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.
Michigan, Arizona make their case for No. 1
Heading into the weekend, Arizona was the No. 1 team in the country, with Michigan at No. 2. There are plenty of arguments to make for either as the top team before the holiday break, though: Arizona has had the favor of the voters to this point, with 42 placing their first-place votes for the undefeated Wildcats in the Week 7 rankings, but Michigan has been the top team in the NCAA Evaluation Tool, or NET, owing to their ridiculously difficult schedule — one of the toughest in Division I to this point, and FOX Sports’ Casey Jacobsen has been riding the Michigan train in his own rankings for some time now.
On Saturday, Arizona faced San Diego State, and won 68-45. San Diego State is kind of on the bubble of the bubble, sitting 87th in NET ranking through the weekend, so Arizona holding them to just 45 point is notable, but their scoring just 68 is noteworthy in the other direction. Arizona had five players reach double-digits in scoring — good — but none of them had more than 11 points; that’s less good.
Freshman forward Koa Peat and senior guard Jaden Bradley both notched 11, but it was the rebounds that would stand out in the end: Arizona had 52 of them to San Diego State’s 28, though, part of the reason there were so many rebounds up for grabs is because they shot 38% and 26% from the field, respectively. It should be noted, though, that Arizona was up by a single point at halftime, 28-27 — they played like they should in the second, dominating San Diego State.
Michigan, meanwhile, faced La Salle on Sunday, and it was wall-to-wall dominance. Granted, La Salle is in the bottom-third or so of men’s Division I teams this year, so it’s not a perfect comparison by any means, but Arizona forgetting themselves for one half and also maybe how to shoot the same weekend that the No. 2 team breathing down their necks wipes out their opponent 102-50 isn’t ideal.
Michigan shot 14-of-29 from three and 55% overall, with 25 assists against 10 turnovers, 28 points scored off of turnovers, and dominance both on fast breaks (15 to 2) and in the paint (38 to 20). They were unstoppable in every facet of the game, which is what you want to see in this kind of matchup unless you’re playing for or cheering for La Salle. We’ll see if this was enough to sway the voters, or if Michigan still has more to do to convince them.
UConn trounced Iowa
Sarah Strong and Azzi Fudd are a tough matchup for any team. Just ask No. 11 Iowa, as they took on those two and the rest of No. 1 UConn on Saturday at Barclays in the Women’s Champions Classic. Sophomore forward Sarah Strong helped the Huskies get out to an early lead, and graduate guard Azzi Fudd made sure that they kept it in the second half.
Strong came out firing, with 20 first-half points — at halftime, it was Iowa 31, Strong 20, and the rest of the Huskies made the actual score 42-31. Strong would finish with 23 points, 7 rebounds, 4 assists, 6 steals and a block for good measure in 34 minutes. Fudd would take over in the second half: after scoring 6 points in the first while missing far from than is usual for the sharpshooter, she looked more the part from there. Fudd would score 21 points in the second half to finish with a game-high 27 with 2 rebounds, 3 assists, 4 steals and a block of her own all told.
Blanca Quinonez added another 10 points off the bench in 21 impressive minutes, and those three alone nearly matched Iowa’s entire output in a 90-64 win for UConn. No other player stood out on their own offensively, but as a team the defense was stifling: Iowa came into the matchup averaging just under 84 points per game, but UConn has now held opponents to 52.9 per game despite two-thirds of their schedule coming in Quad 1 and Quad 2 matchups, and they did it again against Iowa.
A pair of 41-point games (and a buzzer-beater)
Virginia’s Kymora Johnson scored 41 points on 15-for-20 shooting, with 6 rebounds, 5 assists and 2 steals against Winthrow, and managed all of that despite only one free throw attempt (and make). The junior guard went 10-for-13 on 3-pointers to fuel that outburst, and those 10 threes set a school record for Virginia in the 88-53 dub, while the 41 points now stand as her career-high, besting the 35 she dropped as a freshman in 2024 against Florida State. The Cavaliers are now 9-3 on the season, thanks in no small part to Johnson and her 18.4 points, 5.9 assists and 2.4 steals per game.
Johnson wasn’t the only player to reach 41 points over the weekend, however. Iowa State’s Audi Crooks scored exactly as many, with 41 points, 4 rebounds and 3 assists against Kansas in a 79-76 win for the No. 10 Cyclones.
That’s her third 40-point game of the season and in the last nine games and the fourth of her career, tying her for the most all-time in the Big 12. It was also her fourth-consecutive game with at least 30 points, making her just the fifth Division I player to pull that off in the last 15 seasons. And she couldn’t have picked better timing for the next one, either, given Iowa State won by all of three points even with the junior center exploding for 41. While the Cyclones dominated in the paint, with 56 points there to 24 from Kansas, the Jayhawks controlled the game from deep: they shot 12-for-21 on threes, while the Cyclones had fewer attempts from beyond the arc than Kansas had makes.
One of the pair of threes that Iowa State did make, though, came at the perfect time: at the buzzer, out of the hand of junior guard Kenzie Hare.
