Forde Minutes: Trust UConn As Parity Reigns Across Men’s College Basketball
Forty names, games, teams and minutiae making news in men’s college basketball, where the good news at Arkansas is that it’s almost baseball season:
Trust (almost) no one
It’s early February, and just about everyone is losing with regularity. Not only are there no remaining undefeated teams, there are no remaining one-loss teams. And just three teams remain with two losses—the UConn Huskies, Purdue Boilermakers and Grand Canyon Antelopes. (The Minutes sees you out there in the desert, Antelopes.)
Even in conference play, there are only five unbeaten teams remaining: the Saint Mary’s Gaels in the West Coast; High Point Panthers in the Big South; Yale Bulldogs and Cornell Big Red in the Ivy League; and Vermont Catamounts in the America East.
In the absence of dominance, parity reigns. Teams that look great one week look awful the next. The programs huddled together in the vast middle class of high-major ball are largely indistinguishable from one another. It’s a free-for-all in most of the power conferences.
A team picked to finish fifth in the Southeastern Conference leads the league in the Alabama Crimson Tide (1), followed by a tie for second between teams picked sixth (Auburn Tigers) and last (South Carolina Gamecocks). The North Carolina Tar Heels (2) were predicted to finish third in the Atlantic Coast Conference after missing the NCAA tournament last year, but the Tar Heels have discovered defense and opened up a two-game lead. The Kansas Jayhawks and Houston Cougars being tied for first in the Big 12 tracks with preseason expectations, but among the teams one game behind them are the Iowa State Cyclones (3) and Texas Tech Red Raiders (4), the projected Nos. 7 and 8 finishers. Nobody in the Big 12 has won more than two in a row. In the Pac-12, the longest current winning streak is three games. The Arizona Wildcats (5), the best team in the Pac-12, have league losses to the last-place Oregon State Beavers, 11–9 Stanford Cardinal and bubble team Washington State Cougars.
In these uncertain times, it’s difficult for fans to know which teams to trust when tournament basketball begins in March. The Minutes can identify only one at this juncture, and that’s UConn (6).
UConn freshman Stephon Castle reacts after his three-point basket against the Providence Friars last month.
David Butler II/USA TODAY Sports
The Huskies aren’t just the defending national champions. They’re also on the longest active winning streak in a power conference at 10 games. They’ve navigated a five-game stretch without 7’ 2” Donovan Clingan and six games without five-star freshman Stephon Castle. They just beat the St. John’s Red Storm without starter Alex Karaban. UConn is actually a better offensive team than last season and is improving defensively (the last six opponents have all been held to fewer than 70 points and the last eight have shot 33% or worse from three-point range). Trust Danny Hurley.
It would be nice to trust Purdue (7), which has now established its third seven-game winning streak of the season. The Boilermakers played an extremely tough early schedule and came through it brilliantly. Zach Edey is the national Player of the Year by a wide margin at this point, with an improved supporting cast around him. The Boilermakers’ free throw differential is massive (to the consternation of Chris Collins and other Big Ten coaches): They have made nearly 100 more foul shots than their opponents have attempted (415 to 327).
But the March history is the March history, and that will not be buried until it actually happens. With stunning tournament losses in the last decade to the Fairleigh Dickinson Knights, Saint Peter’s Peacocks, North Texas Mean Green and Little Rock Trojans, there simply isn’t much Purdue can do right now to prove that this season will end differently. It’s Final Four or bust for the Boilers.
Others lurking just outside The Minutes’ Circle of Trust:
North Carolina. The Tar Heels were maybe the biggest winners of all in the offseason roster construction derby. They retained the ancient Armando Bacot for a fifth season and guard RJ Davis for a fourth, with Davis blossoming into a bona fide star. (In a win-win move, Caleb Love’s departure for Arizona helped both Love and Davis.) Then Hubert Davis added Stanford transfer Harrison Ingram and Notre Dame transfer Cormac Ryan, plus touted freshman Elliot Cadeau. If it weren’t for the weird stumble at Georgia Tech last week, North Carolina might be inside the circle.
