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ESPN
Dec 16, 2024, 09:00 AM ET
Dec. 14 was a date college basketball die-hards circled on their calendars before the season started. While some of the luster was taken away given several teams’ poor starts to the campaign, it was still as loaded a nonconference Saturday as we’ve had in some time, with 18 ranked teams in action.
And it lived up to expectations.
There were buzzer-beaters — we’re looking at you, Dylan Harper and Jordan Gainey. There were rivalry games, with Kentucky, Cincinnati, Oklahoma and Rutgers among those beating their biggest in-state foe. And there were massive top-25 upsets, with Dayton over Marquette being the biggest one.
As conference play across the country inches closer and narratives are beginning to take shape, ESPN college basketball writers Jeff Borzello and Myron Medcalf break down the biggest talking points from a busy weekend of nonconference showdowns.
UConn’s three-peat quest is far from finished
After the UConn Huskies won at Texas last weekend, coach Dan Hurley had a comment about people writing off his team’s chances at a third straight national championship. “Maybe the people with the shovels and the dirt, maybe they were too quick to grab the shovel and throw the dirt on us,” Hurley said. After Saturday’s 77-71 win over Gonzaga at Madison Square Garden, that statement looks even more prescient.
Since losing three games in three days at the Maui Invitational, UConn has won four in a row — including victories over Baylor, Texas and the Gonzaga Bulldogs in a 10-day stretch. The Huskies are defending better on the perimeter, and freshman Liam McNeeley had a true breakout performance against the Zags: 26 points, 8 rebounds, 4 assists, 0 turnovers. McNeeley was terrific in the second half and looks like a potential go-to guy for the Huskies moving forward.
UConn now enters Big East play — and while no league game, especially on the road, is an easy matchup, the schedule does look friendlier for a few weeks. They should be favored in every game in December and January, with road games at Villanova and Xavier likely the toughest ones on the docket. By the time UConn heads to Marquette on Feb. 1, there’s a chance Hurley has the Huskies back in the top five. — Borzello
Kentucky continues to win, but defensive challenges should not be overlooked
The return of Lamont Butler (33 points, 10-for-10) from an ankle injury sparked a 93-85 win for the Kentucky Wildcats over rival Louisville on Saturday, giving Mark Pope another victory to satisfy the program’s rabid fan base. Kentucky’s wins over Gonzaga and Duke, along with the other quality wins the program has amassed, have put the Wildcats in the early running for a top seed in the NCAA tournament.
They’re playing at a top-25 pace, connecting on 37% of their 3-point attempts, and Pope’s system has also allowed five different players to finish with a team-high in scoring over the course of their 11 games. Against Louisville, however, the Wildcats also surrendered 85 points (116 points per 100 possessions). The Cardinals committed just seven turnovers in a high-paced game, too.
Right now, the Wildcats are ranked 45th in adjusted defensive efficiency on KenPom. Since the 1996-97 season, there hasn’t been a national champion end a season ranked lower than 22nd. While some of the champions over that span improved in the postseason, the one-month mark of the season is a solid snapshot of where a team stands.
And the truth is that the Wildcats have to be more disciplined on defense to reach their ceiling. They gave up 50 points in the first half against Gonzaga before their great comeback in Seattle earlier this month. They missed key stops in a loss to Clemson, too. Part of the challenge is the Wildcats play a defensive style that doesn’t include a lot of gambles to force turnovers. Kentucky entered the week ranked 340th nationally in opponents’ turnover rate. The Wildcats are so diverse and effective on offense that their defensive lapses have not outweighed their offensive gifts. But even a marginal defensive improvement could elevate the program to another level in the weeks and months ahead. — Medcalf
Arizona is the most disappointing preseason top-10 team
It’s only mid-December, but the Arizona Wildcats‘ season is already spiraling into the danger zone after falling to 4-5. The Wildcats collapsed down the stretch on Saturday against UCLA, blowing a 13-point lead in the final 10 minutes. They didn’t score a single basket in the final 8:45, shot 2-for-16 from 3-point range and turned it over 22 times. Caleb Love, coming off his best season as a college player, shot 3-for-10 and finished with seven points to continue his big-game struggles as a fifth-year senior. Given that Tommy Lloyd had molded Arizona’s attack into one of the best in the country the past three seasons, the offensive struggles are a surprise.
Making matters worse is that Arizona will be without Motiejus Krivas indefinitely after the Wildcats’ 7-foot-2 Lithuanian center suffered a lower leg injury last week. His hasn’t exactly broken out over the first month, but he’s shown flashes of his NBA ceiling and his absence puts more pressure on freshman Carter Bryant and redshirt sophomore Henri Veesaar.
