Forty names, games, teams and minutiae making news in college basketball, where we are reminded that quality control is a vital part of jersey retirements.
Nobody Wants Your Expansion Scam
The alleged leaders in college athletics are at it again, looking to collect more power and money and further tilt the entire enterprise toward those who already have all the advantages. The Big Ten (1) and SEC (2) are meeting this week in New Orleans to discuss ways to distance themselves a bit more from the rest of FBS by potentially expanding the College Football Playoff, solidifying a scheduling agreement between the two leagues—and, most brazenly, locking in a certain number of automatic bids for each of the Power 4 conferences. Guess which two would get the most, and guess which two leagues would be told to go along with it? That’s the ACC (3) and Big 12 (4), who get something for their complicity (multiple guaranteed bids) but help sell the industry a little further down the river.
It’s another opportunity for the Big Ten and SEC to choke out competition, and it provides a solution that lacks a problem. The 12-team playoff, all of one year old, did its job. The Minutes doesn’t hear a lot of clamoring for change, for an even bigger playoff, for ironclad guarantees granted to certain conferences before games are even played—yet change appears to be at hand.
And, getting to the stated purpose of this weekly column, similarly unwanted change is looming over the NCAA basketball tournament. Everyone is couching an expansion of that tourney in cautious rhetoric—it’s not done, it may not happen—but sources across the landscape say there is continued momentum toward a 76-team field for 2026.
It’s a terrible idea that lacks public support and “fixes” something that is not broken. March Madness reached its sweet spot at 64 teams in 1985. The addition of four more teams was a crass move by the power conferences to get more of their teams in the field, and it has added no appreciable value. Further expansion adds even less.
It adds clutter. It creates a more unwieldy bracket, and woe unto those who dismiss the importance of the bracket and associated office pools to casual fan interest. It further stresses the schedule of an event that fits perfectly across three weekends. And it further marginalizes the smaller schools and conferences who provide so much of the flavor of the event.
Killing Cinderella (5) is a remarkably soulless and tone deaf idea. Naturally, the powermongers in charge are interested in it.
They’ve said they don’t want to reduce access to the tournament, but make no mistake about who they envision taking those extra eight bids. The Sports Illustrated Bracket Watch last week listed the following conferences among the last eight teams outside the field of 68: the SEC (two teams), the ACC (two), the Big 12 (two), the Big Ten (one) and the Big West (one). ESPN’s Bracketology on Friday had this last-eight breakdown: three from the ACC, one from the Big 12, one from the Big Ten, one from the Big East, one from the Mountain West and one from the Atlantic 10.
They don’t want a second team from the Missouri Valley Conference—where, this season, Drake (6) is 23–3 and Bradley (7) is 21–6. They want a 14th team from the SEC, and a ninth team from the Big Ten, and an eighth from the Big 12, and a fifth from the ACC, and a fifth from the Big East.
When the SEC drafted a modest proposal at the NCAA convention for the Power 4 conferences to take control of postseason championships away from the NCAA itself, that was the latest unveiling of the power grab. They want control of everything, they want to further stack the deck to their advantage, and they don’t care what elements of fairness and tradition get broken and discarded along the way. They’re far less interested in giving the public what it wants than taking what they want.
We Regret to Inform You, but Your Team Is a Crashing Disappointment
The Minutes is appraising a few teams that were expected to be much better than they are, and what’s happened to them. Spoiler alert: They all suffered from defective roster construction, much of which owed to transfers who have not worked out as hoped.
Big 12 teams historically have had to play one of their best games of the season to beat the Kansas Jayhawks (8). Yet there were the Utah Utes, a 14–11 team tied for 10th place in the league, beating Kansas on Saturday night while malfunctioning badly on the offensive end. The Utes made just 41.4% of their two-point shots (13% below their season average), 32.4% of their three-pointers (down 1.5%) and 60.7% of their free throws (down 1.2%). Utah went more than seven minutes of the second half without scoring, and one Ute went 1-for-9 at the foul line—and it didn’t matter. The Jayhawks never led.
To win, Utah needed Kansas to be bad. Quite bad. Which has become a recurring theme for the team that started the season No. 1 in both polls.
Kansas is 3–4 over its last seven games and 5–5 over its last 10, hitting a new low in Salt Lake City. Its last road win was Jan. 22. At 8–6 in the league, the Jayhawks could be headed to a second straight Wednesday appearance in the second round of the Big 12 tournament, missing the double bye.
The league has gotten tougher with the addition of the Houston Cougars and Arizona Wildcats, but this is still a shocking two-year comeuppance for a program that won 18 out of 19 Big 12 titles from 2005 to ’23.
