For the first time in Division I men's basketball history, seven teams in the AP Top-10 lost on the same day. This included teams ranked 1-6 all falling on a wild Saturday.
Here's everything you need to know about Saturday's men's basketball action.
Here are Saturday's top-25 schedule and results
- No. 23 Saint Mary's 67, No. 1 Gonzaga 57
- Colorado 79, No. 2 Arizona 63
- No. 17 Tennessee 67, No. 3 Auburn 62
- Michigan State 68, No. 4 Purdue 65
- No. 10 Baylor 80, No. 5 Kansas 70
- No. 18 Arkansas 75, No. 6 Kentucky 73
- No. 7 Duke 97, Syracuse 72
- TCU 69, No. 9 Texas Tech 66
- No. 11 Providence 72, Creighton 51
- No. 12 UCLA 94, Oregon State 55
- No. 13 Wisconsin 66, Rutgers 61
- No. 16 Southern California 70, Oregon 69
- No. 19 Murray State 70, Southeast Missouri State
- No. 20 Texas 82, West Virginia 81
- No. 24 Alabama 90, South Carolina 71
Tennessee tops Auburn at Rocky Top
Despite making just 20 of 61 shots, committing 18 turnovers and allowing No. 3 Auburn's star freshman Jabari Smith to go off for 27 points and eight rebounds, No. 17 Tennessee picked up another massive win in Knoxville, defeating Auburn 67-62. The Vols beat the Kentucky Wildcats at home last week, as well as Arizona in December, so Tennessee has already beaten three of the nation's best inside Thompson-Boling Arena this season.
Auburn took a six-point lead into halftime thanks to Smith's late 3-pointer that made it 31-25 at the break. Smith then scored the first bucket of the second half and teammate K.D. Johnson scored the next, putting Auburn up by 10, but Tennessee responded with a 20-6 run and eventually the Volunteers took an 11-point lead on a pair of free throws from Santiago Vescovi.
With Auburn trailing by 10 with 75 seconds left, the Tigers tried to make a furious rally. Johnson drew a foul and made one of two free throws. Then Smith made a pair, cutting the deficit to seven with 1:08 to play. Then came a potentially game-changing play as Smith hit a 3-pointer from the right wing, while drawing a foul on Josiah-Jordan James. Smith sank the free throw to complete the four-point play, cutting the margin to just three with 59 seconds left.
But Tennessee's Kennedy Chandler hit a jumper to put the Vols back up by two possessions and Vescovi hit another pair of free throws as Tennessee held onto the massive win.
Tennessee is now 12-4 in the SEC, along with Arkansas and Kentucky, who met in Fayetteville on Saturday, when the Razorbacks won in front of their home crowd, and all three schools are still chasing Auburn, which is 13-3 in the conference. The Tigers will finish the regular season with games at Mississippi State and home against South Carolina.
Auburn, previously ranked No. 1 for several consecutive weeks, has now three of its last six games, each on the road, and, in order, in overtime, by one point and by five points.
Arkansas ties Kentucky in SEC standings with home win in epic top-25 showdown
Arguably the game of the day — admittedly with lots of high-profile games remaining — was in Fayetteville, Ark., where No. 18 Arkansas toppled No. 6 Kentucky, 75-72, in a duel between not just two of the best teams in the country, but two of the premier individual talents. Each team's star — Arkansas guard JD Notae and Kentucky forward Oscar Tshiebwe — came through with a 30-point performance. Notae scored from all three levels, ranging from acrobatic layups to a deep three that color analyst Pete Gillen said was attempted from Little Rock, while Tshiebwe, a national player of the year contender, also had 18 rebounds and no turnovers.
After Tshiebwe scored the first bucket of the game, Arkansas blitzed Kentucky as it scored the next 15 points, as the Wildcats found themselves in a double-digit hole in one of the most difficult road environments in the conference.
