Last Night in College Basketball: Arizona Bounces Back Against Shorthanded BYU

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. BYU can’t stop Arizona even with Dybantsa With senior guard Richie Saunders out for the rest of the season with a torn ACL, No. 22 BYU faces an uphill battle from here on out. There is hope for the Cougars, however, as evidenced by Wednesday’s loss to No. 4 Arizona. This easily could have been a beatdown by the Wildcats, which have lost just two games this season: one to a top-10 team Kansas, and another to ranked Texas Tech when the Red Raiders had JT Toppin showing everyone why he was a player-of-the-year candidate before his own season-ending ACL tear. Instead, BYU played Arizona hard, losing 75-68, thanks to freshman forward AJ Dybantsa going off for 35 points on 13-for-28 shooting. For the Cougars to have a real chance in March without Saunders — who averaged 18 points, 5.8 rebounds and 2.1 assists per game, all ranked third on BYU — Dybantsa is going to have to be that dude in every win-or-go-home scenario. The Cougars are already in that situation as is: with the loss to the Wildcats, they are 7-6 in Big 12 play, putting them in a tie for seventh in the conference. Teams seeded 4-8 get a single bye in the conference tournament; TCU and Cincinnati are both 6-7, so there isn’t much room for failure left with five games on the schedule. Cincinnati plays BYU in the second-to-last game of the regular season, UCF is on the schedule, as well and the Cougars also have to face No. 6 Iowa State and No. 13 Texas Tech before the season ends, too. It’s going to be a fight just to keep a bye, but Dybantsa has the talent to make it happen. Dybantsa’s performance, by the way, gave him the program record for points by a freshman, as he passed Danny Ainge with his 624th point of the season, and with his 19th 20-point game of the season broke a different record held by Ainge. As for Arizona, picking up a win even with the likely early NBA Draft pick going off is a positive, but it’s also a bit concerning that the response to losing its first two games in a row was to narrowly defeat a shorthanded BYU squad that had been sinking in the standings even before losing one of its three best players. Here, the Wildcats were buoyed by a huge performance off the bench from senior guard Anthony Dell’Orso, who finished second in scoring with 22 points in 26 minutes while adding 4 rebounds and a steal. And it should be pointed out that the W did come without freshman forward Koa Peat, who is second on the team in scoring and third in both rebounds and assists, but suffering from a lower leg injury. Arizona’s schedule isn’t exactly a cinch from here on out, either. Up next is No. 2 Houston, a rematch against No. 8 Kansas and the long-awaited showdown with Iowa State. That’s the three teams directly behind the Wildcats in the Big 12 standings, and a fight for seeding in tournament play is going to matter given just how stacked the top of this conference is. UConn falls to Creighton If you are wondering how No. 5 UConn managed to lose against Creighton — the Huskies’ first loss against an unranked opponent this season — and at home, to boot, coach Dan Hurley has your answer. “The defense has been a joke,” Hurley told assembled media in the postgame presser. And it’s tough to argue with the vocal coach, given UConn let Creighton drop 91 points on it. The Bluejays came into the game ranked 83rd in the NCAA Evaluation Tool, with the 40th-best adjusted Offensive Rating in Division I men’s basketball per KenPom. It’s a real good offense, basically, but Connecticut’s Defensive Rating was, at one time, up there with the elites: now, the adjusted version has slipped all the way to 34th, and a loss at the hands of a team like Creighton that can score was not out of the question. Creighton having four players in double-digit scoring while three others scored 8 was huge, as UConn couldn’t just focus on shutting down one player to make the buckets stop. Senior guards Josh Dix and Nik Graves combined for 39 points, 10 rebounds and 6 assists, while junior forward Jasen Green just missed a double-double with 8 points and a team-high 11 boards. UConn had no trouble scoring, either — Tarris Reed Jr. and Silas Demary Jr. had 15 and 17 points, respectively, while freshman guard Braylon Mullins led all scorers with 25. But the defense just was not there, and Mullins wasn’t as good as that 25-point showing looks, either: he shot just 9-for-22 from the field, worse than UConn’s overall uninspiring 44% rate. It also didn’t help that the Huskies were 11-for-18 from the line (61%) and fouled Creighton so often that the Bluejays went to the stripe 32 times… and sank 27 of their free throws. Forcing just eight turnovers, committing 21 fouls, poor shot selection and free-throw performance and a defense full of holes. The only surprising result is that Hurley wasn’t even angrier about it all. UConn women pass a significant test at Villanova