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 last night in college basketball.
Iowa vs. Iowa State
The big ranked matchup of the night was an intrastate showdown between No. 11 Iowa and No. 11 Iowa State. For both sides, this was a showcase for the starters: four Hawkeyes’ starters scored at least 10 points, with sophomore guard Chazadi Wright leading the team with 21 points in 37 minutes, and senior forward Hannah Stuelke snagged a double-double thanks to 15 rebounds to go with her 10 points.
Iowa State had a slightly different approach: the terrifying duo of junior center Audi Crooks and junior forward Addy Brown carried the day for them. Of Iowa’s 69 points, 60 were scored by their starter, and distributed pretty evenly as described above. For Iowa State, of their 74, 50 were scored by just Crooks and Brown, with junior guard Jada Williams adding another 11.
This was Iowa’s first loss, while Iowa State is now an unbeaten 11-0 after their first major test of the season.
You can’t say enough about how good Audi Crooks is. In her last three games, she’s scored 47, 30 and 30 points. That 47 broke Iowa State’s program record, which oh, Crooks herself set a few weeks before breaking it when she dropped 43 points on Valparaiso. She’s leading all of D-I in scoring — not just women’s ball, the whole division — at 27.6 points per game, and has scored a leading 276 total points as well. She’s second in scoring percentage (73.2%) behind Penn State’s Gracie Merkle, first in total field goals and is well ahead in John Hollinger’s Player Efficiency Rating (PER) as well, at 55.8 — she’s the lone player over 50, as UConn’s Sarah Strong is next up at 49.1. Crooks is absurd in a way that is going to make Iowa State a real problem in March if she’s on one like she is now.
Braden Smith is 1-of-1
The Big Ten has never before had a player score 1,500 points, drop 800 dimes and pull down 500 rebounds, but now they have one: Purdue senior Braden Smith. The Boilermakers’ guard led his team with 15 points against Minnesota on Wednesday, while adding a men’s D-I high of 12 assists, 6 rebounds, 5 steals and 2 blocks.
The points were the last milestone that Smith needed to hit to secure his place in Big Ten history, which let him add additional assists and rebounds to the mix before then. The result? He’s just the fourth player in NCAA history — not D-I, NCAA — with at least 1,500 points, 825 assists and 550 rebounds. And there’s a whole lot of the 2025-2026 season left, too.
Purdue, powered by Smith’s performance, would defeat Minnesota 85-57 in this conference matchup. The No. 6 Boilermakers are 2-0 in Big Ten play, and 9-1 overall, while the Golden Gophers are 1-1 and 5-5, respectively.
Troy, Jenkins both set program records
Emani Jenkins had sunk six 3-pointers in a game on multiple occasions, but the senior guard from Troy had never gotten past that point. At least, not until Wednesday against Oakwood. First, she nailed her seventh three of the day, matching Troy’s Division I-era record, and then she scored an eighth, breaking said record. And then Jenkins sank two more triples, giving her 10 for the day: the most in program history, not just the D-I years, and also the lead for Wednesday across Division I in general.
Her 31 points also led all D-I, tied with one player on the men’s side. And they contributed to a second notable achievement for Troy: the program record for points in a single game. The Trojans took down the Ambassadors 132-62, in no small part thanks to Jenkins, but also that the team as a whole shot 20-for-35 from beyond the arc. That’s a 57% success rate, and at a high volume. They were hitting everything: Troy shot 58% overall, and the only reason they didn’t pick up even more points is because their free throws were lacking, at just 14-for-22.
Those 20 threes were a record for the team, as were their 36 assists. It’s Troy, so you know they also pulled down a ton of rebounds. Fifty-seven of them, to be exact, with senior forward Zay Dyer leading the way with 10. It was kind of a slow day at the office for her, really, as she’s averaging 12.2 boards per game, tops in the Sun Belt Conference and third in women’s D-I basketball behind Charlotte O’Keefe and Khamil Pierre.
Solomon drops 31 on Miami (OH), but it’s not enough
UNC Asheville’s Toyaz Solomon had 31 points, 6 rebounds, 2 assists and 2 blocks on 11-for-17 shooting — and 5-for-6 on threes. Which sounds like the kind of performance that helps your team to a win, but alas, it wasn’t enough for the Bulldogs against the Miami Redhawks, even if it was close. UNC Asheville would lose in overtime, with Miami scoring 6 points to their 3 in the extended time.
Still, what a game by the senior forward — 31 points was a career-high, even before you get into all the way other ways he contributed — and the Bulldogs might have won if they got even a little more help from the bench: of their 87 points, 77 of them came from the starters, and only one bench player was responsible for any of the other scoring.