Tshiebwe had a double-double before halftime, with 14 points and 12 rebounds through the opening stanza, but the Wildcats still trailed 34-28 at the break as Tshiebwe had little support around him. Keion Brooks Jr., who had six first-half points on 3-for-7 shooting, was the only other Wildcat to make more than one field goal in the first half. Arkansas guard JD Notae came out firing, totaling 18 first-half points on 8-of-13 shooting, with a pair of 3-pointers, as he nearly matched his scoring average (18.7 points per game) by halftime.
Kentucky reclaimed its first lead since 2-0 when a Brooks layup made it 41-40 with just less than 15 minutes to play and it was a back-and-forth game from there. After Kentucky guard Kellan Grady made his first and only shot of the game, a 3-pointer to put Kentucky ahead 70-69, Arkansas forward Jaylin Williams scored four consecutive points as part of his 16-point, 12-rebound effort, and Davonte Davis added a free throw to put Arkansas up by four with about 14 seconds left.
Defensively, Notae's biggest play came in the final 10 seconds when he came flying in to block a TyTy Washington Jr. 3-pointer from the right wing, with Arkansas leading by four.
Both schools are now 12-4 in the SEC as conference leader Auburn, which entered Saturday with a 13-2 record, took a trip to Tennessee for a stiff road test.
Purdue loses at Michigan State on Tyson Walker's game-winner amid crowded Big Ten race
Michigan State guard Tyson Walker's step-back 3-pointer over Purdue forward Trevion Williams, after the latter got switched onto the former on a pick and roll, proved to be the difference as the Spartans downed the No. 4-ranked Boilermakers, 68-65, in East Lansing Saturday.
Tyson Walker just hit the biggest shot of his life.
— Big Ten Network (@BigTenNetwork)
On the previous possession, Williams' second effort on a layup tied the game at 65, and when the Boilermakers were left with 1.4 seconds left to try to tie the game, Williams' three-quarters-court baseball pass was too hard and too high for Jaden Ivey to corral, leading to a turnover.
When Michigan State took over in its own backcourt, just needing to waste the rest of the clock, Malik Hall threw a long pass to the opposite corner and Walker went for the save, with just tenths of a second remaining, and after the play was reviewed, Purdue was given the possession, with another chance to tie the game with just 0.4 seconds remaining.
Williams' inbounds pass was again off the mark, this time bouncing off Hall's back and the clock expiring in an anticlimactic ending, following Walker's dramatic three. It was a balanced scoring effort from Michigan State with six players who scored between eight and 13 points, led by forward Gabe Brown's 13. Purdue's 7-foot-4 center Zach Edey had 25 points, including 15 before halftime, but he dealt with foul trouble with four fouls, while the team's leading rebounder, Mason Gillis, who had seven boards, fouled out.
Last weekend Purdue was revealed to be a No. 2 seed — and the No. 7 overall seed — in the selection committee's top 16 teams but the Boilermakers could be at risk of a bit of a late-season slide compared to their previous perch atop the sport.
Purdue reached No. 1 in the AP Top 25 poll for the first time in program history earlier this season and the Boilermakers have flexed the country's most efficient offense for much of the season, per kenpom.com. Entering the weekend, Purdue shared the Big Ten lead with Wisconsin at 13-4, with the Badgers having won in West Lafayette in early January. It's now 13-5.
With Michigan State's win over Purdue, the Boilermakers may no longer have the inside track for the conference's regular-season crown. No. 13 Wisconsin is scheduled to tip off at surging Rutgers at 6 p.m. ET Saturday, while Illinois entered Saturday just one game behind the two co-leaders.
Purdue is now 5-4 on the road this season – by no means a bad mark, especially in a competitive Big Ten Conference, but also a concern, when you consider the team's porous defense. The Boilermakers' next game is also on the road, at Wisconsin on Tuesday, in a game that has major Big Ten title implications.
