College Basketball Weekly: Peril for major coaches, historic Georgia & the Big Ten Elite

The second full week of conference play provides plenty to discuss in this more negative-leaning edition of College Basketball Weekly.

We won’t depress you, but rather, this week, highlight some of the notable programs, players or coaches in peril at the midway point of the season. Guys like Mick Cronin and Mike Woodson could really use a life vest just about now. But below are the top games from the last week of play followed by some quick-hitter topics and then blurbs on a slew of flailing parties in this chaotic 2024-25 college basketball season.

Notable Results

(AP ranking)

(6) Kentucky 69 @ Georgia 82
(1) Tennessee 43 @ (8) Florida 73
Arizona 75 @ (21) West Virginia 56
(24) Michigan 94 @ (22) UCLA 75
(9) UConn 66 @ Villanova 68
(23) Ole Miss 73 @ Arkansas 66
(10) Texas A&M 80 @ (17) Oklahoma 78
(15) Oregon 73 @ Ohio State 71
(22) UCLA 61 @ Maryland 79
(6) Kentucky 95 @ (14) Mississippi State 90
USC 82 @ (13) Illinois 72
(8) Florida 71 @ Arkansas 63
(17) Oklahoma 62 @ Georgia 72
(5) Alabama 94 @ (10) Texas A&M 88

Quick Hitters

Georgia emerges. The Bulldogs are the latest SEC squad to enforce themselves as a member of the AP Top 25 as Monday will be their first appearance since 2011 and just the second since 2002! Florida’s trash was Georgia’s treasure as former Gator leader Mike White has the Dawgs on tourney track in year three with wins over Kentucky, Oklahoma and St. John’s on the resume while UGA is now 14-2, also their first time hitting that mark since ’02.

Big Ten standouts. Oil rose from water in Big Ten play this weekend. Michigan, Purdue and Michigan State all took care of business on Wildcard Sunday to maintain a hold on the top of the league standings with the Michigan schools still undefeated. The Boilermakers are hard to bet against as two-time champions but the Tom Izzo revival and Dustry May arrival are threatening as well.

Florida means business. The Gators beat up on a friendly schedule and finally faltered against Kentucky in a 106-100 heater at Rupp Arena last Saturday. Florida played excellent in that contest despite the defeat and then proved their quality by thumping No. 1 Tennessee by 30 and beating Arkansas on the road this week.

Major Players In Peril

JOHNI BROOME

The National Player of the Year frontrunner suffered a low ankle sprain in Auburn’s narrow win at South Carolina and is set to miss several games at least. He’ll be back by February, hopefully, but foot injuries on big guys are always dicey. Any complications that cause him to miss extended game, or worse, major games in March, will significantly hurt Auburn, a championship front-runner both in the SEC and nationally at this point. For now, the diagnosis isn’t too bad, so we’ll hope to see Broome back sooner than later.

INDIANA

Mike Woodson pushed all his chips in with a loaded hand and could be on track to lose his career. (Cue the Mike McDermott face). That’s a little dramatic, but Indiana just tanked their five-game winning streak with a 25-point neck-wringing at Iowa and now the Hoosiers’ shot at an at-large bid is suspect. Abundant time remains for a turnaround in Big Ten play (and IU is still 4-2) but the clock is running thin on Woody.

Let’s take a look the brewing situation with him. Woodson took the program to consecutive NCAA Tournaments on the heels of the fruitless Archie Miller era, and his 2023 team led by All-American Trayce Jackson-Davis and top-20 pick Jalen Hood-Schifino earned a 4-seed and IU’s first official tourney win since 2016. But since, results aren’t up to par.

Last season featured a 6-10 start to conference play and a missed NCAA Tournament, but Hoosier faithful rallied with a robust NIL effort to add players for a resurgent 2025. Washington State point guard Myles Rice came aboard, as did talented Stanford freshman Kanaan Carlyle, and prized Arizona big man Oumar Ballo also joined in the migration from Pac-12 to Indiana. Ballo alone was rumored to fetch $1 million+ and the class as a whole was certainly over seven figures by all estimations. Yet, here’s another disappointing start.

