Here comes February, which in many ways is the taxiway for March. And anyone wanting a measure of this season in all its intrigue, uncertainty and goofiness, these numbers from the final weekend of January ought to do.
And there’s no better place to start than shark tank that is the Big 12.
15-33 — The current record in conference away games in the Big 12. Kansas and Houston — the mightiest names on the block — are a combined 2-5. A ranked visitor has been sideswiped by an unranked host 10 times. Life on the road in that league is a beast.
13-0 — Iowa State’s record in Ames. The Cyclones have trailed a total of 31 seconds in the second half of the 13 games — by one point.
45.75 — Points allowed per home game by the Houston Cougars in the Fertitta Center. No visitor has managed more than 55 points. “They may be the best defensive team I’ve ever seen,” Kansas State coach Jerome Tang said after his Wildcats were stuffed in Houston 74-52.
3 — Baylor just lost three consecutive Big 12 games by a combined nine points and four overtimes. The Bears fell in three overtimes to TCU, whose last five games have been decided by 14 points and four overtimes. That included an OT defeat at Cincinnati, who had just lost by three to Baylor and one to Texas, who then lost by three to West Virginia.
Atop all this untidiness is Texas Tech, who beat Oklahoma and Kansas State each by one point and is in first place with a 5-1 conference record, even though the Red Raiders were picked to finish eighth in the league and last year started 1-10 in the Big 12 on their way to 5-13. Now they have lost only one game since November and that was Houston, who has won its home Big 12 games by 22, 15, 23 and 34 but lost at Iowa State and TCU by four and one.
👉🏼 How Kansas, Auburn, Oklahoma and Baylor fell this weekend
So it goes in the Big 12. Meanwhile elsewhere . . .
3 — Weeks Connecticut has now spent at No. 1. The Huskies spent zero weeks at No. 1 in 2011, 2014 and 2023, and won the national championship all three years. Their latest effort was a 43-point dismantling of Xavier. If you like close games, stick to the Big 12 because you’ve come to the wrong place with these guys. The winning margin has been at least seven points in 45 of UConn’s last 49 games.
9-0 — North Carolina has started that way in the ACC for the first time in 23 years to climb up the polls. The last coach to do it? Roy Williams? Dean Smith? Nah. Matt Doherty. While on the subject of the Tar Heels, they have also held the opposition under 70 points in five consecutive conference road games, and the last time they did that was 1982, with a freshman named Michael Jordan in the lineup.
3-2 — Duke’s record against power league opponents in the normally invulnerable Cameron Indoor Stadium. The Blue Devils were beaten at home by Arizona and Pittsburgh (for the first time since 1979), had to come from 10 points down to put away Georgia Tech and needed a last-second foul and two Tyrese Proctor free throws to escape Clemson, who had gone 0-20 there since 1995.
Any ominous hints amid all that for the Blue Devils? February will tell more.
28, 36, 39, 25, 32 – Point production by Tennessee’s Dalton Knecht in the Vols’ last five SEC games. No one had reached 25-plus points in five consecutive SEC games in 14 years. He averaged 31 points and shot 61.5 percent in Tennessee’s first five road contests. If the Vols crash through to their first Final Four, they may be carried by a graduate transfer from Northern Colorado.
12-10 – Wright State’s record, which seems pretty screwy when you consider the Raiders are the nation’s best shooting team with a 53.6 percentage. Six of the top seven scorers are at 51 percent or better and they expect the ball to go in. Wright State hit only 49 percent in an 83-76 win over IUPUI Sunday — 8-for-16 from behind the 3-point arc, 23-for-26 from the free throw line — and coach Scott Nagy said afterward of his players, “They all look like we lost. Most teams would love to shoot that.”
Why the gaudy percentages? “Honestly, if I knew I’d tell you,” Nagy said. “One, we do have good midrange shooters. We hit a lot of tough shots. And then we throw it in a lot. We like to pound the ball inside.
“But what’s that led to, 12-10?”
Well, yeah. This might explain it. Wright State is sixth in the nation in scoring offense — but 344th in scoring defense.
“We’re very good offensively and we’re less than average defensively, and that’s why we’re about .500,” Nagy said. “Probably most people think I’m an offensive coach and I’m not. My whole focus is defense and rebounding but you wouldn’t know it from watching our team. it drives me crazy.”
📈 RANKINGS: Latest men's basketball AP Poll
14-0 — Arizona’s record coming off a defeat in Tommy Lloyd’s three seasons as coach. He has never lost consecutive games with the Wildcats. That’s come in handy this season with Arizona losing five of 11 games, but each time responding with a victory, including winning at Oregon last weekend for the first time in nine years. So now the Wildcats share the Pac-12 lead with the Ducks.
