Last Night in College Basketball: Upset After Upset, Feat. Michigan State, Twice

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. Michigan State’s double trouble What a rough night to be a Michigan State fan. Both the men’s and women’s Spartans were upset in Big Ten competition, and in a way that complicates the conference standings. Michigan State’s men faced off against Minnesota, and it was there that the roster imbalance that FOX Sports’ Michael Cohen pointed out while sizing up the Big Five of the Big Ten reared its head. As Cohen mentioned, No. 10 Michigan State’s defense is incredible, the second-best in the nation, but its offense is barely top-50. And with Jeremy Fears Jr. the only true offensive weapon on the team, if he doesn’t have a good game, the Spartans can be in trouble. Related: on Wednesday against the Golden Gophers, the sophomore guard and leading scorer for the Spartans scored just 10 points, and Michigan State lost. To be fair to Fears, he did dish out 11 assists — he’s also the team’s assists leader — but what the team needed in addition to that was more points. Michigan State’s offense did wake up in the second half with 52 points, but the problem was that it scored just 21 in the preceding 20 minutes, and the defense was also worse in the second half, with the Spartans allowing Minnesota to score 44. It’s a little unfair to Fears to put this on his shoulders — it’s not like Coen Carr or Jordan Scott stepped up with a 20-point game to pick up the Spartans, either — but seeing him score just 10 and go 0-for-3 from beyond the arc in a 76-73 game makes it pretty clear how things could have been a lot different if he had merely hit his averages. Fears also was called for a technical foul for lifting his leg to kick Langston Reynolds. Michigan State head coach Tom Izzo did not appreciate the dirty play, and let the media know as much postgame, saying he would even bench Fears if he continues to play that way. Michigan State is now 9-3 in Big Ten play, tied in losses with but a win up on Purdue and Minnesota for the final double bye in the conference tournament. UCLA is right behind that duo at 8-4, as well, meaning Michigan State doesn’t have much wiggle room left if it’s to get an easier path in the Big Ten tourney. Don’t forget Minnesota in all of this, though. The Gophers have now defeated three different ranked teams this season at home: Then-No. 19 Iowa, then-No. 22 Indiana and now No. 10 Michigan State. Minnesota is just 4-8 in Big Ten play, but it has made those dubs chaotic ones. As for the Spartan women, their loss came against No. 22 Maryland, which makes things a little more acceptable than the men losing to Minnesota, but Michigan State is also ranked No. 12 and lost by a significantly larger margin, 86-70. Turnovers were the issue. The Spartans played a sloppy game and turned the ball over 20 games, but even worse than that was how the Terps responded: Maryland converted those 20 turnovers into 22 points, while Michigan State scored just 7 in the same situation. The two played evenly in the paint, rebounds were a wash and while Maryland shot more accurately (49% to 44%), it wasn’t a massive gap. No, the issue was that Michigan State couldn’t catch up from an early deficit because it kept handing Maryland opportunities to increase its lead, and the Terps obliged. Junior guard Oluchi Okananwa played just 22 minutes, but she scored a game-high 23 points on an efficient 8-for-13 shooting, and had 4 rebounds, 5 assists and a steal to go with it. Maryland leaned on its bench quite a bit, with the unit combining for 79 minutes, but the fivesome also contributed 32 points, 10 rebounds, 5 assists and 4 steals in that time, making it that much more difficult for Michigan State to make up for falling behind by 10 points in the second quarter. There wasn’t any one player with a turnover issue, which was the problem. Junior guard Rashuna Jones had more turnovers than points — 7 to 3 — but sophomore guard Kennedy Blair had 5 turnovers of her own, while every other starter had at least a pair. What’s wild is that the Spartans rank 7th in assist-to-turnover ratio this season, at 1.51 — an uncharacteristic performance, then, but one that resulted in an L that has Michigan State now even further behind Ohio State for the final double-bye slot in the standings. Maryland, conversely, has now put itself back in position to get one of the single byes for teams 5-9 in the Big Ten standings, though it is tied with Illinois for that privilege at present. BYU upset despite Dybantsa gem No. 16 BYU has had some trouble