A tournament appearance will suffice for job safety, but if Indiana misses? Who knows what the future could hold.

ARKANSAS

John Calipari said “We’re fine” after another defeat Saturday, but that’s a hard argument to make for the Razorbacks. He’s whipped discombobulated Kentucky teams into fearsome contenders through SEC play before, but 2025’s edition of the league is a different beast while Arkansas threw its jockey off the horse out of the gate in the conference race with an 0-3 start.

Now, Quad 1 opportunities are plentiful and the schedule eases up ever so slightly after the two top-10 losses in between a defeat against No. 23 Ole Miss. Plus, Adou Thiero is a machine and Boogie Fland can dance with the best guards in the conference. Otherwise, though, it’s hard to find optimism in Fayetteville.

Like Indiana, Arkansas made quite the charade this offseason, purloining John Calipari from Kentucky and setting him up with a windfall of NIL funds thanks to Tyson Chicken and the Hog booster brigade. In a normal year, this group would stumble into the NCAA Tournament, but if Arkansas floats toward the bottom of a stacked SEC and somehow misses the Big Dance, what in the world happens next? How angry is Woo Pig faithful?

NORTH CAROLINA

With a majority of their very weak ACC schedule to go, UNC is 11-6 with a lone Quad 1 victory over a spiraling UCLA club (see below). The Tar Heels did just score a third straight win at rival NC State over the weekend and are finding some answers, but Hubert Davis is headed towards an awkward four-year resume.

His first and second Carolina squads drove down the same sort of road, struggling early on with a series of competitive losses in the non-conference before rallying to land on the bubble. The ’22 group made real strides and obviously ascended to all-time college basketball lore, beating Duke in Coach K’s final game at Cameron Indoor and then again in his final-ever game in the Final Four. But of course, the preseason No. 1 UNC team in ’23 missed the NCAA Tournament completely.

On the heels of a grand coaching job and 1-seed in 2024, UNC figures to land an NCAA Tournament bid in 2025, and Hubert Davis’ 4-2 record vs. Duke provides hope for another huge victory or two. But regardless, you’re possibly looking at three seasons out of four with an 8-seed or worse coming out of the regular season, which ain’t. gonna. cut. it… at North Carolina.

UCLA

Many coaches are stable and predictable, as are their teams, and a select few are pure chaos all the time, and so are their teams. Think Arizona State and Bobby Hurley, and yes, definitely, Mick Cronin at UCLA (or anywhere for that matter).

Cronin seemed like a frictious hire bringing his fiery East Coast mad-headedness to the more relaxed West Coast, but the marriage worked out tremendously with a Final Four appearance and then consecutive top-4-seeds in the NCAA Tournament from 2021-2023.

The 2024 season was an unmitigated disaster for most of its runtime but gained small momentum in Pac-12 play (remember that?). However, 2025 featured a great start and only a recent rough patch, but UCLA’s current three-game losing streak has Coach Cronin losing his marbles at the podium. The Bruins fell on the road vs. Nebraska and then returned home for a 19-point loss to Michigan, infuriating Cronin.

“So what the truth of it has been, it’s really hard to coach people that are delusional,” he said of his players after the Michigan loss. “The hungry dog gets the bone. We got guys who think they’re way better than they are. They’re nice kids. They’re completely delusional about who they are.”

Those words of encouragement failed to motivate UCLA to a better result Friday night, as loss No. 3 came at Maryland by 18 points. Cronin made a show of his disapproval by earning an ejection, claiming afterward that the game was over with anyway.

In the radio postgame, Mick Cronin said he chose to get thrown out as the game was essentially over.

— Mike Regalado 🏀🏈🎧 (@MikeRegaladoLA) January 11, 2025

It’s a tough time to be a UCLA men’s basketball player, sheesh.