Duke stomps Syracuse in Coach K's final trip to the Carrier Dome
Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski was honored before Saturday's game at Syracuse, where his No. 7-ranked Blue Devils blitzed the Orange in Coach K's final trip to the Carrier Dome. Duke scored the game's first 14 points — four different Blue Devils scored before the first Orange player scored — and the Blue Devils' lead was never less than 12 after that, and it soon grew to 28 points. The Blue Devils led 51-34 at half, despite Duke missing three shots on the final possession of the half.
Duke's scoring pace slowed some in the second half but the Blue Devils still finished with 97 points, behind Mark Williams' 28, Paolo Banchero's 21 and AJ Griffin's 20.
Florida State wins on ridiculous buzzer-beater
Virginia, just three seasons removed from its first-ever men's basketball national championship run, which featured its share of timely, late-game shooting, was on the wrong end of a buzzer-beater on its home floor Saturday. Florida State, trailing 63-61 with exactly one second left, pulled off a miraculous last-second comeback thanks to Harrison Prieto's three-quarters-court baseball pass to Matthew Cleveland, who caught the pass about 10 feet behind the opposite 3-point line and without dribbling, turned and fired a 3-pointer that was more of a desperation heave than a fundamentally sound jump shot. With Cleveland's momentum carrying him to his left and certainly not towards the hoop, the shot swished. Ball game. Florida State 64, Virginia 63.
— Bart Trvik (@totally_t_bomb)
While these two programs have often been among the class of the ACC in the last five to 10 years, this is not one of those years. The loss for Virginia knocked the Cavaliers to 11-7 in the ACC, while Florida State is just 7-10 in the conference after the win.
But with March just days away, Cleveland's buzzer-beater was a tasty appetizer of the memorable moments to come next month.
Texas survives at West Virginia
In West Virginia coach Bob Huggins' first 14 seasons at the school, his team's worst conference record was 4-14 during the 2019 season. This season's group of Mountaineers is still searching for its fourth conference win after they fell at home to No. 20 Texas, 82-81, despite Malik Curry's game-high 27 points off the bench. Curry scored the game's final three points the old-fashioned way to cut a four-point deficit to one, but on the team's last possession, his potential game-winning jumper was no good.
Texas' Timmy Allen had 26 points and 10 rebounds in the win. The Longhorns, which were No. 16 overall — the final No. 4 seed — in the selection committee's list of the top 16 teams, which were announced on Feb. 19, were swept by Texas Tech later that day but have now won two in a row.
It'll be a tough closing stretch for Texas, which hosts Baylor Monday, then travels to Kansas next Saturday for the regular-season finale.
West Virginia, which entered the weekend in last place in the conference by two games, has now lost six in a row, which is one game shy of tying a previous seven-game losing streak in Big 12 play.
Baylor knocks off Kansas in Big 12 battle
In a battle for Big 12 supremacy, Baylor topped Kansas 80-70. Four Baylor players scored in double figures, with Flo Thamba's 18 points leading the way. Defensively, the Bears limited Kansas to 34 percent shooting from the field.
In the loss, National Player of the Year candidate Ochai Agbaji scored 27 points for the Jayhawks. Kansas could've clinched a share of the Big 12 title, but instead, the conference race will remain wide open.
Colorado stuns No. 2 Arizona
Colorado upset No. 2 Arizona 79-63 in stunning fashion. Led by Tristan da Silva's 19 points, the Buffaloes secured their first AP top-2 victory since 1992. Despite trailing at halftime, Colorado used a dominant second half to run away with a victory. Arizona's 16-point loss is the largest by an AP top-2 team against an unranked opponent since 2018. The Colorado fans stormed the court after the upset.
No. 1 Gonzaga falls to St. Mary's
The final top-10 team to fall Saturday was No. 1 Gonzaga, losing to St. Mary's 67-57. St. Mary's started fast, jumping out to a 12-3 lead and never looked back. The Gaels limited Gonzaga's star big-man duo of Drew Timme and Chet Holmgren to 12 points combined. The Bulldogs shot 36.67 percent from the field in a struggling effort.
With the win, St. Mary's hands Gonzaga its first conference loss of the season as the Gaels get a significant tournament-boosting win right before march
