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.
LSU is undefeated no more
It’s been said for weeks and weeks in this space and elsewhere in FOX Sports’ college basketball coverage that, as impressive as LSU has looked early on in the year, it hadn’t actually played anyone yet. The Tigers had exactly one Quad 1-level matchup on their schedule — which they did win, mind you — but had racked up all those record-setting 100-point games and the bulk of their wins in lowly Quad 4 games.
On Thursday, a new year brought a new kind of opponent: a ranked one. No. 5 LSU took on No. 11 Kentucky in what was the SEC opener for both teams, and the result was the Tigers’ first loss of the year, 80-78. The game wasn’t just that close at the end, but throughout. LSU was up 23-22 after one quarter, after a hot start by the Tigers that had them up 12 early was erased in a hurry by the Wildcats. Then the game was tied, 41-41, entering the half. LSU had a 5-point lead at the start of the fourth quarter, and junior guard Mikayla Williams, who led all scorers with 26 points, made all three free throws on a foul with 18 seconds left to go ahead, 78-77.
Kentucky might have made a mistake fouling on a 3-point attempt, but made up for it with a shot from deep of its own… as time expired. That shot was courtesy senior guard Tonie Morgan, the Wildcats’ leading scorer for the night thanks to a 24/3/13 double-double performance, and also its hero.
That was a close one, for sure, but it’s a reminder that what happens during the first two months of the season is a warmup for conference play and March, and not necessarily representative of a team’s true ability. That is, unless said team schedules a ridiculous slate of opponents with an iron-sharpens-iron mentality, which LSU did not: its 2025 portion of the schedule featured the 334th-weakest schedule of the 363 Division I women’s basketball teams, per the NCAA’s own accounting via the NCAA Evaluation Tool, or NET.
Just the single game against Kentucky bumped that strength-of-schedule ranking all the way to 310th. And while LSU’s schedule is truly a gauntlet in the season’s second half owing to the loaded SEC conference — next up is undefeated and ranked Vanderbilt, and it will play additional ranked opponents in Texas, Oklahoma, Texas again, South Carolina, Ole Miss and Tennessee between now and the end of the regular season — that is also the portion of the schedule that will tell us just how good this team actually is.
Michigan couldn’t shoot again, upset by Washington
Washington is a really good basketball team, that’s no secret, but Michigan came into its Big Ten matchup against the Huskies as the No. 6 team in the country as well as the only one to even come close to defeating No. 1 UConn. So you would be forgiven for assuming that this was going to go the Wolverines’ way just like every other game did for them in 2025. It’s not 2025, anymore, though — legally we have to keep pointing that out for a while. Michigan would fall to Washington, and it wasn’t a last-second defeat like with LSU against Kentucky, either: the Wolverines lost 64-52.
The Huskies were led by sophomore guard Avery Howell, who picked up where she left off in her 23-point performance against Northwestern the last time out, only against Michigan she also added a game-high 16 rebounds and 2 steals in 38 minutes. No one for Michigan had a game even approaching that, and it was once again beset by shooting woes, just as they had been during a disastrous second-half collapse against Oregon earlier this week, which the Wolverines salvaged in overtime. Sophomore guard Syla Swords shot just 6-for-19 from the field after going 5-for-16 against Oregon, and fellow sophomore guard Olivia Olson was even more inaccurate, going 5-for-17 (29.4%) on Thursday after a 6-for-20 night against Oregon.
It’s unlikely the cold shooting will continue, but with conference season upon the Wolverines, this isn’t exactly a great time for their star sophomores to lose their feel.
Illinois outlasts No. 7 Maryland
Washington taking down Michigan wasn’t the only Big Ten upset of the day, either. Unranked Illinois played host to No. 7 Maryland, with the two representing the longest winning streaks in the conference: Maryland was undefeated and winners of 14 in a row, while Illinois had just the one loss, and had rattled off 10 dubs in a row since then. Like with Washington, Illinois might have been unranked, but that’s a real good team, and it showed as much against the Terrapins.