this season when freshman sensation AJ Dybantsa doesn’t have a big night — see: the loss to UConn when he didn’t turn it on until halftime, the loss to Kansas when he was outscored by just 20 minutes of Darryn Peterson, the loss to Texas Tech when he scored just 13 points — but on Wednesday the problem was entirely different. The Cougars lost despite Dybantsa having a huge game: the likely early NBA Draft pick forward scored 36 points in in 36 minutes on 13-for-20 shooting, and he added 7 rebounds and 4 assists to that performance, too, but BYU still lost, 99-92, to Oklahoma State. Sophomore guard Richard Wright III was right at his season average of 17.4 with 15 points, and senior guard Richie Saunders was at his with 20. Wright added 4 boards and 4 dimes as well as a steal, while Saunders led BYU in rebounds with 8 and had 3 assists, too. Despite everyone being what they normally are, and Dybantsa going all-out, it wasn’t enough. Not against a Cowboys team that got its own 30-point performance out of senior guard Anthony Roy, as well as three other starters in double-digits and an 18-point showing from junior guard Jaylen Curry off the bench. Three things happened here that make it pretty clear how Oklahoma State was able to handle BYU in spite of its best players playing so well. As good as Dybantsa et al were, BYU still turned the ball over 16 times. And Oklahoma State punished it for that, converting those 16 turnovers into an efficient 21 points. In addition, the Cowboys dominated in the paint, 52-36, and sank 22 free throws in 34 chances as well. That’s not a great shooting percentage from the stripe, but when you give a team 34 chances for free points as BYU did here, the result is not going to be in your favor. The Cougars are now 17-5 overall and just 5-4 in Big 12 play. Oklahoma State is actually worse off, at 4-5, but it also just shot up from 67th in NET to a stronger bubble-adjacent spot, 61st. That was the Cowboys’ first Quad 1 win, but it’s going to pair well with a 6-2 showing in Quad 2 games, especially if they can build on this with some more conference dubs before Selection Sunday. Gonzaga blew it against Portland Gonzaga has veered between unstoppable West Coast Conference power and lucky to get out of its matchups in one piece throughout conference play. After a near-miss against San Diego, an overtime win against Seattle and a 2-point victory over San Francisco, the Bulldogs came out on the losing end of one of these games. Portland — Portland! — took down Gonzaga, 87-80. In case the exclamation point there doesn’t tell the whole story, Portland came into the matchup ranked 230th in the NCAA Evaluation Tool, or NET, out of Division I men’s 365 teams. The Pilots were 0-2 in Quad 1 matchups and 0-7 in Quad 2. This is a team that has gone just 5-2 against Quad 4 opponents this year, meaning, Portland should not be a credible threat to the No. 6 team in the country, which, to let the poll voters off the hook here, was also ranked 5th in NET and 11th in KenPom’s ratings. As said, though, Gonzaga has been either playing with its food or playing down to the competition far too often this season for something like this to not happen eventually, and Portland was the one to do it. Gonzaga allowed the Pilots to shoot 59% from the field, which meant that even though the Bulldogs took advantage of turnovers, keeping up was just too difficult a task. Portland scored 40 points in the paint to Gonzaga’s 26, and the difference in the deep game was not nearly big enough to overcome that advantage. Gonzaga fought back, more than cutting a 15-point lead in half, but there wasn’t enough game this time to salvage things like there had been against San Diego or Seattle or San Francisco. Portland straight-up outplayed Gonzaga for more of the game than it did not, led by freshman guard Joel Foxwell and his 27/4/8 night, with three of the other starters scoring between 11 and 14 points while sophomore forward James O’Donnell added 16 off the bench in 18 minutes. From that, Portland earned its first-ever top-10 win. Gonzaga is probably not going to be top-10 anymore on Monday, either — it already fell to 14th in KenPom and 9th in NET after losing against a Quad 3 squad. A pair of 19-rebound games A good night if you love upsets, and also a good night if you enjoy lofty rebound totals. Even better if you like them to come in Sun Belt games. Troy’s Zay Dyer is one of the best in the nation at ripping down rebounds — she is leading the Sun Belt in rebounds per game for the second consecutive season, and her 12.4 has her third in all of Division