Those were her only points of the entire game, too. Talk about good timing.
This was the kind of game that doesn’t hurt Iowa State much as far as NET’s evaluation goes — they won a tough game against a tough opponent — but it is the kind of matchup that improves Kansas’ standings: they jumped from the 65 to 58 in NET even in defeat. The further you can get from the bubble in the right direction — and against a legit team like Iowa State — the better.
20 boards for Ajayi
Butler barely edged Northwestern on Saturday, winning 61-58 to improve to 9-3, and with those razor-thin margins it’s not difficult to point to one thing in particular as the reason for the W. Senior forward Michael Ajayi made it that much easier with his performance, as he scored a game-high 19 points — he was the only player in the game to even get over 14 — and pulled down 20 rebounds as well as picking up 2 assists, 3 steals and 2 blocks. Those 20 boards represented the most of any player in Division I, men’s or women’s ball, all weekend.
That was not only the most rebounds of the weekend, but also the most by anyone in a Butler uniform since 1983, a career-high for Ajayi and half the reason for his ninth double-double of the season in 12 games. He’s leading the Big East in both total rebounds and rebounds per game, at 12.3, and he’s second in Division I behind only Kent State’s Delrecco Gillespie.
Hidalgo’s massive triple-double
The best performance of the weekend didn’t belong to Michael Ajayi or Kymora Johnson or Audi Crooks, however. That instead was the work of Notre Dame’s Hannah Hidalgo, who had a ridiculous triple-double powered by 30 points, 10 assists and 13 steals, with 5 rebounds on top just because. Hidalgo also turned the ball over just twice, despite all that ball movement.
It was the first-ever triple-double in program history with at least 30 points scored, and she has the most 30-point games in Notre Dame’s history, as well. She got there this most recent time on 13-for-17 shooting, mostly from 2-point range but with a pair of threes in four attempts to push her over that line.
That’s all great. Of course, to match the exploits of her former teammate Olivia Miles — now with TCU — Hidalgo will have to pull off a triple-double in her next two games, as well. Just one is pretty good, though, especially with that many points and forced turnovers included.
Virginia Tech escapes upset in OT
Virginia Tech isn’t ranked, no, and isn’t in danger of that happening, either. However, they are a pretty good basketball team on the bubble as far as NET goes, as they sat 62nd out of 365 teams before this weekend’s matchup against Elon. And while the Phoenix are no Hokies, they are still 143rd in NET and came into the game 7-4. More importantly, they pushed Virginia Tech to the edge on Saturday.
Junior forward Amani Hansberry hit a jumper with 28 seconds to go in regulation to tie the game for Virginia Tech at 72-72, one in which they had been behind at the half, 43-35, and had been down by as many as 19 points. They clawed back in the second half, however, and Hansberry’s shot was the result of all of that — the game went into OT, where Virginia Tech outscored a suddenly very game again Elon by a single point to win 82-81.
Given the 1-point win, you can’t overstate the contributions of guards Jaden Schutt and Izaiah Pasha off the bench: in 36 minutes, the junior Schutt scored 10 points for Virginia Tech, while the sophomore Pasha logged 11 points in 28.
This would have been a disaster upset for the Hokies, but they instead salvaged the W without ruining their record or their reputation. How a team responds to adversity, even if it’s a little self-inflicted, can say a lot about them, and Virginia Tech responded well here by coming back from such a dramatic deficit, even if it took OT to get the expected result.
Texas Tech stunned Duke with late comeback
Speaking of disaster upsets that ended 82-81, here’s Duke vs. Texas Tech. The No. 19 Red Raiders took on the undefeated No. 3 Blue Devils, and did so shorthanded. They looked the part, too, at one point falling 17 points behind Duke. The script flipped starting around the 12-minute mark in the second half, however, as sophomore guard Christian Anderson managed a 4-point play to cut the lead to 63-55, and they went on a brief run to close the gap to 63-61 before Duke finally answered with some points of their own. Another 8-0 run, once again powered by Anderson, brought it back to 74-71, and with 2:20 left in regulation Texas Tech tied it up at 76 on a JT Toppin floater assisted by, whom else, Christian Anderson.
Anderson would sink a layup and pick up the foul to make it 81-77, and with the game tied with 3 seconds left to go, he was fouled and sank one of two free throws to score the final point of the game: Texas Tech would secure the come-from-behind upset over a shocked Duke team, 82-81 thanks to this massive 12-minute run that saw the Red Raiders outscore the Blue Devils 31-18.
Smith powers Purdue past Auburn
No. 6 Purdue faced off against No. 21 Auburn on Saturday, and Braden Smith happened. While the senior guard had “just” 11 points — one of five Boilermakers in double figures, and tied for the fewest points in that group — they were all scoring thanks to his efforts: Smith had 14 assists on the day along with 5 rebounds, 3 steals and a block. That’s a pretty solid double-double, in a pretty solid ranked W for Purdue.
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