Houston (8). Kelvin Sampson has become the most consistent reloader in college basketball—not even changing leagues can stop him. This will be his ninth straight 20-win season, his fourth straight top-10 defense, per Ken Pomeroy, and his fifth straight top-five offensive rebounding team. Retaining heart-and-soul point guard Jamal Shead was key, as was adding Baylor Bears transfer LJ Cryer for shooting help. The nagging concern is whether the Cougars can make enough baskets when they have to, ranking 273rd nationally in two-point percentage (47.9) and 312th in foul shooting (67.6).
Kansas guard Johnny Furphy dunks against Iowa State.
Reese Strickland/USA TODAY Sports
Kansas (9). The preseason No. 1 Jayhawks looked the part Saturday in strafing Houston’s previously indestructible defense. Kansas shot 78% from two-point range and 46% from three, prompting Sampson to declare, “They shot the piss out of it, now.” If Australian freshman Johnny Furphy is going to play like he did against the Cougars—17 points on just seven field goal attempts—the Jayhawks’ ceiling raises. But Kansas also has a home hero/road zero dynamic going on, having lost three out of four Big 12 games away from Allen Fieldhouse. The Big Dance will not be played in Lawrence, Kan.
Tennessee Volunteers (10). The arrival of transfer Dalton Knecht immediately improved the Volunteers’ offensive capability. But it was a welcome sight for the Vols to see point guard Zakai Zeigler have a career night (26 points, 13 assists) against the Kentucky Wildcats on Saturday and Josiah Jordan-James’s shooting stroke return (he made four threes, after hitting just 2 of 23 from outside the arc in January). The question is whether that says more about the Wildcats’ flimsy defense or Tennessee’s offensive versatility. And the bigger question, to be answered next month, is whether Rick Barnes can get back to a Final Four for the first time in 21 years.
Arizona (11). As noted above, the Wildcats have some sketchy losses. But they’ve also beaten the Duke Blue Devils in Cameron Indoor, blown out the Wisconsin Badgers, handled Alabama comfortably and defeated the Michigan State Spartans. They’re huge, rebound well, have a plethora of scorers and are probably better defensively than Tommy Lloyd’s first two Arizona teams. The Wildcats’ comeback home victory over Stanford on Sunday night marked their first three-game winning streak since early December. It takes four to make the Final Four, most of which would be against better competition than they’re facing in the Pac-12.
Marquette Golden Eagles (12). Have the Golden Eagles gotten their groove back? It appears to be the case. After starting the season ranked No. 5 and winning high-profile games over the Illinois Fighting Illini, UCLA Bruins and Kansas, things got wobbly for a while with five losses in 11 games. Now, Marquette has won six straight, four of them on the road, lighting it up from three over the last four games. Two big games with Connecticut remain. Ultimately, we have to see whether Shaka Smart can reverse his history of early NCAA exits—his last nine Big Dance appearances have all ended on the first weekend.
Duke (13). It was around this time last year when the Blue Devils pieced it all together and went on a nine-game winning streak that included the ACC tournament title. We’ll see whether this group has the ability—particularly on defense—to do something similar. The schedule is favorable in an underwhelming ACC: six of the last 10 regular-season games are at home and two of the road contests are a bus ride away (Wake Forest Demon Deacons, North Carolina State Wolfpack). Freshman guard Jared McCain is asserting himself of late, a welcome addition to the veteran core of dependable Devils. After a disappointing second-round flameout against Tennessee last year, Jon Scheyer still has some NCAA tournament proving to do.
Wisconsin (14). Losing to Purdue on Sunday is no sin. It’s a couple of the other recent losses—on the road to the Penn State Nittany Lions and Nebraska Cornhuskers—that make you wonder. The Badgers have had some great wins, destroying the Virginia Cavaliers, beating Marquette and sweeping Michigan State, with some of the best offensive efficiency of Greg Gard’s career. But Gard also hasn’t taken a team past the second round of the tournament since 2017 and has never been past the Sweet 16.