Texas drops 110 on UT Rio Grande Valley
Texas is a relentless defensive team, but they are also a bit grind-it-out on offense in a way that tends to keep their scoring low. That wasn’t the case on Wednesday against UT Rio Valley Grande, however, as the Longhorns let ‘er rip: they took 85 shots and shot 56% on them, resulting in 110 points. The defense was still in place, too, as they held the Vaqueros to 45 points.
Graduate guard Rori Harmon logged 14 assists, the most of anyone in D-I on Wednesday and also a career-high, but she wasn’t the only one moving the ball around for Texas. Junior forward Madison Booker had 10 assists, as well as a game-high 28 points and 10 rebounds, for the fifth triple-double in program history, and her first.
Texas is now 11-0, and this was their first road win of the season, too.
A Big time Big Ten matchup
Wisconsin entered play on Wednesday at 7-2, with a victory in their one and only Big Ten matchup of the young season. Their opponent was No. 23 Nebraska, a fellow Big Ten team that had yet to partake in conference play, but was an undefeated 9-0 overall. Nebraska is still undefeated after handling Wisconsin, 90-60, with a dominant team-wide performance that stands as the largest margin of victory over the Badgers they have ever managed.
Nebraska was able to shut down Wisconsin’s offense for the most part, outside of senior guard Nick Boyd, who had 20 points. Those 20 represented one-third of the Badgers’ total, though, so there wasn’t much harm in letting him cook alone. The Cornhuskers, conversely, had four starters score at least 12 points, with senior forward Rienk Mast leading with 17, and they got plenty of help from the bench, too: Nebraska gave minutes to six different bench players, who combined for 28 points, with freshman forward Braden Frager picking up 15 of those himself in 30 minutes.
The Cornhuskers will go straight from one Big Ten showdown to another, though this one will double as a ranked matchup — they take on No. 13 Illinois on Saturday.
Maryland gave up just 21 points
A dominant performance from a ranked team against an unranked one — especially one that isn’t a power — isn’t a rare occurrence. These games aren’t scheduled because, say, Delaware State thinks that they are going to topple No. 7 Maryland, but as tuneups for conference matchups, opportunities for the bench players to get game reps in, and for the weaker opponent, experience against tougher competition that, again, a Delaware State won’t find in their own conference. The Big Ten, which Maryland is part of, has a record nine schools in the top 25 at the moment; the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference that Delaware State is a member of has just six teams total.
All this preamble is here in order to say, oh wow, No. 7 Maryland allowed Delaware State to score just 21 points in their matchup on Wednesday. The Terrapins scoring 91 point is the normal result in a game like this, but allowing just 21 points? Well, that’s a program record for the fewest points allowed by Maryland basketball teams.
That program record has existed since 1974, when the Terrapins won 60-22 against Morgan State. It’s also the second time this season that Maryland held an opponent to under 30 points, as they defeated Loyola of Maryland 80-26 in their first game of 2025-2026.
Undefeated Maryland had senior guard Saylor Poffenberger — fresh off of a 48-minute, 30-point performance against Minnesota — and freshman guard Addi Mack sit this one out, but even with that decision every Terps starter scored at least 11 points, and that was with everyone besides senior guard Yarden Garzon basically eschewing 3-pointers. It helped that Maryland scored nearly half of their points — 45 of 91 — on turnovers. And now they are the first team to a 12-0 record in D-I.
Delaware State is one of the weaker teams in Division I this year by NET ranking — they entered play as the 355th of 363 squads — and Maryland even with their multiple injuries is one of the better ones. But still, 21 points. Twenty-one of them! That’s difficult to do. Maryland football gave up more than 21 points seven times this year.
Maine is winless no more
Entering play on Wednesday, the Maine Black Bears had the most losses in Division I this year without a win: they were 0-11, putting them just ahead of South Carolina State and Gardner-Webb, both 0-10, and even further ahead of every women’s program, the worst of which came in at 0-9. They finally picked up their first W of the season, though, against Boston University — and they even did it on the road.
Three Black Bears reached double-digit scoring, with senior forward TJ Biel leading the way with 17 to go with 4 rebounds and a steal and block each. This wasn’t quite on Maryland’s level as far as defense goes, but Maine’s W was powered by defense more than offense: they held the Terriers to 36% shooting and just 26% on threes: Boston University was a mere 9-for-35 from beyond the arc. They never led, and all those misses made it hard to even catch up.
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