UConn’s women had a much better night than the men, even if it didn’t seem like things were going to go that way at first. After a previous tough win against Marquette on the road, coach Geno Auriemma explained on his radio show that more challenges like the one the Golden Eagles presented — Marquette limited UConn to its lowest first-quarter point total, 13, of the season, and beat it up on the boards — would actually be a positive for the Huskies, to remind them that they have to go out there and earn their wins, and that the team needed to focus on rebounding instead of assuming shots were going in. Villanova, as a top-40 team in NET and in Wins Above Bubble, is a likely NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament team and UConn’s primary challenger in the Big East. And the Wildcats showed as much at home on Wednesday, where they came into the game 8-0 against Big East competition. Villanova finished the first quarter up 22-19, the first time UConn had trailed at the end of the first quarter all season long, and was still ahead at the half, another first. Sophomore guard Jasmine Bascoe was the most significant issue for UConn, with 18 first-half points, but adjustments were made during the break and the Huskies clawed back with a 7-0 run to open the third quarter. UConn would slow Bascoe down from there on out — she scored 26 points and finished a much rougher 8-for-22 from the field — and UConn’s early misses on open looks would vanish from the record, with the Huskies ending at 53% from the field and 8-for-15 from deep. So, seeing how UConn played while being down at halftime, against a quality team, was the first test. The other was seeing how things would go without sophomore forward and player-of-the-year candidate Sarah Strong fully available. Strong picked up her fourth foul of the game early in the third quarter, necessitating an extended trip to the bench, but she still ended up playing 32 minutes with that break being her time off the court. Strong ended up scoring nine-straight points upon returning in the fourth to push UConn’s lead to 19 — she would have 21 points overall on 9-for-13 shooting, with 12 rebounds, 4 assists, 5 steals and 3 blocks. It helped, too, that freshman forward Blanca Quinonez was finally back after missing six games with a shoulder injury: while playing with apparent rust early, Quinonez stepped up when Strong had to head to the bench, and made her presence felt defensively with 4 steals in 18 minutes. The win clinched the Big East for UConn, as it’s now 17-0 in conference play while Villanova is 14-4. The Huskies have won 44 in a row, giving them sole possession of the seventh-longest win streak in Division I women’s basketball history, and this W against a conference opponent also marked its 64th-consecutive Big East win including tournament games. Connecticut, at 27-0, is the last remaining undefeated team in D-I women’s basketball. Arkansas-Alabama Takes Double-OT Not only was Arkansas-Alabama a ranked-ranked matchup — the Razorbacks are No. 20 and the Crimson Tide No. 25 — but it took double-overtime for the two to get a result. Bonus basketball, and the kind that resulted in an upset, as Alabama ended up winning 117-115. What’s even wilder is that the game was even as close as that. For one, Arkansas got 49 points out of guard Darius Acuff Jr., the second-most points anyone in Division I has scored in 2025-2026, and the freshman also played all 50 minutes. He had to, because Arkansas had literally no one else to turn to: after using just seven players throughout the first 40 minutes, four Razorbacks fouled out in overtime, resulting in Arkansas having to play a pair of bench players who, combined, didn’t have an entire game’s worth of minutes under their belts this season: freshman center Elmer Dzafic and sophomore guard Jaden Karuletwa. Acuff, for all the good he did — there is no first overtime without his incredible performance, and his 49 points are a program record in SEC play — did miss a pair of ill-timed shots in the extra periods, both of which would have won the game for Arkansas at the end of each overtime. It’s difficult to complain even as an Arkansas fan, however: he scored 49 points, he played 50 minutes, he shot 16-for-27 with 6 from beyond the arc, and had 5 rebounds, 5 assists and a steal and block each, too. Alabama had its own shooters, of course. Sophomore guard Labaron Philon Jr. and sophomore forward Aiden Sherrell had 35 and 26 points, respectively, which marked a career-best for both. Freshman forward Amari Allen added 19 while junior guard Aden Holloway scored 15. Allen and Sherrell both had double-doubles (11 and 13 rebounds), while Philon led all players with 7 assists. While neither Houston Mallette nor Latrel Wrightsell had huge performances off the bench for the Tide by the numbers, the two combined for 69 minutes off the bench with 13 points, 6 rebounds, 3 assists and 4 steals — Alabama doesn’t get to or survive overtime(s) without