The Fighting Illini got very little from their bench, as just three players came in off of it and scored a combined 2 points in 44 minutes. The starters made sure that didn’t matter in the end, though, especially freshman forward Cearah Parchment — who had 17 points, 8 rebounds, 3 steals and 3 blocks in 37 minutes — and sophomore forward Berry Wallace, who contributed a game-high 22 points with 7 rebounds, 2 assists and a block in 38 minutes.
The difference in the game was the long ball. Maryland shot 1-for-12 from deep, so even though they had a better shooting day overall in terms of percentage — 42% to 38% — the types of shots being made made up for that for Illinois. It was 5-for-14 from deep, which isn’t a massive amount either by volume or percentage, but it ended up being both the reason the Illini won, as well as bringing us a fitting conclusion where the Terrapins missed their last shot from beyond the arc as time expired.
Illinois remains unbeaten in Big Ten play at 3-0, and 13-1 overall, while Maryland is 2-1 and 14-1.
No. 18 Notre Dame felled by Georgia Tech
The poll voters are going to have a whole lot to think about this weekend. Unlike Washington and Illinois, no one was confusing Georgia Tech for a possibility as a ranked team, or even one on its way to March: the Yellow Jackets entered play 5-9 on the season, and just 112th in NET. Notre Dame, meanwhile, was ranked No. 18 both in the poll and in NET, and were 10-2 with their losses coming against ranked teams Michigan and Ole Miss.
And yet! And yet. It was Georgia Tech that stood victorious over Notre Dame as the overtime clock expired on Thursday. It was Georgia Tech that rallied from down 14, that withstood a near triple-double from star junior guard Hannah Hidalgo (26 points, 10 assists, 8 steals and 4 rebounds in 46 minutes). And the Yellow Jackets got there with their own huge game out of sophomore guard Talayah Walker, who scored 33 points on 10-for-17 shooting — and 12-for-14 from the line — with 10 rebounds, 6 assists and a steal and block each. By Game Score, Walker’s performance was the best of the night in Division I from either the men’s or women’s side. Junior guard La’Nya Foster added 22 points and 4 boards, while senior guard Catherine Alben provided 18 points in 33 minutes off the bench — basically the only bench production and time from any of the three players Georgia Tech brought in from it.
Notre Dame used just one bench player despite going to overtime, and senior guard Iyana Moore certainly did her part by scoring 11 points in her 39 minutes, but it just wasn’t enough. Georgia Tech scored 47 points in the second half to force overtime, then dropped 15 on Notre Dame in the shortened frame to take the W.
Big game for the big man
South Dakota State’s Damon Wilkinson is a 6-foot-10, 260-lb. forward, and he used all of that size to his advantage on Thursday to open up Summit League play. The sophomore scored 24 points with 19 rebounds — the Division I high for the night, tied with Marquette’s Halle Vice on the women’s side — while also contributing 3 assists, a steal and 3 blocks.
The Jackrabbits would end up winning against Omaha, 84-69, bringing their overall record to 8-8 and 1-0 in conference play. Wilkinson, by the way, had the top Game Score among men’s Division I players on Thursday.
Johnson needed help and didn’t get it
The men’s scoring leader on Thursday was Tarleton State’s Dior Johnson, who was featured in this space earlier in the season for setting a program record with 18 made free throws in a 33-point performance. The junior guard is scoring 22.1 points per game while shooting just under 58%, and 57% on threes while averaging 7.9 free throw attempts per game. He was 9-for-12 from the line on Thursday against Utah Valley and 12-for-21 from the field, and while his boxscore entry didn’t have much besides points going for it — two rebounds and a steal — it’s hard to argue with 36 points, the second-most he’s scored in a game this year and his fourth with at least 32.
Just like when Johnon dropped his season-high of 42 points, though, the rest of Tarleton State didn’t do enough to secure the W. Utah Valley won, 91-85, and the best performances for the Texans came off the bench. Neither Johnson nor senior guard Cam McDowell started the game, but they combined for 64 minutes and 62 of Tarleton’s points. Just one starter reached double-digit scoring, and was also the only one with more than 4 points.
