College Basketball Weekly: A Big 4 Breakdown, Duke's Statement & the SEC See-Saw

College basketball season is just rolling, full of momentum in the final weeks of February as March awaits just around the corner. This week, we had decisive action in the four major conferences and we’ll look at the key results of the week before diving into the latest from the Big Ten, Big 12, SEC and ACC. Here’s the menu:

• Notable Results
• Big Ten: Another new frontrunner
• Big 12: Cougar Country
• The SEC see-saw
• Duke: Great; ACC: Not So Much

Notable Results

(AP Ranking)

(7) Texas A&M 54 @ (21) Mississippi State 70
(9) Texas Tech 66 @ TCU 69
(13) Purdue 66 @ (14) Michigan State 75
(23) Kansas 57 @ BYU 91
Minnesota 64 @ UCLA 61
(4) Alabama 98 @ (15) Missouri 110
(14) Michigan State 75 @ (12) Michigan 62
(16) Marquette 66 @ Villanova 81
(17) Kentucky 83 @ (4) Alabama 96
(3) Duke 110 vs. Illinois 67
(8) Iowa State 59 @ Houston 68
(6) Tennessee 77 @ (7) Texas A&M 69
Oregon 77 @ (11) Wisconsin 73
(15) Missouri 85 @ Arkansas 92
BYU 96 @ (19) Arizona 95
(21) Mississippi State 87 @ Oklahoma 93
(24) Ole Miss 72 @ Vanderbilt 77
Saint Mary’s 74 @ Gonzaga 67

Michigan State surges in messy Big Ten

A week and a half ago, Purdue was the clear conference frontrunner with the B10 Player of the Year favorite as well in point guard Braden Smith. The Boilermakers are now losers of three straight while the Michigan schools passed them and Maryland and Wisconsin are now knotted with Purdue at third with 11-5 league records.

The Big Ten Elite occupy half of the 11-20 spots in the AP poll and four in a row right now with (11) Wisconsin, (12) Michigan, (13) Purdue, (14) Michigan State and then (20) Maryland, and the penultimate week of February brought plenty of carnage.

Wisconsin fell in a home meltdown on Saturday at the hands of the plucky Oregon Ducks, who got back above .500 in Big Ten play with a fourth straight victory of their own. After trailing by five points with a minute to go and then needing a 3-pointer coming out of a timeout with 17 seconds left, sophomore point guard Jackson Shelstad buried a stepback jumper from 25+ feet to force overtime. In OT, Oregon cruised to a 77-73 road win.

JACKSON SHELSTAD STEP BACK 3 TO GO TO OVERTIME! 🔥 @OregonMBB x @JacksonShelstad pic.twitter.com/uTTUyzLkA4

— FOX College Hoops (@CBBonFOX) February 22, 2025

Michigan State had the best week, downing Purdue at home before scoring a road victory over rival Michigan Friday night. The Spartans just inched a win ahead of the Wolverines in B10 standings at 13-3 vs. UM’s 12-3, plus hold the tiebreaker before the squads meet again in East Lansing to close out the schedule. So, Tom Izzo is zeroing in on his first regular season conference crown since 2019-2020. But with Wisconsin, Maryland and Purdue stalking all at 11-5, the race is plenty up in the air as we turn for the home stretch.

Big 12: Cougar Country

The respective Houston and BYU Cougars are rolling through the Big 12 amidst their second seasons in the conference.

Obviously, Houston had no trouble with the transition and won the league outright by two games in their first season coming in from the AAC, but they’re now on the prowl for a second straight title after bottling up a depleted Iowa State squad on Saturday. Let’s face it, Houston has pretty much locked up the crown with a three-game lead and just four games to play. Move over Bill Self, this is Kelvin Sampson’s conference now.

Meanwhile, BYU just drummed Kansas at home and then traveled to Arizona and escaped with their best resume victory of the season after completing the upset thanks to a generous late foul call (we’ll get to that). The blue and white Cougars look for a fifth straight win and a Grand Canyon State sweep on Wednesday at Arizona State, but at 10-6 in the Big 12 with several more winnable contests left, BYU is playing for NCAA Tournament seeding in Kevin Young’s first year at the helm. Applause for him.

As for the call, well, it likely led to the violent shattering of several hundred television screens in the Tucson metro. A personal 5-0 run from Caleb Love flipped the score from 94-90 to 95-94 in the final minute, but on the final BYU play, poor Trey Townsend walled up against Cougar wing Richie Saunders and a Saunders flail caught the whistle of a referee to send him to the free throw line with :03 to play. He nailed both foul shots and Townsend turned over the Wildcats’ last-gasp possession, leading to a steal of a road win for BYU, if there’s ever been such a thing.