those contributions. Minnesota upsets Ohio State Minnesota has been red-hot lately and even entered the poll at No. 23, but it was fair to wonder if No. 10 Ohio State would put a stop to its eight-game winning streak. While the Buckeyes did hold the Golden Gophers to 40% shooting, it wasn’t enough: Minnesota would score the upset, 74-61, handing Ohio State its second loss in a row and moving ahead of the Buckeyes in the Big Ten standings for possession of the fourth and final double-bye of the conference tournament. Senior center Sophie Hart and senior guard Amaya Battle both recorded double-doubles, with Hart scoring 18 with 10 rebounds, 2 assists and 2 steals, while Battle had 13 points, 12 boards and 5 assists. Junior guard Mara Braun just missed a double-double of her own with 18 points and 9 rebounds, to which she added a pair of assists and a block. The starters played the bulk of the game, and it paid off for Minnesota. Ohio State’s sophomore guard Jaloni Cambridge played well, with 23 points, 7 rebounds and 6 assists in 40 minutes, while senior guard Chance Gray added 17 points, but performances were quiet or outright muted besides, beyond sophomore center Elsa Lemmila’s 10 boards. It just wasn’t enough to take down a Minnesota team that has been mowing down the Big Ten since mid-January. Texas Tech hands Baylor an upset L Baylor briefly rebounded from a loss and a drop in Big 12 conference positioning to TCU by demolishing UCF, but now Texas Tech has complicated things for the Bears even further. With an 87-56 W, the Lady Raiders are now tied with Baylor in the Big 12 standings at 11-4, joining West Virginia. With four double-byes available — and both Oklahoma State and Colorado tied for 5th at 10-5 — things have gotten worse for the Bears in a hurry. Also of concern is just how badly Texas Tech beat Baylor here. Senior guard Snudda Collins came off the bench and scored 23 points in 20 minutes on 9-for-15 shooting, while starting senior guard Bailey Maupin had 22 on 7-for-13. The Lady Raiders scored 56% as a team and handled business on the other end, forcing 21 turnovers and grabbing 22 defensive rebounds to Baylor’s 15 and 20. Dominance in the paint sealed the deal: Texas Tech scored 44 points from up close, while Baylor managed just 26, and could not hit the deep ball to make up for it, going just 3-for-17 from beyond the arc. This win gave Texas Tech its first sweep of Baylor in 22 years, which is also the last time that the Lady Raiders had beaten the Bears on the road. Three (3!) 40-point games Darin Acuff didn’t have the only 40-point performance of the night. Mississippi State’s Josh Hubbard scored 46 against Auburn, while Jordan Riley put up 40 on the dot for East Carolina. In the case of Hubbard, the junior guard helped the Bulldogs to a 91-85 dub, thanks to shooting 15-for-27 from the field and narrowly missing a double-double by posting 9 rebounds with 3 assists and 2 steals. Hubbard also broke the program record for 3s in a game… in the first half. He would finish with 10, as well as more than half of the Bulldogs’ total points. Riley’s performance kept East Carolina in the game against Wichita State, but the Pirates couldn’t pull off the upset against the Shockers in the end: it took two overtimes for Wichita State to finally put East Carolina away, but it won 92-89 in the end despite Riley dropping 40 points with 10 rebounds, and assist and 3 steals against it. It’s difficult to hand out criticism in a 40-point game for a team that scored 89 even with that foundation to build on, but Riley did go just 1-for-7 from beyond the arc — just one more trey might have meant a very different result. Or, at the least, a third overtime, given the final score. Michigan State duo takes out Northwestern Senior forward Grace Sullivan is one of the better players in the Big Ten, but she is also just one player. So, when she scores 23 points on 11-for-20 shooting, that doesn’t mean the opposing team is going to struggle. Someone else has to step up, and given Northwestern’s 2-13 Big Ten record, you don’t need a recap to tell you it doesn’t happen nearly often enough. Michigan State, on the other hand, is one of the better teams in the conference, and its depth is a huge part of that. On Wednesday, that depth was on display: senior forward and WNBA hopeful Grace VanSlooten scored 22 points in 29 minutes on 10-for-17 shooting with 7 rebounds, 4 assists, 2 steals and 3 blocks, and sophomore guard Kennedy Blair had a double-double with 17 points, 7 rebounds, 10 assists and 5 steals. The two were responsible for the second- and third-highest GameScores of Wednesday in women’s D-I basketball, with only UConn’s Sarah Strong ahead of them. The Spartans needed this W, too, as it lost back-to-back games to No. 2 UCLA and then-No. 7 Michigan, and will close out the season against No. 23 Minnesota and No. 10 Ohio State — the two teams ahead of them in the Big Ten’s race for a double-bye in the conference tournament.