Johnson brought it to within a single point with under a minute to go, but he’s just one guy. And he and McDowell are still just two guys. That it was this close despite getting basically nothing from anyone else on the roster on the scoring front is impressive, but it also resulted in an L.
Sometimes it works, though
Two players outscored Johnson on Thursday, both on the women’s side. Maine fifth-year forward Adrianna Smith, who dropped 37 points on UMass Lowell, and NJIT’s Alejandra Zuniga, a senior guard who led all scorers with 39.
Smith has been huge in her return from a 2024-2025 knee injury that sidelined her for the entire season. She scored her 37 on 16-for-23 shooting and added 6 rebounds and a steal and a block each en route to a 73-65 opening conference win for the Black Bears. Smith is leading the America East Conference in rebounds (9.7) and points (19.7) per game and is third in assists (4.4). Smith is also at the top of the conference in minutes per game at 35.8 — a pretty good reminder of how vital she is to Maine in the first place, if her scoring just over half of their points in Thursday’s win, in which Maine came back from down 11 in the second half and she set a career-high for points, wasn’t example enough.
As for Zuniga, she and NJIT are also in the America East, and while she didn’t score half of her team’s points, she was damn close. NJIT defeated UMBC, 80-75, to improve to 10-4 overall and start out conference play 1-0. Zuniga shot 13-for-16 from the field and added 12 free throws in 16 attempts, as well, to go with 4 rebounds, an assist, 2 steals and a block in 31 minutes.
Iowa handles Nebraska in ranked Big Ten matchup
This ranked-ranked Big Ten matchup was closer than the final score of 86-76 suggests. No. 14 Iowa’s largest lead of the game was 13, but No. 20 Nebraska was up by 10 at one point, and the two switched back and forth constantly, as well. Nebraska was up 21-18 after the first quarter, then Iowa won the second quarter 26-24 before becoming more difficult to catch in the second half. Iowa shot 49%, Nebraska 50%. The Cornhuskers sank 6-of-20 threes, the Hawkeyes 7-of-20. Turnovers were 18-14, with Nebraska committing more of them, but Iowa scored 22 points off of turnovers compared to Nebraska’s 16, so the gap wasn’t that huge in either case. Iowa scored more points in the paint with 40, but it’s not like the Huskers were far behind there, either, as it scored 34 there.
No, the difference came down to the performances at the line. The Cornhuskers committed 22 fouls to the Hawkeyes’ 15, and it resulted in 28 trips to the line for Iowa — they sank 23 free throws against Nebraska’s 12, which explains the final score and a little bit more.
Plays like this one late also helped a lot.
Senior forward Hannah Stuelke scored 21 points on 7-for-11 shooting for Iowa, and had 10 rebounds with 4 assists and a block for the 14th double-double of her career. Sophomore guard Chazadi Wright led in points, however, with a career-high 24 — including 11 free throws in 12 attempts, or, one fewer make than Nebraska had as a team.
Vanderbilt is off to its best start ever
The fun trend of 2026 so far is for ranked teams to lose in an upset, but Vanderbilt decided to hold off. Maybe it just isn’t with into the same thing as the rest of the kids these days, or maybe it’s because Vandy had a chance for the greatest start in program history, if only it could defeat Arkansas in its SEC season opener. That’s just what the Commodores did, too, behind a monster performance from sophomore guard Mikayla Blakes, who scored 35 of Vandy’s 88 points while adding 4 rebounds, 8 assists and 3 steals.
Arkansas didn’t have an answer for Blakes either offensively or defensively: senior guard Taleyah Jones scored 24 for the Razorbacks, but none of the other starters had more than 8 points, and the team as a whole managed just 5 assists. Vanderbilt forced 22 turnovers — twice as many as it had — and scored 32 points against 14 off of them, as well.
Vanderbilt’s women’s team had never begun a season 14-0, but here it is, ranked No. 12 in the country and an undefeated 14-0 while a number of other teams in the poll saw their new year begin on the wrong side of an upset.
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