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.
Welcome to the Big Ten, DeVries
It’s not even a negative at this point, rather a rite of passage or fact of life that you will eventually go into Williams Arena and get upset by the Minnesota Golden Gophers. You can’t really call yourself a Big Ten basketball coach if you don’t get trapped by the epitome of all trap games.
Last season, Oregon learned that fate on its first trip to St. Paul since joining the conference. The Ducks were ranked 15th in the nation at that point, and yet the Golden Gophers stunned them. This season, Minnesota did the same to No. 22 Indiana in first-year head coach Darian DeVries’ introduction to the Golden Gophers. On top of that, it was Minnesota’s first win over Indiana since 2019, and it was a team-wide effort.
Every Minnesota starter scored at least 11 points, and all but one played at least 37 minutes. Junior forward Bobby Durkin had the fewest rebounds among the starters, with 4; senior guard Cade Tyson led both Minnesota and the game as a whole with 8. Tyson also had a team-high 17 points, tied with senior guard Langston Reynolds, who had 5 boards, 3 assists and a steal of his own.
Compare that to the Hoosiers, who had to lean on a bench that, with one exception in senior forward Sam Alexis (10 points, 3 rebounds and 2 assists in 19 minutes) didn’t provide much help for the starters who needed it. Taylor Conerway had a game-high 18 points, but played just 23 minutes: the Hoosiers needed more of him on a night where they shot just 30% from beyond the arc, but couldn’t get it, and that’s how Minnesota ended up winning 73-64.
Indiana’s women won, though
Indiana has two basketball teams, you know, and while the men’s suffered an upset loss in Minnesota, the women’s edition of the Hoosiers dispatched of Western Michigan, 71-53. While not ranked in the poll, Indiana is currently 51st in the nation by the NCAA Evaluation Tool, or NET, that helps determine which teams are selected for March Madness. They’re a pretty good team, is the thing, and now 8-1, to boot.
Senior guard Shay Ciezki was once again at the center of the win, putting up a game-high 26 points in 36 minutes on 12-for-17 shooting — she also had 2 rebounds, 4 assists and 4 steals. It’s been quite the breakout season for her so far, as she has never averaged more than 11.8 points per game either at Penn State or Indiana, and she’s now leading the Big Ten at 24.4, owing to scoring between 22 and 38 in seven of her nine games thus far. And even in the two sub-20 scoring performances, Chiezki still outscored her previous career-best average.
Arkansas takes down Louisville
Well, at least Indiana doesn’t have to feel lonely here, as No. 6 Louisville also suffered an upset. No. 25 Arkansas will surely be moving up in the rankings next week after defeating Louisville, 89-80, and they did it thanks to a strong performance from their bench combined with an abysmal night from three for the Cardinals.
The Razorbacks had three bench players enter the game for a combined 70 minutes, and they scored 10, 12 and 17 points while pulling down a total of 18 rebounds. Freshman guard Meleek Thomas led the way with 17 points — tied for the second-most of anyone on Arkansas, behind senior forward Trevon Brazile and his 21 on 8-for-11 shooting — while Louisville got no such help from their own bench.
Now, the Cardinals starters had a better night than the Razorbacks did, but their bench just didn’t provide anywhere near what was needed to keep pace with Arkansas — especially not on a night where the team shot 8-for-37 from three, committed 10 more fouls and were outrebounded 46-36.
Oklahoma wins in double-OT, but Pierre is the star
No. 9 Oklahoma took on NC State, and it took two overtimes — and 33 points from freshman guard Aaliyah Chavez — for them to avoid the upset. It might look bad on the surface for Oklahoma to have let NC State hang around this long, but two things were happening here: the Sooners came back to win, as they were at one point down by 10, and NC State isn’t ranked but they are a really good basketball team, currently 39th in NET.
This is one of those games where NC State obviously would have wanted the win, but they came out looking great for hanging with the ninth-ranked team in the nation to this degree. It helps when you have your own star performance to guide you, of course. Khamil Pierre has been pulling rebounds down like wild this season, and even set a new career-high with 21 in a game on Nov. 27. NC State’s junior forward nearly matched that figure on Wednesday, as she led all of D-I with 20 rebounds, on top of scoring 19 points with 2 assists and a steal and block each. That was Pierre’s second 20-rebound game of the season in nine games, and her sixth double-double — she also just missed double-doubles in two of the other three games. She’s on one.
