked up 20 of them, allowing the Buffaloes to shoot 22 free throws; they sank 19 of them.
So, even though Texas Tech shot better and in high volume from three, even though it won the rebound battle handily, Colorado making 15 more free three throws was nearly enough to overcome all of that. The Red Raiders would hang on to win, 73-71, despite Colorado outscoring them 44-30 in the second half, owing to a couple of things. It was up 58-34 with 13:32 remaining, but then missed 8 of the next 9 shots to give Colorado some time to catch up.
Which it did: freshman guard Isaiah Johnson, playing off the bench, scored all 21 of his team-leading points for Colorado in the second half, including 13 of those 19 free throws in the last 13 minutes of the game. The 24-point lead vanished, and while Colorado never led, that’s merely because it missed its last, best chance as time expired: junior guard Barrington Hagress missed a 25-foot three attempt as time expired after Colorado pulled in a defensive board to give them one last shot, and the Red Raiders held on.
48 points for Doogan
Just a huge game for Richmond senior forward Maggie Doogan on Saturday. The Spiders went to triple-overtime with Davidson in Atlantic 10 Conference play, and Doogan ended up pulling down 13 rebounds while scoring 48 points. That marked not just a program record for Richmond — beating out Karen Elsner’s 39 points from 1983 — and a career-best for Doogan, but it’s also the most points anyone in Division I has scored this season, and the most anyone has scored in an A-10 matchup, besting the mark set back in 1987 by by Sue Wicks and her 44 points.
Granted, Doogan had three overtimes to get all of it together whereas the previous leader, Iowa State junior center Audi Crooks, scored 47 in 33 minutes. But her playing 53 minutes and still having the gas in the tank to drop 18 points across three overtimes shouldn’t be discounted, either, especially since it was that level of effort that allowed the Spiders to finally pull away from the Wildcats and post a W, 91-84.
Doogan is leading the A-10 in minutes (35.9), field goal percentage (51.7%), effective field goal percentage (61.3%), assists (4.8) and points (24.2). She’s fourth in Division I in points per game, behind Crooks, Notre Dame’s Hannah Hidalgo and Vanderbilt’s Mikayla Blakes, and is third in 3-pointers, as well — she went 8-for-12 from deep on Saturday, and is shooting 43.6% from beyond the arc on the season, to boot.
20 rebounds for Minott
Tre-Vaughn Minott pulled down a weekend-high 20 rebounds for Portland State against Sacramento State, in what was a great all-around outing for the fifth-year center. Minott also scored 23 points on 9-for-11 shooting and posted 4 blocks — three more than Sacramento State managed as a team — in a dominant 96-69 win for the Vikings.
Minott is leading the Big Sky conference in rebounds per game with 9.2, which is also far and away a career-best for him: his previous high was last season’s 7.6 per nine. He’s playing an additional 5.2 minutes per game this season, and using it for both rebounds and additional points — Minott is averaging a career-high 11.3 per nine, and while that rate of boards isn’t showing up on the Division I top 10, leading an entire conference is still notable.
Portland State got huge performances out of more players than just Minott, as well. Senior forward Terri Miller Jr. posted his second triple-double of the season with 14 points, 10 rebounds and 13 assists, becoming the first-ever Vikings player with more than one, while senior guard Jaylin Henderson scored 26 points with 5 assists while playing all 40 minutes. Pretty good game to be a senior in, at least if you attend Portland State.
Florida upsets ranked Tennessee
Florida began the season as the defending champions and ranked No. 3 in the preseason poll, but fell to 10, 15, 18, 23, 22 and then out of the poll entirely in the new year. Its 5 losses is more than it had all of last season when the Gators ended up as national champions, and it’s not as if all of them were against powerhouses — Florida lost to unranked TCU and Missouri in addition to the Ls against ranked squads.
Conference play has been pretty good for the Gators so far, however. After shocking No. 21 Tennessee, 91-67, Florida is now 2-1 in the SEC and 11-5 overall. It’s not 15th in NET, in no small part due to the strength of its schedule so far: Florida has played the 10th-toughest schedule in men’s Division I college ball this season, so it’s no wonder the Gators have racked up some defeats. They held Tennessee in check on Saturday, though, limiting its shot opportunities — the Volunteers shot 43% but had just 49 attempts thanks to 18 turnovers and 13 Florida steals — and suddenly are looking like a potential ranked team again instead of spiraling further.
Ohio State upsets top-10 Maryland
Ohio State keeps quietly showing that it belongs in the poll it had to wait until the season to be voted into. This time, the No. 19 Buckeyes defeated No. 8 Maryland on the road, 89-76, thanks to another serious tandem effort by the Cambridge sisters.
Junior guard Kennedy Cambridge scored 14 points with 2 rebounds, 4 assists and 4 steals, while sophomore guard Jaloni Cambridge continued her breakout campaign with a game-high 28 points on 9-for-9 shooting (and a perfect 8-for-8 from the line), to go with 9 rebounds, 8 assists and 2 steals. A near triple-double, against the No. 8 team in the country. Pretty good.
Ohio State is now 5-1 in Big Ten play and 15-2 overall, with its lone losses coming against No. 1 UConn and fellow Big Ten program, No. 4 UCLA. The rise of Jaloni Cambridge, who has a career-best and team-leading 21.2 points per game to go with 5.5 rebounds, 4.2 assists (also best on the team) and 2.4 steals, has mirrored Ohio State’s own season.
Want great stories delivered right to your inbox? Create or log in to your FOX Sports account and follow leagues, teams and players to receive a personalized newsletter daily!