Auburn (15). Bruce Pearl has developed big man Johni Broome into a star, improving his game in every category. Broome is now capable of making threes, while still inhaling rebounds and blocking shots. The Tigers can go 10 deep, allowing them to play frantic defense all game and expend plenty of fouls in the process (they’ve been whistled for more fouls than the opposition in six straight games). Auburn has won 14 straight at home dating back to last season; it’s the road where things sometimes go off the rails.
Florida Atlantic Owls (16). The Owls were Final Four Cinderellas last year who came within a San Diego State Aztecs buzzer beater of making the championship game. They retained almost everyone from that team, upgraded conferences and continue to succeed, currently standing at 18–4 overall and 8–1 in the American Athletic Conference. They had a couple of weird losses to the Bryant Bulldogs and Florida Gulf Coast Eagles, but also beat Arizona, the Butler Bulldogs, Virginia Tech Hokies and Texas A&M Aggies on neutral courts. FAU can be remarkably sloppy on offense and cavalier defensively for stretches, but the Owls have gamers who rise to the occasion. Disregard Dusty May’s team at your peril.
The breakaway needs to happen
With the news last week the Big Ten (17) and SEC (18) are forming a joint advisory group to do … something, it should be viewed as a test rocket fired into the atmosphere. It’s a show of strength and a warning signal to the rest of college athletics. A Power 2 move away from everyone else remains an existential threat. Only a fool would underestimate the lust for power and dollars that exists in the industry, and those who have the most of both certainly want more.
The same two conferences that did the most to destabilize the national landscape, leading to turmoil in the Big 12 and the death of the Pac-12 as we know it, now want more control. The land thieves are going to keep pushing for outcomes that benefit themselves, not the whole.
SEC commissioner Greg Sankey (19) says the goal of the advisory group is to find “common sense solutions” to the myriad issues facing the industry. Sankey has had his fingerprints on the direction of college sports more than anyone over the last decade, so any scorecard of failed leadership has to include him. Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti (20) brings a TV exec’s mindset to the job, and those folks have played a vital role in screwing up the place.
Between that, the NCAA’s crisis of leadership and the next wave of impending legal ass-kickings, it’s time to get radical. In an effort to save some semblance of a broad-based, national college sports landscape, the time has come to either let football go its own way or make it go its own way. Not just releasing it from NCAA oversight, but kicking football off campus (21). Divorce football from higher education, while saving the NCAA tournament as a full Division I event.
The football players would no longer have to attend school. The coaches would no longer be employed by the schools. License the logos and nicknames for use by what would now be professional teams; let them rent out the stadiums and facilities; take a cut of the ticket revenue; but otherwise be done with it. The schools should be able to drive a very hard bargain for all those things, because Alabama football without “Crimson Tide”, Michigan Wolverines football without the winged victory helmets and Clemson Tigers football without Death Valley would be pretty hollow. So take a hefty cut and simultaneously break the bonds.
Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick (22) prophesied a watershed split in an interview with Sports Illustrated in 2022. “There’s always been sort of a spectrum—and I want to stress that everything along the spectrum is valid; it’s not a criticism,” Swarbrick said at the time. “On one end of the spectrum, you license the school name and run an independent business that’s engaged in sports. The other end of the spectrum, you’re integrated into the university in terms of decision making and requirements, and some follow that.”
At the time, Swarbrick said he could foresee this fracture of the enterprise by the mid-2030s. That timetable now seems to be accelerating, as the Big Ten and SEC further seek to control their own destiny.
It’s up to each school to decide where they land in a new stratification of haves and have-nots. In the process, could a demarcation be drawn between football and basketball in terms of breakaway entities? Football goes, but basketball stays on campus? One would hope, although some men’s basketball programs are every bit as much of a big business as football, and thus might want the same freedom from higher education.
But if there is one thing that everyone should work together to preserve, it’s an all-comers March Madness (23). If the SEC and Big Ten break away and try to form their own two-conference basketball postseason, history could and would judge them harshly for ruining the best thing in college sports. (Potential expansion beyond the current 68 teams is a bad enough idea; tearing apart the whole thing would be exponentially worse.)
If releasing football—or evicting it—from the rest of college athletics helps both the NCAA tournament and Olympic sports survive, find a way to do it.
