Last Night in College Basketball: Arizona Wins Big 12 With W Over Iowa State

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. Arizona wins Big 12 outright No. 6 Iowa State and No. 2 Arizona have been monsters in the Big 12 all season long, but the two had not faced off directly until Monday. The Cyclones were no longer vying for the regular-season title, but were (and are) in competition for the fourth and final double-bye into the Big 12 conference tournament quarterfinal, so a W against the Wildcats would not only show that Iowa State could hang with the best, but also serve a practical seeding purpose. Instead, Iowa State could not solve Arizona’s defense, and shot just 29% for the game from the field. The first half was a real issue, with the Cyclones shooting 9-for-33, 27%, and scoring just 25 points. The second half was not much better, at least to start, as Iowa State missed its first eight shots to drop its shooting for the game to 22%. They went 10-for-24 the rest of the way, a much better 42% that is better than that looks considering Arizona’s defense, but it was far too late for that to matter. If Iowa State had not sunk 12 of its 13 free-throw attempts, things would have looked even worse at the end. The Wildcats shot 46% against Iowa State, which is not exceptional but is perfectly fine against Iowa State’s top-10 defense. What Arizona succeeded at unequivocally was in drawing shooting fouls: Iowa State might have salvaged its final point total by hitting a dozen free throws, but Arizona went to the stripe 26 times and scored 23 points there. The star of the game for Arizona was Tobe Awaka. The senior forward came off the bench for 25 minutes, in which he scored 10 points, logged an assist and a steal each, picked up 3 blocks and led all players with 15 rebounds. Of those, 11 were defensive boards, as well, helping Arizona keep Iowa State away from second-chance opportunities on a night when the first chances were rarely falling. Arizona has one game remaining, against Colorado on Saturday, then it can rest until Thursday when it will play against one of the No. 8, No. 9 or No. 16 seed in the conference tournament. Iowa State, meanwhile, has lost two in a row and is half-a-game up on No. 14 Kansas, which faces Arizona State and Kansas State this week. The Cyclones close out against Arizona State, and will need a win to have a real chance at getting one of those double byes. Cleveland State advances in Horizon tourney The first conference tournament to get going is Horizon’s, which features a single play-in game between the bottom two seeds before moving into the meat of the playoffs. On Monday, the men’s side opened up with Cleveland State hosting IU Indy, a matchup between a 6-14 team and a 3-17 one. You might think that would make for some unexciting basketball, but these two came to play. Or, at least, they came to score: the two totaled 194 points between them before Cleveland State held on to win, 101-93. Here is the most peculiar thing about the game, though. The high for points was 23, and it was achieved by three players… on each team. A six-way tie for the leading scorer of the game, split evenly between the Jaguars and Vikings. Wild. For IU Indy it was senior guard Jaxon Edwards, freshman guard Maguire Mitchell and junior guard Kyler D’Augustino all notching 23, while Cleveland State featured junior forward Preist Ryan, senior guard Jaidon Lipscomb and junior guard Chevalier Emery all reaching 23. Mitchell and Lipscomb had the most 3s of the bunch, with 5 each, while Ryan secured his 23 with 10-for-16 shooting while adding 12 rebounds for a double-double — Edwards also had a double-double, with 10 boards of his own. Emery was the most efficient of them all, however, as he played just 22 minutes off the bench and still scored 23 on a 7-for-11 showing that included a pair of 3s and 7-for-8 shooting from the line. As a team, Cleveland State shot 63% overall, and 11-for-20 from deep. Defense was not the name of the game, not with nearly 200 combined points, but it’s even more clear how true that is when you see that the Vikings basically set up wherever and hit throughout. While their own defense faltered in the second half, in which Cleveland State allowed IU Indianapolis to score 57 points, the Vikings still scored 56 of their own and won by 8. Cleveland State will now have to face top seed Wright State on Wednesday, but there could be an upset here: the Vikings actually won the first matchup between the two this year, and while the second was an L, it was by just 12 points. So… maybe! Detroit Mercy ended Milwaukee’s season The women’s side of the Horizon tournament also had its play-in game, and there it was Detroit Mercy visiting Milwaukee. This was a far different affair — it had defense, for starters — but Detroit Mercy actually picked up the W on the road despite shooting just 3-for-18 from 3-point range and 42% overall. The difference? Turnovers. Milwaukee shot better, but it also turned the ball over 14 times, with the Titans converting those into 20 points. While Detroit Mercy nearly turned the ball over as often, the Panthers did not have the same success turning those opportunities into buckets. It still all came down to one final attempt at scoring, and it was there that Detroit Mercy showed off the defense that had let