6-1 — Richmond’s record at home since 2009 against ranked visitors. That includes beating No. 16 Dayton 69-64 over the weekend to end the nation’s longest winning streak at 13. The Spiders themselves have won 10 in a row, their longest streak since 1935. To finish off the Flyers, Richmond made 18 of its last 19 free throws.
64-53 — Colorado State’s lead over Wyoming with under a minute to go Saturday. “I couldn’t blame people for starting to turn and leave,” Wyoming coach Jeff Linder said later. Anyone who left missed the Cowboys scoring 12 minutes in the last 50 seconds to force overtime, then beating the No. 24 Rams 79-76. Wyoming is barely above .500 at 11-9 but has won five games this season after trailing by double digits.
3-13 — Combined conference record of Arkansas and Southern Cal. Arkansas was No. 14 in the preseason and picked to finish third in the SEC while USC was No. 21 and picked to finish second in the Pac-12.
5-0 — Northwestern’s start in the Big Ten at home. The last time the Wildcats did that was 1968. The victims include Purdue, Illinois and Michigan State, who all began the season ranked.
36.70 — Auburn’s average scoring off the bench, the highest for any power league team. Ten players average at least 14 minutes a game and nobody is more than 24.
0:01 — The favorite time showing on the clock for Miami Ohio’s Darweshi Hunter. His 3-pointer at the buzzer beat Akron Saturday. The week before his long 3-pointer at the buzzer tied Ball State and the RedHawks won in overtime. In December, he banked in another game-winner in the final second against Vermont. “I just shoot like I always shoot,” he told the media after the Akron game. “The moment doesn’t matter.”
WELCOME TO THE HUNTER GAMES❗️❗️❗️ ||
— Miami Men’s Basketball (@MiamiOH_BBall)
49 — Tommy Bruner’s scoring output for Denver in its 111-110 double-overtime win over South Dakota last Thursday. That’s the highest individual total for any Division I player this season. Second highest is 44. That came from South Dakota’s Kaleb Stewart in the same game. So this shootout may end the season with the nation's two biggest individual performances on the same floor but in different uniforms. For the record, Brunner is currently the nation’s leading scorer with a 26.1 average. Stewart is tied for 214th at 15.6.
1-5 — Villanova’s record in its past six Big East games. The program that carried away seven league season titles in eight years from 2014-21 is in a tie for eighth place.
Here is a blue blood desperately in need of better days, but just where do you find them in the merciless Big East? The season record to 11-9, the NET rating has dropped to 43. The program that went to four Final Fours with two national championships from 2009-22 is starting to flirt with missing the NCAA tournament for a second consecutive year. That hasn’t happened in two decades.
Kyle Neptune is in his second year replacing the hallowed Jay Wright. He’s 28-26 overall and 14-15 in the Big East. Villanova has been a bastion of coaching stability; only six men have held the job since 1936. In the same span, there have been 15 U.S. Presidents. But the Wildcats are 286th in the nation shooting and 222nd in scoring. This ain’t Villanova basketball. Neptune knows it and so do a lot of impatient people on social media.
“You’ve just got to keep running,” he said after the Wildcats lost in two overtimes at Butler, who led for only 67 seconds all day and never until the first overtime. “It’s a long year, a long season. It’s a tough conference, the best basketball conference in the country. We’ve got to keep running, move on to the next game and get better."
Villanova has been a confusing team. Yeah, the Wildcats knocked over Texas Tech, North Carolina and Memphis to win the Battle 4 Atlantis. Yeah, they started 3-0 in Big East play. What’s a resume like that doing on the bubble?
But . . .
There was the 0-3 showing against the Philadelphia Big 5 cousins they used to own. Villanova had won 18 of the last 19 against Penn, 11 in a row against Saint Joseph’s and was 18-1 all-time against Drexel. The Wildcats lost to all of them, never leading in the second half.
Also . . .
After the quick start in the league, the grease fire started. The Wildcats were swept by St. John’s for the first time in 31 years. They went down by 13 at Marquette, lost close against UConn and suffered the brand of foul fate at Butler that seems to follow around teams under a cloud.
Villanova started with an 11-0 lead and 11-1 gap in rebounding, but ended up losing 88-81 and being outrebounded by 10. The Wildcats came into the game with the nation’s best free throw percentage at 81.6 and could become become the first program to lead the nation from the line three consecutive years since the NCAA started keeping the category in its record book in 1948. But against Butler, the Wildcats went 6-for-9 and were outscored from the line 17-6. It was like being stabbed with their own pitchfork.
February means the clock is ticking. If Villanova is to keep hope alive for March, a turnaround must be done against Connecticut, Marquette, Creighton, somebody. “This is what it takes, this is the season,” veteran Eric Dixon said. “Nothing’s given to you . . . you’re not just going to take up and it happen for you.”
So there are lots of numbers and lots of storylines as February begins. And they’re going in all different directions.