Take a look at the call in question:

This foul just won BYU the game at Arizona.

Thoughts 🤔

pic.twitter.com/iPqsPqkdqG

— College Basketball Report (@CBKReport) February 23, 2025

ROCK BOTTOM FOR BILL SELF?

Speaking of Bill Self, Kansas is spiraling towards irrelevancy for a second straight March. Sure, the Big 12 is deeper and more competitive at the top nowadays, but the Jayhawks’ backslide is notable these last two seasons compared to the history of Self in Lawrence.

Starting in 2005, Kansas brought home 14 consecutive Big 12 regular season crowns either won outright or shared. Texas Tech broke that pitiful streak on behalf of the rest of the conference in 2019 and Kansas has now failed to win in ’19, ’21, ’24, and most certainly won’t in ’25. Kansas also had a streak of nine straight seasons (2010-2018) earning either a 1 or 2-seed in the NCAA Tournament — mind-blowing in precision, honestly. Overall, Self has never earned lower than a 4-seed as the Kansas head coach and has maintained a 1-or-2 spot for 13 out of his last 17 seasons.

After a brutal embarrassment in Provo making it five losses in eight games for Kansas during the week, the Jayhawks did respond with a beatdown of Oklahoma State on Saturday. They could still earn a top-four seed with a late rally and wins against some quality opponents, but this group is trending towards the worst NCAA Tournament seeding of the two-decade-long Bill Self tenure, and regardless of seeding, this group doesn’t inspire a ton of confidence in a grand March run.

The SEC See-Saws on Saturday

If the SEC was like a see-saw, Auburn is its fulcrum, holding serve throughout as the consistent centerpiece of the conference. But everywhere else, teams are trading wins and losses like stock brokers. Just look at how many clubs responded to a win or loss with the exact opposite result this weekend:

Arkansas lost a real fight this week at Auburn thanks to Zvonimir “Big Z” Ivisic’s 0-10 3-point shooting but responded Saturday with a win over Missouri, who was the toast of the SEC after hanging 110 points on Alabama in a home win during the week.

Mississippi State had beat Texas A&M at home during the week but couldn’t put a lid on Oklahoma in their weekend road trip to Norman. OU, by the way, snapped a five-game losing streak and revived their NCAA Tournament hopes with that victory.

Kentucky lost to Texas last weekend, and the Longhorns had the week off but spilled all of their momentum with a season-murdering blowout loss at South Carolina on Saturday. Of course, the Gamecocks lost during the week at LSU before scoring their very first league win of year.

As for the Wildcats, well we all know they beat Vanderbilt and then lost at Alabama, who avenged their Missouri loss from the week. But how about Vanderbilt? Those Commodores also improved their postseason prospects with a home win over Ole Miss to split their week.

Circling back to LSU, their postseason hopes are well done after a loss at Florida, who joined Auburn as the only clubs to go 2-0 in SEC games this week. Texas A&M, however, went 0-2. Otherwise, did you count them? That’s nine SEC teams who split their last two games, because there is a crazy level of competitiveness from top to bottom in this league.

Duke: Good; ACC: Still Bad

The Blue Devils’ recent misstep against the only other top-20 conference foe, Clemson, spiked some concern, but Jon Scheyer’s club silenced any doubters for the time being with a 43-point walloping of Illinois in Madison Square Garden this weekend. Cooper Flagg and co. immediately re-asserted themselves as a 1 or 1A national title contender alongside Auburn — at least for the few who had any serious doubts through the weak ACC slate.

Duke’s slaughter of the Illini is great for Duke since it eliminates the illusion that the Blue Devils are overrated and beating up on ACC fluff, but it remains that much of the ACC is, in fact, fluff. We know that three teams in the conference are certifiably good: Duke, Louisville and Clemson. That trio has just five conference losses collectively, all coming against either each other or Georgia Tech, oddly enough. That’s it.

You’ve got SMU, Wake Forest and North Carolina behind them and clinging to life on the bubble, but the other, I don’t know, TWELVE teams in the ACC are a washout. My guy Bart Torvik has some great stats on his website for college hoops, including one that assigns a % chance that a team will make the NCAA Tournament. Three ACC teams are on the positive side of 50% and only six have better than a 1% chance; again, leaving a dozen of them to play with their thumbs until the conference tournament begins.

Additionally, the ACC rates as by far the worst power conference in Torvik’s system, as his team rankings have eight of the worst 11 high major teams coming from the ACC. For reference, the lowest SEC team, South Carolina, is 81st in his metrics, while Stanford is right ahead at 80th but eighth-highest out of 18 in the ACC.