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.
UConn routed Villanova in Big East clash
No. 1 UConn being the best team in the Big East isn’t a surprise. The Huskies are the defending champions, they were ranked at the top of the conference and women’s college basketball in general in the preseason and have just stuck both there and in the NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET) throughout thanks to continued dominance.
Still, there were potential challenges in conference play, as the Big East has no one on Connecticut’s level but there are some good teams there. First up was Marquette, currently 55th in NET, back on Dec. 17: UConn swatted them aside, 89-53. Next was Seton Hall to kick off the new year, now 45th in NET — the Huskies beat them by 36 points. And on Thursday, UConn took on Villanova, a terror from deep that scores in bunches and has had the best chance of a non-UConn Big East team at making it into the poll: the Huskies won, 99-50.
UConn came out swinging, posting a 26-8 lead after the first quarter, and outside of an even 19-19 second, it was all Connecticut all the time. A 31-point third quarter was followed by holding Villanova to just 6 points in the fourth. The Wildcats, 7th in all of Division I in 3-point percentage at 38%, shot just 8-for-32 from deep. Villanova is 30th in shooting percentage overall, at 46.2% — UConn held them to 18-for-65 shooting, 28%. This is one of the better shooting teams not just in the Big East, but in women’s basketball, and it didn’t slow UConn down one bit.
Sophomore forward and Player of the Year contender Sarah Strong was on the floor for 28 minutes and scored 24 points on 10-for-17 shooting with 9 rebounds, 4 assists, 3 steals and 5 blocks. Junior point guard KK Arnold’s high-energy play was difficult for Villanova defenders to contain, leading to 13 points and 7 assists — with a couple of seconds left on the clock at the half, she even sprinted all the way across the court and just missed laying in another bucket before the clock ran out. Freshman forward Blanca Quinonez continued to show she’s going to be a real problem once she plays starter minutes, with 13 points on 5-for-9 shooting, 4 rebounds, an assist and 2 steals off the bench and fifth-year guard Azzi Fudd added 14 on a quiet night for her. Every one of those players outscored Villanova’s leading scorer, freshman guard Kennedy Henry (12 points in 33 minutes), and in fewer minutes.
UConn faces a non-conference test on Monday night on FOX, against current No. 23 Notre Dame, while Villanova is still in second in the Big East at 7-2 with a chance to improve to 8-2 in its Sunday matchup against Butler.
South Carolina gets its revenge on Texas
Back during Feast Week, at the Players Era tournament finals, Texas took down South Carolina in what was a matchup of conference teams but in non-conference play. It was a huge win for the Longhorns, which had defeated UCLA to get there and then claimed victory against last season’s national championship runner-up to take the holiday tournament and its NIL money prize. To make it that much sweeter, the Gamecocks had ended Texas’ own championship run back in April in the Final Four — a little back-and-forth never hurt a rivalry.
Things swung in the other direction on Thursday. Now fully healthy and looking more dangerous than it did in November, South Carolina managed to pull away at the end where it had failed to in Las Vegas. A 68-65 dub is real close to the result of the last matchup, which went 66-64 in the Longhorns’ favor, but this time it was South Carolina coming out on top.
All of South Carolina’s starters scored at least 10 points, which helped mitigate the fact the Gamecocks did not have someone take over the game offensively. Slow and steady won the race here, as did doing a better job of converting turnovers into points: South Carolina turned the ball over 20 times, but that was fewer than Texas’ 22, and it converted those into 23 points against the Longhorns’ 15. Also a factor was South Carolina’s defense limiting Texas to a single 3-pointer — it was just 1-for-9, and while South Carolina didn’t exactly light it up from deep, it had four times as many threes in just two more attempts.
That’s the second loss in a row for Texas, which began the week undefeated before falling to now-No. 5 LSU on Sunday and is now 3-2 in the conference. Next up in SEC play is Texas A&M, which ranks 77th in NET — good, but not quite LSU or South Carolina levels of dangerous, either.
Vanderbilt? Still undefeated
UConn is undefeated, but it isn’t the only women’s team that can still make the unbeaten claim. Texas Tech managed to keep its record spotless earlier in the week, and on Thursday Vanderbilt did the same with an 89-84 victory over Mississippi State. Sophomore guard Mikayla Blakes led the charge, scoring a game- and season-high 38 points with 5 rebounds and 7 assists, as well as perfect 11-for-11 shooting from the line. The Bulldogs put up a serious fight against a great Vandy team — 29 points from the bench did a lot of that heavy lifting — but Blakes was simply too much.
She’s leading the SEC with 24.9 points per game, a jump from last year’s impressive freshman debut of 23.3, and has added over an assist and steal per game to her totals, as well. Vanderbilt is great this year, off to its best-ever start at 18-0 and leading the SEC by a game, and Blakes is the most significant reason for it.
Johnson drops 40 again and loses, again
Poor Dior Johnson. Twice this season now the junior guard and UCF transfer has put up at least 40 points, and Tarleton State has lost, anyway. On Thursday, the Western Athletic Conference’s scoring leader dropped 40 points — his season-high is 42 — on Southern Utah off the bench in 30 minutes, but the Texans would fall 106-105 in overtime.
