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.
Villanova beats Seton Hall in Big East showdown
The last time the Villanova Wildcats qualified for the NCAA Tournament, the year was 2022. Beloved NBA role player Collin Gillespie was running point, Jay Wright was enjoying his swan song as a head coach and current head coach, Kevan Willard was, well, at Seton Hall. And on Tuesday, the Wildcats took a big step toward returning to March Madness by beating Seton Hall in their first taste of Big East play in 2025-2026.
Villanova was win-less in its two previous Quad 1 opportunities — against BYU and Michigan – so getting a signature victory over the Pirates will go a long way in strengthening its résumé. The Wildcats took advantage of a rare Quad 1 opportunity in the weak Big East because Willard, a defensive-minded head coach, pressed all the right buttons on that side of the ball.
The Wildcats held the Pirates to just 3-of-13 shooting on 3-point attempts. They held Seton Hall scoreless for over six minutes after their first basket of the second half, growing their lead from 31-29 to 47-29 in that time. And point guard Adam “Bud” Clark scored just 4 points on 11 shots, and didn’t make up for it on assists, either, as he had just 2 despite averaging well over 5 per game on the season. Seton Hall finished the game with a season-low in points, 56, and as a result they took a hit in the NCAA Evaluation Tool, or NET: Seton Hall dropped from 34th to 44th, while Villanova went 10 spots in the other direction with the W, from 30 to 20. See? Résumé building.
Bilodeau scores career-high in UCLA win
UCLA forward Tyler Bilodeau had his best night of the season from a scoring standpoint, dropping a career-high 34 points in the Bruins 97-65 win over UC Riverside. Bilodeau, a senior, played center all of last season at UCLA, but moved down to power forward at the start of this year after the Bruins acquired a pair of centers in the transfer portal. However, those moves haven’t worked out as head coach Mick Cronin expected, so now Bilodeau has returned to center.
He flourishes there because he can take advantage of bigger defenders. He can shoot over them and use his nifty footwork to blow by them. On Tuesday, he did both, knocking down 4 threes while shooting 12-for-19 overall.
Bilodeau’s 34 was the most of any Division I player on Tuesday, as well as the lone 30-point game on the night. Thanks to adding 6 rebounds, an assist and a block, too, Bilodeau also led Division I in Game Score.
Ohio State handles Grambling
Ohio State isn’t ranked, but they aren’t a team you want to ignore, either: after Tuesday’s victory against Grambling, they are sitting 43rd in NET, meaning that they are a likely participant in March so long as they keep this level of play up during conference season.
On Tuesday, their defense held Grambling to 38% shooting overall and just 6-for-21 on threes while also dominating them in the paint, 42-20. The Buckeyes would win, 89-63, due to this complete effort on both sides of the ball.
While Ohio State shot a more pedestrian 33% from three, they weren’t reliable on the deep ball to score, either — they had all of those paints in the paint cited above, but also shot 62% as a team overall despite the 6-for-18 night from beyond the arc, and also sank 21 free throws in 25 attempts. Grambling had plenty of opportunities to take advantage of turnovers — Ohio State made 14 to their 15 — but they failed to convert at the rate the Buckeyes did, resulting in a 29-13 points off turnovers advantage for Ohio State.
It was a complete team effort, too: while sophomore guard John Mobley led the way with 20 points, every starter for Ohio State had at least 10 points, while freshman forward Amare Bynum had a double-double with 12 points and 10 boards. The bench didn’t play all that much or score that often, but they were efficient when they tried, going 4-for-6 from the field and 5-for-8 from the line while chipping in 7 of Ohio State’s 31 rebounds.
A record night for Kentucky’s Williams
What a game for Kentucky sophomore Kam Williams. Coming off the bench, the 6-foot-8 guard played 22 minutes and ended up leading the Wildcats in points with 26 on 8-for-10 shooting. Oh, and every single shot was a 3-point attempt: he made 8 threes on 80% shooting, tying the single-game record set by former Kentucky star and current NBA player Jamal Murray, who pulled off the feat in 2016.
Also matching a 2016 feat — albeit in the 2016-2017 season, not the 2015-2016 one — was senior guard Otega Oweh. He totaled 10 points, 10 assists, 8 rebounds and 2 steals, narrowly missing a triple-double but becoming the only Kentucky player besides De’Aron Fox to have at least that good of a game by those numbers. Fox totaled 14 points, 10 assists, 11 rebounds and 2 steals against Arizona State just over 11 years ago.
While Kentucky ended up getting the win against Bellarmine, it was shockingly close considering these performances. Senior forward Jack Karasinski had a game-high 24 points, and his 9 free throws led, as well – part of a 26-for-30 effort from the Knights that kept them in this game a lot longer than you would have expected given the gulf that was supposed to exist between these two teams. That Kentucky also allowed Bellarmine’s bench to shoot 11-for-20 from the field and 7-for-8 on free throws didn’t help matters, either.
The result? Kentucky won, but fell out of the top 25 in NET rankings to 26, as Bellarmine is a bottom-third team that has only won against Quad 4 opponents to this point. The Wildcats are supposed to beat teams like that by more than 14 points, and not give up 47 points to them in a half.
UCF comes from behind to win
UCF found themselves down 14 points, 30-16, to Florida Atlantic with 6:17 to go in the first half, and things could have gotten much worse from there considering how early it was. Because it was early, though, UCF instead had time to climb back into the game, and that’s exactly what they did little by little.
By the end of the half, thanks to a sustained attack and shots starting to fall, UCF had cut the deficit to 38-33, and then their offense kept that energy going the rest of the way: UCF scored 52 second-half points and ended up winning the whole thing, 85-80.
This effort was almost entirely on the starters, as far as scoring goes: the Knights’ bench scored just three points and took just six shots total without a single one of the six players coming off of it so much as making a free throw attempt. Senior guard Themus Fulks ended up with a game-high 24 points, while sophomore center John Bol logged a double-double with 11 points and boards each. Fulks, by the way, was responsible for 8 of UCF’s 33 first-half points, and then scored another 16 in the second.
UCF has now won 10 in a row, and they are 11-1 as they head into Big 12 conference play. They are also right there on the periphery of the top 25 in NET, at 33 after winning against Florida Atlantic.
Army survives Binghamton in OT
Army and Binghamton are both rated down toward the bottom of the NET rankings — the former is at 307 out of 365, and the latter is bottom three — but that’s what makes the two of them facing off against each other fun. This isn’t a situation where a ranked team is going to pummel their opponent in a Quad 4 matchup, where they will be punished by the rankings if the score is anywhere even close, never mind if they actually lose. No, here it’s a Quad 4 matchup in the sense that both teams have that designation. And what we got instead of a beatdown was a hotly contested basketball game that had to go to overtime to be decided.
Just over five minutes in, Army was up 13-6, but Binghamton started scoring in bunches and ended up ahead, 32-30, at the half. Then, in the second half, the offenses actually both woke up. Army would score 46 points to Binghamton’s 44, but it was those final two points by the Bearcats that pushed the game into overtime.
After sophomore guard Jaxson Bell made his second free throw to put Army up 76-74 with 19 seconds left in regulation, Binghamton junior forward Zyier Beverly made his second dunk in nine seconds to tie the game once more. And then the Bearcats locked down on defense in the final possession to push it to OT.
The problem is that Army erupted in those five overtime minutes, scoring a layup a mere four seconds in, then hitting a three just over 30 seconds later, then piling on with free throws and layups and the occasional three. At the end, Army was victorious, 95-85, after a 19-9 overtime onslaught. They didn’t look at all like the team that barely got to 30 points in the first half, and it was enough to put Binghamton away for good.
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