Pierre now leads all of Division I in rebounds per game, at 13.6, pulling ahead of Texas-Rio Grande Valley’s Charlotte O’Keefe and UTEP’s Mary Moses Amaniyo with Wednesday’s performance. A dub would have made it that much better of a night, but the Wolfpack is a lot better team than their 5-4 record suggests, especially with Pierre playing like this.
Troy’s massive comeback
Down by 23 points in the second quarter, things weren’t looking great for Troy against Longwood. They started closing that gap before halftime, though, cutting the deficit to 15, and then erupted for a 50-point second half. The long ball wasn’t working for the Trojans — they were 6-for-25 — so they adjusted midgame and ended up scoring 58 points in the paint. Which they were able to do because they pulled down 50 rebounds, including 23 offensive boards.
Senior forwards led the way, with Fortuna Ngnawo logging a double-double with 19 points and 10 rebounds in 22 minutes, while Zay Dyer scored 8 but pulled down a game-high 12 rebounds. All the rest of the starters scored between 10 and 16 points, and while the bench didn’t add much in the way of points, they did collectively grab 15 rebounds in their 66 minutes of subbing — Troy is 10th in D-I in rebounds per game, at 47.7 per game, and that skill is what allowed them to get back into this game and then secure the W.
Undefeated Wake Forest undefeated no more
Wake Forest entered play on Wednesday at 9-0 to take on 2-4 William & Mary. Nothing went the way that Wake Forest expected once that first whistle blew. The Tribe and Demon Deacons were tied up 14-14 after the first quarter, but instead of it being Wake Forest pulling away in the second, it was William & Mary: the Tribe exploded for 28 second-quarter points while holding the Deacons to 9, and eventually extended their lead to 25 points. While William & Mary were clearly outplayed from that point forward, Wake Forest had a second opponent to contend with: the clock.
Wake Forest outscored William & Mary 20-13 in the third quarter, and 21-12 in the second. They brought it to within 2 points, 66-64, on the first 3-pointer of the season for freshman guard Caitlyn Jones, whose 14 points off of the bench were a huge part of why Wake Forest was able to get back in this thing in the first place. The problem is that there were just six seconds left on the clock by that point, and fouling to get the ball back made it 67-64 with four seconds to go.
A desperation three from Mary Carter didn’t land, and William & Mary ended up with their first-ever win over Wake Forest in six attempts.
UCLA survives Washington
UCLA and Washington had one hell of a back-and-forth game that ended 82-80, but at multiple points within it seemed like anything that close wouldn’t be the case. UCLA’s largest lead of the game was 16, but Washington had their own 11-point lead at one point, too. UCLA shot 53% percent; Washington 52%. They both hit nine 3-pointers, and were separated by just 4 points in the paint. The difference, in the end, came down to turnovers: the Huskies turned it over 15 times against the Bruins’ 7, and UCLA capitalized to the tune of 20 points on them against Washington’s 6.
Even with that, though, it still came down to one final play that went UCLA’s way.
College basketball, baby.
Michigan and Maryland took care of business
No. 6 Michigan and No. 7 Maryland were both in action on Wednesday, and both handled it no problem. The Wolverines faced off against the Central Michigan Chippewas, while the Terrapins took on Mount St. Mary’s Mountaineers. Sophomore — it’s always a sophomore with this team — Olivia Olson had a game-high 21 points, but also grabbed 11 rebounds for the double-double. The guard added an assist and a steal, too, and while she had 5 turnovers, Central Michigan had far more of them and lost 82-40.
As for Maryland, they won 92-44 to move to 10-0 on the season. Just one starter — senior guard Yarden Garzon — played for over 20 minutes, with the Terrapins using this game to get the bench some reps. Seven bench players picked up minutes, and combined for 108 of them total, with freshman forward Breanna Williams the standout thanks to 12 points on 5-for-7 shooting, 7 rebounds and 3 assists in just 15 minutes.
A surprise scoring leader
Izzy Callaway, a sophomore guard at Akron, scored a Division I-high 36 points on Wednesday against Heidelberg. And saying it came out of nowhere would be an understatement: her two highest-scoring games of the season were her previous two, but with just 10 and 11 points total. On Wednesday, though, Callaway was 13-for-17 overall and 8-for-11 on threes, and the result was a career-high that’s going to be tough to match even if she keeps on scoring from here on out.
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