Tarleton got 64 points from just two bench players and 70 bench points overall, and couldn’t pull out the W. Which is wild, too, because the Texans are 11-5 in games in which Johnson — against, the conference’s leading scorer — doesn’t score 40, and just lost to a team that had been 4-13, and winless in WAC play. Basketball doesn’t have to make sense sometimes; it’s just going to do basketball-like things such as this. That’s why we watch, though, isn’t it?
44 points with 20(!) free throws
Now here’s a segue: earlier this year, Dior Johnson set Tarleton’s program record with 18 made free throws while scoring 33 points overall. (The Texans did win that game, for the record.) On the same night he dropped 40 points for the second time in the season, Jacksonville fifth-year guard Priscilla Williams scored a program record 44 points while sinking 20-of-22 free throw attempts. Those 44 are also an Atlantic Sun Conference high for the season. She went 4-for-7 from three and 10-for-20 from the field, too, while pulling down 8 rebounds with 2 assists, 3 steals and 3 blocks. Just a monster performance.
And, unlike with Johnson, it all led to a W. Jacksonville defeated Central Arkansas, 96-86, in an impressive come-from-behind win to improve to 3-2 in ASUN play. Jacksonville was down by 10 at one point and still down 7 with 2:24 to go. Williams would hit a pair of free throws, a 16-foot jumper, two more free throws and then a 3-pointer between 1:24 and 7 seconds remaining in the game, bringing Jacksonville within a point, and then the Dolphins would tie it to force OT where Williams would score another 6 points — 36 of her 44 came after halftime — and help Jacksonville secure the win.
Also unlike with Johnson, this one came out of nowhere: Williams is scoring just 12.7 points per game for the season, a career-best for her, and has more games with fewer than 10 points than she does ones of over 20 in 2025-2026.
A big night for big rebounds
Both men’s and women’s basketball had a player with at least 20 rebounds on Thursday. UT Rio Grande Valley’s Charlotte O’Keefe had 22 points on 11-for-15 shooting, along with 3 assists, 3 steals and 4 blocks against Southeastern Louisiana. She also pulled down 22 boards, though, in a stellar performance for the 6-foot-3 senior forward. O’Keefe led the Southland Conference in rebounds per game a year ago, with 12.5, and is at 12.3 this season after posting her first 20-rebound game of the year. These 22 aren’t a career-high, however: O’Keefe grabbed 24 boards against New Orleans on March 1 of 2025. Unlike in that game, though, the Vaqueros won, 78-65, and moved into a tie for second in the conference at 6-2.
Then there is Armani Mighty. The senior center from Mercer is getting his first chance at playing meaningful minutes in Division I ball, and is averaging 9.5 rebounds and a Southern Conference-leading 1.8 blocks per game because of it. On Thursday, he scored 18 points on 8-for-10 shooting with 3 blocks and 2 assists, but the eye-popping figure is his rebounds total: Mighty grabbed 25 of them, or, one fewer than VMI’s entire team managed as it was nearly doubled up in the stat, 50-26. Now that’s a double-double. Despite that difference, the game was closer than you’d think, but Mercer got the win, 77-67.
Those 25 boards are the second-most in program history, but you have to go all the way back to 1950 to find the one performance ahead of Mighty’s: that one came courtesy of Lamar Clements against Florida State.
Louisville handles Notre Dame
Notre Dame just popped back into the poll this week, but it might be on its way back out. No. 9 Louisville took down the No. 23 Fighting Irish, 79-66, in a game dominated nearly from start to finish by the Cardinals. Notre Dame had the deep ball working, with the Irish shooting 9-for-16 from three, but overall shot just 39% while getting trounced in the paint, 38 points to 24.
Senior guard Reyna Scott dropped 20 points off the bench for Louisville, the bulk of 31 total from the second unit, which was 29 points more than Notre Dame got from its own reserves. Granted, the Irish played just one bench player and for 9 total minutes — this game was the starter’s to win or lose, and lose they did.
Junior guard Hannah Hidalgo had a good night, but not great by her standards, with 24 points in 40 minutes on 8-for-19 shooting, with 5 rebounds and 8 assists. You could argue the Irish needed more out of her to win, but what they needed was for someone else to step up in a real big way. Louisville got that kind of secondary support from Scott, and that, plus the performance in the paint, explains the 13-point defeat.
Auburn upsets Alabama
No. 21 Alabama upset No. 7 Kentucky just last week, but the favor has been returned, and this time not in a ranked-ranked matchup. Auburn — which came into the game ranked 70th in NET and on the bubble — defeated Bama, 58-54. The Crimson Tide just never got going here, as they trailed for 83% of the game, and the largest lead they possessed was a mere 2 points.
Auburn didn’t even dominate in any particular way. Neither team shot very well, but each did shoot similarly, 44% for Bama and 42% for Auburn. The Tigers won the rebound battle, but only 32-28, and turned the ball over two additional times compared to Bama. Each team scored 20 points off of turnovers, while Bama actually outscored Auburn in the paint, 26-22. The only significant difference was in free throws: the Tigers went 12-for-14 from the line, while Bama had just eight attempts. In a four-point loss, that slight difference is more than enough.
And given Alabama was already ranked No. 21 and now sits 28th in NET, it might just find itself back out of the poll come Monday.
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