Transfers who leveled up and thrived
One of the positives of increased transfer movement is the ability for players who have excelled at the mid-major or low-major level to move up and contribute to a high-major program. Examples are numerous—like the previously mentioned Knecht at Tennessee—but The Minutes has identified seven teams that wouldn’t be where they are without a former mid-major player making a big contribution.
Lance Jones (24), Purdue. Before: Played four seasons at the Southern Illinois Salukis. Now: He’s the No. 2 scorer on the No. 2 team in the country, averaging 12.7 points and 27 minutes per game. Jones has given the Boilermakers an infusion of perimeter athleticism and has been especially productive the past two weeks. Jones had 20-point games in wins over Wisconsin, the Northwestern Wildcats and Michigan, and a 10-rebound, eight-assist and five-steal effort against Rutgers.
RayJ Dennis (25), Baylor. Before: Played two seasons at the Boise State Broncos, then two more at the Toledo Rockets and was the MAC Player of the Year last season. Now: Leads the Bears in minutes per game (32.1) and assists (6.4) while ranking second in scoring (13.4). After losing two guards to the NBA and one to the portal, Scott Drew needed an instant-impact point guard and got that in Dennis.
Dennis drives to the basket against Iowa State guard Curtis Jones.
Chris Jones/USA TODAY Sports
B.J. Mack (26), South Carolina. Before: Played one season at the South Florida Bulls and three at the Wofford Terriers. Now: Despite playing just 25.1 minutes per game, the 6’ 8” widebody is second on the surging Gamecocks in scoring (13.8 points) and first in rebounding (5.1). He also can play the ukulele, according to The Charleston Post & Courier.
Curtis Jones (27), Iowa State. Before: Played two seasons at the Buffalo Bulls. Now: Comes off the bench for the Cyclones but is fourth on the team in minutes per game, averaging 9.6 points. Jones has upped his production the last four games, averaging 15.3 points. He also had a seven-steal game against the TCU Horned Frogs.
Cam Spencer (28), UConn. Before: He was with the Loyola (Md.) Greyhounds for three seasons and the Rutgers Scarlet Knights for one. Now: Spencer is second on the Huskies in scoring (15.3) and first in steals (1.5). He’s UConn’s most dangerous three-point threat, making 44.8% of his shots outside the arc, having just dropped five on St. John’s over the weekend.
Great Osobor (29), Utah State Aggies. Before: Played two seasons at the Montana State Bobcats. Now: Blessed with a Great name and game, Osobor is second in the Mountain West in scoring (19 points per game) and first in rebounding (9.5) for the 19–3 Aggies. The native of England has almost doubled what he averaged in scoring last season at Montana State while playing for the same coach he is now, Danny Sprinkle.
Mark Sears (30), Alabama. Before: Played two seasons at the Ohio Bobcats. Now: In his second season with the Crimson Tide, Sears has become an SEC Player of the Year candidate. He leads the league in scoring at 20.1 and leads the Tide in steals at 1.7. Sears made the jump from role player on last season’s loaded team to the leading man. He currently has a five-game streak of scoring 20-plus points. He’s also made 52 of 55 free throws since the calendar flipped to 2024.
Are you buying it?
The Minutes examines a few teams that have started to surge, checking on their staying power.
Virginia (31). The Cavaliers have won six straight heading into a Big Monday game against Miami. There wasn’t much heft to that streak until Saturday, when Virginia won at Clemson. The Cavaliers are getting back to playing defense more like a customary Tony Bennett team, but there still isn’t much heft to this winning streak. The six teams Virginia beat are a combined 23–42 in ACC play. Verdict: Not buying in yet.
Butler (32). Thad Matta’s team has won four straight, including a big road triumph at the Creighton Bluejays, to get into the bubble conversation. That’s significant for a program that hasn’t played in the Big Dance since 2018. Butler (15–7, 6–5 in the Big East) also doesn’t have any bad losses. Tuesday might be Mission: Impossible at UConn, but then the Bulldogs come back to Hinkle Fieldhouse for three straight against the Providence Friars, Marquette and Creighton. Verdict: Check back after that stretch.