I women’s basketball — and on Wednesday she had 19 of them against App State. That was enough to lead D-I basketball, men’s or women’s, for the night. [Get To Know a Mid-Major: Sun Belt Conference] Dyer also led all scorers with 20 points, marking her 15th double-double of the season, and also passed her previous season-high of 18 boards with the effort. Dyer added 4 blocks for good measure, and her final points gave Troy back the lead at the start of the fourth quarter in what ended up being a 69-59 win. Dyer wasn’t the only one to attack the glass like that, though. Louisiana-Monroe’s Marcania Shavers had 19 rebounds and a double-double as well, this one with 13 points, in an 81-62 win over Georgia State. This was a key win for the Warhawks, since it gave them a little bit of separation from Georgia State as well as Coastal Carolina, which are both 4-8 and now a game back in the Sun Belt as well as fighting for the last bye for the conference tourney. Also a noteworthy game for another reason, in that senior guard J’Mani Ingram scored the 1,000th point of her career with a team-best 18-point showing. Still, those 19 rebounds just jump off the page. Providence outlasted Butler in 2OT Maybe it’s not as obvious of an upset since neither team is ranked, but Providence defeating Butler is not how things were supposed to go. Providence getting Butler to OT wasn’t even necessarily how things should have gone: the Bulldogs were a possible bubble team out of the Big East, ranking 64th in NET before this matchup, while the Friars seemed comfortably outside of that for now, having gone 1-6 Quad 1 games and losing just as many Quad 2 ones. Here we are, though. Basketball still has to be played, and that’s where the magic happens. Butler had a slight lead over Providence after the first half, 34-32, and the Friars answered right back in the second, 41-39, while forcing overtime thanks to freshman guard Stefan Vaaks hitting his second free throw with 21 seconds remaining in regulation — if he had also hit the first, Providence might have won outright without OT. The act was repeated in the first overtime, this time with Butler hitting just the one free throw to force another overtime period rather than wrapping up a W, with senior forward Michael Ajayi hitting his second attempt. The second OT is where there was finally some separation, as senior guard Jaylin Sellers scored 8 of his game-high 36 points for the Friars in that period, leading to a 97-87 win for Providence. Providence is still last in the Big East at 3-9, so no change there, but Butler missed a chance to move into a tie for sixth alongside Georgetown. Which reduces its chance of getting to one of the five byes available into the quarterfinals of the Big East tourney next month. Hit your free throws, kids. All of ‘em. Your scoring leader dropped 38 Sellers might have scored 36 points with the help of a double OT game, but High Point junior guard Macy Spencer just needed 38 minutes to outdo that. She scored a career-best 38 points on 11-for-24 shooting that included a 5-for-14 performance from 3, while adding 11 makes from the line — those 38 points were the most of anyone in men’s or women’s D-I ball on Wednesday. Spencer also pulled down 7 rebounds with 2 assists, 2 steals and a block, which gave her the top GameScore of the night in Division I women’s basketball, at an even 30. High Point would defeat Winthrop, 88-74, to maintain its undefeated record in Big South play. The Panthers are 10-0 there, and 21-2 overall. UConn wins a notable 40th UConn took down DePaul on Wednesday, which should not be a surprise for a few reasons — the Huskies’ previous matchup with the Blue Demons resulted in its largest margin of victory of the season, 67 points — but it is notable despite the lack of shock. The win was UConn’s 40th in a row, which ties them with the 1985-1987 Texas Longhorns for the 10th-longest winning streak in Division I women’s basketball history. Fifth-year guard Azzi Fudd led all scorers with 25 points in the 86-40 rout, in which UConn shot 61% as a team. Now, UConn has seven regular season games left. If it were to win out, that would tie the Huskies for the fifth-longest winning streak in D-I women’s history … with UConn. The 2013-2015 team strung together 47 dubs in a row, the shortest of the four winning streaks the program owns in the top five: the others are 70 (2001-2003), 90 (2008-2011) and the all-time lead of 111 (2014-2017). Present-day UConn has a long way to go to get to those levels, but getting to fifth is doable with just Big East games left on the schedule.