it stay in the game despite its shooting issues. Milwaukee was still in position to win that late, though, thanks to its bench. Specifically, Tierney Madigan, who scored 22 points in 26 minutes on 9-for-11 shooting with 5 rebounds, 2 assists and 2 steals. If the Panthers had hit a couple more free throws (they were 13-for-18) or just one more 3 (6-or-22) then Madigan would be a hero this morning, but alas. The Titans shut Milwaukee down when there was no other choice. Next up for Detroit Mercy is top-seeded Green Bay, a rematch of a 72-61 loss from Jan. 24. Duke crushes NC State The No. 1 team in the nation is already the ACC regular-season champion, as well, but Duke is still playing regular-season ball. On Monday, the Blue Devils took on NC State on the road, but there was no advantage to be found: Duke won, 93-64, improving to 16-1 in conference play. Cameron Boozer, star freshman forward, just missed another double-double with a 26-point, 9-rebound showing that led all players on both fronts. The Wolfpack has now lost three in a row, which is a problem in the sense that they can’t climb into fourth place and pick up one of the byes that would kick them to the quarterfinals, but they remain in sixth place and a game up on Louisville, which still has to play Syracuse and No. 22 Miami before its season ends. As of now, that lines NC State up to face either Stanford or Syracuse in the second round of the tournament, but slipping any further will force the Wolfpack to face higher-ranked opponents. As for Duke, its fortunes did not change with another dub, but coach Jon Scheyer did hit a milestone. He is now tied with Brad Stevens for the most D-I victories by a coach in their first four seasons, with 117. McNeese wins 20th-straight McNeese has been on a serious run in conference play, and the Cowgirls kept it going on Monday against SFA. McNeese shot 12-for-24 from beyond the arc to power the Cowgirls to a dominant 87-60 win over the Ladyjacks, in what was a showcase for the team’s starters. Three starters scored 10 points each, while freshman forward Dakota Howard had 24 on 8-for-11 shooting with 11 rebounds, 5 assists and 4 steals, and senior guard Arianna Patton led all scorers with 30, all on 3-pointers — she shot 10-for-12 from 3 to set a new career-best. The bench scored just 3 combined points, but with the other 84 coming from the starters, that didn’t matter even a little bit. Howard, by the way, led all Division I women’s basketball players on Monday in GameScore with her 28.3, with Patton next in line. The win gave McNeese the Southland regular-season title, the first time the Cowgirls have won it since 2011. As a reward, the Cowgirls get to rest until the conference tournament semifinal on March 11, where they will face one of four-seed UTRGV, five-seed Northwestern State or the to-be-determined eighth seed. This win is also significant in that it makes it much more difficult for SFA to be the second seed, which is the other free ride to the semis. [Get to Know a Mid-Major: Southland] Ingram’s 31-point game Patton was not the leading scorer for all of Division I with her 10 triples, though. That instead went to another Southland player, UTRGV’s Jalayah Ingram. The junior guard scored 31 on 11-for-24 shooting, and added 8 rebounds and 5 assists to the mix for one of the top performances of the night across men’s or women’s basketball — no one on the men’s side cracked 30 points last night. The Vaqueros would win 72-64 over Incarnate Word, moving them into a tie with SFA for third in the conference following the Ladyjacks’ defeat against McNeese. There are no games left on the schedule, so that’s as far up as UTRGV can go, but it’s enough to start the Southland tournament already in the quarterfinals, at least. Sacramento State upsets Idaho State We got a Starch Madness preview last night thanks to Big Sky basketball, with Sacramento State upsetting Idaho State, 85-72, and on the road, too. And not just hypothetically, either: thanks to the surprise W, the first matchup for this pair in the Big Sky conference tournament is against each other in a rematch: Sacramento State had come into the game tied with Eastern Washington with the potential to finish in sixth and then have to face the third-seeded Northern Colorado in its first playoff action, but instead it’s fifth and facing fourth. The 85 points allowed by Idaho State were the most the Bengals allowed all season, which is not how you want to finish things up. Sophomore guard Rubi Gray led the Hornets’ attack, scoring a game-high 24 points on 8-for-11 shooting that included 5-for-6 from 3, while adding one rebound, assist and steal each. In support she had a pair of 18-point performances from junior guard Natalia Picton and senior guard Benthe Versteeg — the two also combined for 10 rebounds, 8 assists and 4 steals. While the Hornets also turned the ball over too often — Picton and Versteeg, for all the good they did, also combined for 13 of Sac State’s 21 turnovers — they shot 54% overall and 14-for-28 from 3 to negate that, while also converting nearly as many points off of turnovers (19) as Idaho State did (21), despite forcing fewer of them. If Idaho State shoots and defends like it did the next time these two meet, there will be a similar outcome, and that will be the end of the Bengals’ season.