UCLA (33). The Bruins were in ruins at 6–10 overall, 1–4 in the Pac-12. Mick Cronin was ripping his players, the media was ripping Cronin and the entire operation was sliding off the rails. Since then, UCLA has won five out of six. A young team has started to grow up, because there was no other choice. Shooting the ball can still be an adventure, but the Bruins have shown the necessary propensity to guard. Verdict: The improvement will continue and UCLA will be in the top three in the Pac-12 heading into the league tournament.
South Carolina (34). A 19–3 record for the Gamecocks and a five-game winning streak that includes a beatdown of Kentucky and a win at Tennessee were not on anyone’s SEC bingo card. Coach Lamont Paris went all-in on the portal and it has worked shockingly well with this group. At this point, South Carolina would have to collapse to not grab its first NCAA bid since that fluke-tastic Final Four run of 2017. Verdict: The Minutes believes.
Inexplicable results
Every season, there are outcomes that simply make no sense—not at the time and not thereafter. A couple that have jumped out to The Minutes:
Murray State Racers 71, Northern Iowa Panthers 43 (35). This happened Saturday. The host Panthers were favored by 6.5 points against a Racers team that was on a four-game losing streak. Northern Iowa had beaten Murray State by 10 in January in Murray, Ky. But after UNI took a 13–10 lead with 9:24 left in the first half, its offense staged a work stoppage. The Panthers scored three more points the rest of the first half and went scoreless for the final 5:52 as Murray went on a 30–5 run that spanned both halves.
Air Force Falcons 90, UNLV Runnin’ Rebels 58 (36). The Falcons (8–13) have won exactly one game since Dec. 3. It was this one, on Jan. 23 in Las Vegas. It’s the most points they’ve scored in four years. UNLV, meanwhile, hasn’t lost since then and has improved to 12–9 overall. The Rebels were favored by 10.5 points but fell behind 17–4 and never recovered.
Minutes crush of the week
Kasean Pryor (37), South Florida. The Bulls are on a startling, seven-game winning streak, and that coincides with Pryor blowing up as an impact player. The gangly, 6’ 9” forward spent two seasons barely playing at Boise State, then one year in juco and now he’s blossomed after an inconsistent start to this season. During the seven-game streak, Pryor has averaged 18.6 points, 8.4 rebounds and 1.9 steals. First-year coach Amir Abdur-Rahim, who worked a miracle in getting Kennesaw State Owls to the NCAA tourney, is ahead of schedule in Tampa.
Coach who earned his comp car this week
Sundance Wicks (38), Green Bay Phoenix. Yes, the name is real. So is the turnaround that “Sunny” Wicks has authored at what had been one of the worst programs in America in recent years. Green Bay was 3–29 last season, 5–25 the year before that. This season, the first under Wicks, the Phoenix are 15–9 overall, 10–3 and tied for first in the Horizon League. Wicks arrived after a stint as an assistant to Jeff Linder at the Wyoming Cowboys, and before that was the head coach at the Division II Missouri Western Griffons for two seasons. One more biographical detail on Sundance, the 43-year-old product of Gillette, Wyo., has a son named Skywalker.
Coach who should take the bus to work
John Calipari (39), Kentucky. The NBA All-Star rosters were announced last week, and Kentucky has seven of its former players in the game. Of those seven, only one won a national championship (Anthony Davis in 2012). That’s your reminder of what Calipari has left on the table with all the talent he previously coached in Lexington. As for the present day: One ranking of the top-100 NBA draft prospects for 2024 lists seven Kentucky players. Yet, the Wildcats have lost two straight in Rupp Arena for the first time in three years, are just 5–4 in the SEC and also have a loss to UNC-Wilmington on the résumé. Calipari has some work to do to avoid another major underachievement this season.
Buzzer beater
When hungry and thirsty in the basketball bedrock town of Lawrence, Kan., The Minutes encourages a visit to Free State Brewing (40). The downtown building is nice, the food is good and the beer is excellent. Pair a Yakimaniac IPA with the Nashville chicken mac and cheese and thank The Minutes later.