After a couple of home games to round out nonconference play, Arizona begins its first Big 12 campaign. A home game against a depleted TCU team isn’t a bad opener, but road games at Cincinnati and West Virginia will immediately test the Wildcats’ toughness in 2025. — Borzello
Purdue’s challenges seem to open the door for Illinois, other contenders in the Big Ten
Entering the season, the void left by Zach Edey — the first back-to-back Wooden Award winner in 50 years — was obvious. One player can’t replace him. But the Purdue Boilermakers still appeared to be the team to beat in the Big Ten with key players — Trey Kaufman-Renn, Braden Smith, Fletcher Loyer — returning. After Purdue’s loss to Texas A&M, however, the league race seems more wide-open than preseason projections suggested.
While it is still a great offensive team, Purdue has suffered on defense without Edey. And that decline has led to Purdue suffering its third loss Saturday, a year after the team didn’t lose its third game until mid-February.
And Illinois is its greatest threat. While Brad Underwood’s program suffered a 66-64 loss to Tennessee, the No. 1 team in the country, on Saturday, the Vols needed a buzzer-beater to leave Champaign with a victory. (Rick Barnes used a play from Morgan Wooten, a legendary high school coach, to win the game.) But Illinois managed to manufacture the most successful defensive effort against Tennessee this season, as the Vols were held to just 100 points per 100 possessions, their lowest mark of the 2024-25 campaign. Illinois guard Kasparas Jakucionis (42% from beyond the arc) is a likely All-American and projected first-round pick. He had 22 points and seven turnovers in a turbulent outing but will be in the running for Big Ten player of the year at this rate.
Elsewhere in the Big Ten, UCLA has won eight in a row (a run that includes wins over Arizona and Oregon) with a defense ranked top-five on KenPom. Michigan State has made 59% of its shots inside the arc to go along with a top-20 defense. Dusty May’s twin towers lineup with a pair of 7-footers will be a matchup nightmare for any team.
Also among the contenders, Oregon (wins over Texas A&M, Alabama and San Diego State) is intriguing, as is Maryland, whose star Derek Queen (17.5 PPG, 8.7 RPG) continues to grow. At the end of the season, the Boilermakers might be on top. But it appears as if their own challenges and the league’s expanding list of possible contenders has certainly complicated that path to a Big Ten title. — Medcalf
Maybe there should be more buzz about Texas A&M
It wasn’t always pretty — but that’s not the brand of basketball the Texas A&M Aggies play. Nah, TCU tend to thrive when things get ugly. In its 70-66 victory over Purdue, ranked top 10 in adjusted offensive efficiency on KenPom, Buzz Williams coached a team full of defensive stalwarts to another impressive win. And they pulled off the feat at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, which was essentially a home game for a Purdue team that is based 65 miles away.
Trey Kaufman-Renn, who has been a respectable successor to two-time Wooden Award winner Zach Edey, finished 3-for-9 and committed five turnovers. Braden Smith, a preseason Associated Press All-American, committed six turnovers and missed every shot inside the arc.
The Aggies, the top offensive-rebounding team in America, know how to neutralize the biggest opposing threat on the court and put the burden on a less capable player. This is all happening as Wade Taylor IV (38% from beyond the arc over the past three games) has found a rhythm. The offensive woes for the Aggies are troubling (31% from the 3-point this season), but their defensive talents have helped them score wins over four top-50 KenPom teams (Ohio State, Creighton, Texas Tech, Purdue). This might be an SEC sleeper worth acknowledging. — Medcalf
Don’t expect another second-half collapse from Memphis
The Memphis Tigers had about as strong a bounce-back performance as a team could have, rebounding from last weekend’s embarrassing 13-point home loss to Arkansas State by going into No. 16 Clemson — which was on a six-game winning streak and hadn’t lost at home since Feb. 17 of last season — and beating it in overtime. Penny Hardaway’s team now owns wins away from home over UConn, Michigan State and Clemson, all of which were ranked in last week’s top 25.
Yes, it was only last season that Memphis started 15-2 and rose all the way into the top 10 of the AP poll before going 7-8 in its final 15 games and missing out completely on postseason play. So that’s theoretically in the Tigers’ range of outcomes. But this team feels different. This is the best offensive team — and the best shooting team — Hardaway has had at Memphis, with veteran shotmakers Tyrese Hunter, PJ Haggerty and Colby Rogers leading the way. They’re one of the oldest teams in the country, too.
The AAC is also worse at the top than it was a year ago, which makes Memphis’ current four-game stretch so important. The Tigers play at Virginia on Wednesday, then return home for games against Mississippi State and Ole Miss before starting league play — where they should be a favorite in every game. If Memphis can rack up a couple more quality wins in its next three games, it will be remembered on Selection Sunday. — Borzello