Last year, Kansas had to deal with Kevin McCullar Jr. missing seven of its last 13 games. This year, the Jayhawks have been at full strength all of February, and still are struggling. They haven’t gotten sufficient bang for their transfer portal bucks with a couple of players: AJ Storr (9) has seen his scoring plummet from 16.8 points per game last season at Wisconsin to 6.3 at Kansas; and Rylan Griffen has dropped from 11.2 points per game at Alabama to 6.5 as a Jayhawk. With fewer offensive weapons, Kansas’s ability to get to the foul line has withered—Bill Self’s team is 357th nationally in free throw rate, lowest of any power-conference team.
Kansas’s place in the NCAA tournament is secure, with victories over Michigan State, Duke and Iowa State topping the resume. But it was a No. 4 seed Saturday afternoon in the selection committee’s early top 16 reveal, and that was before the Utah debacle. If the Jayhawks don’t finish well, they could be headed to their lowest seeding since 2000, when they were a No. 8 seed.
Another Big 12 team is struggling to maintain its previous excellence: the Baylor Bears (10). Baylor is tied with Kansas at 8–6 in the league, which follows two seasons of 11–7 conference records. From 2020 to ’22, the Bears went 42–8, won a national title and claimed at least a share of two Big 12 championships. For a team that started the season ranked eighth, working in five new players has proved to be harder than expected.
Guard Langston Love missed 10 league games in which the Bears went 5–5. He’s been back for the last three and should be an important piece down the stretch. But among the new players, Duke Blue Devils transfer Jeremy Roach (11) hasn’t shot or scored at the level he did the previous two seasons (he’s also missed six games).
Overall, Baylor just hasn’t been as good defensively from 2023 to ’25 as it was from 2020 to ’22. In particular, the Bears haven’t been great this season guarding the perimeter or on the defensive glass. But the Bears have two big home opportunities left, getting both Arizona and Houston in Waco, Texas; a strong finish is possible.
The Indiana Hoosiers (12) have been trending the wrong way for a while, which is why they’ve already reached an agreement for coach Mike Woodson to step down after this season ends. But it’s only getting worse, with eight losses in the last 10 games, including four in Assembly Hall. After starting the season ranked No. 17, this is a team that doesn’t always look happy together.
Indiana ponied up to keep Mackenzie Mgbako and Malik Reneau, then added transfers Oumar Ballo from the Arizona Wildcats and Myles Rice (13) from the Washington State Cougars. They’re still a couple of shooters short, making just 31.5% of their three-pointers on the season. Mgbako has made just 4-of-23 threes in the past four games.
Despite the misery of this 15–11 season, Indiana is a hot finish away from getting back into the bubble conversation—if it can find its edge after taking nine days off from Feb. 14–23. Opportunity awaits against the Purdue Boilermakers in Bloomington, Ind., on Sunday.
The most anticipated season in many years for the Rutgers Scarlet Knights (14) has not gone according to plan. After starting the season ranked 25th, they’ve slid below .500 at 12–14, 5–10 in the Big Ten.
Rutgers is the latest illustration of the perils of building around freshmen in an era of old teams. The Knights signed the Nos. 2 and 3 players in the Class of 2024 in Ace Bailey (15) and Dylan Harper (16), and they’re both very good players. But this team doesn’t have enough of a veteran backbone to handle the rigors of the Big Ten, especially at the defensive end. Assuming both Bailey and Harper go pro after the season, Rutgers will have very little to show for those recruiting coups.
Moving further up the Northeast, the defending national champions are excelling in only one area: trash talk from their coach. The UConn Huskies (17) took an incomprehensible loss Saturday at the Seton Hall Pirates—that’s 7–18 Seton Hall, 2–12 in the Big East. UConn’s chances of repeating as Big East champs are certainly gone at this point, and a national championship three-peat would require a dramatic upgrade in performance.
After starting the season No. 3, UConn is 17–8—but more pertinently, it is 5–5 over its last 10 games. That includes losing two of the Huskies’ last three since getting standout freshman Liam McNeeley back from an ankle injury. This team looks nothing like its championship predecessors on the defensive end, fouling too much and not guarding the perimeter well.
Saint Mary’s transfer Aidan Mahaney (18) has gone into witness protection after two very successful seasons for the Gaels. He’s gone from 33 minutes and 13.9 points per game to 13.4 minutes and 4.8 points.
Also within the Big East, the Villanova Wildcats (19) continue to lose the plot from the Jay Wright heyday. They hired a Wright-approved former assistant in Kyle Neptune after he’d spent just one season at Fordham, and in three seasons ’Nova has backslid into mediocrity—50–44 overall, 28–27 in the league.
Eric Dixon (20) leads the nation in scoring at 23.2 points per game, but Villanova’s problems are at the other end of the court. The Wildcats (15–11, 8–7) don’t guard the perimeter well and don’t disrupt opposing offenses much, ranking 232nd nationally in turnover percentage. Whatever progress ’Nova made toward getting into the bubble conversation by beating St. John’s was erased by a beatdown loss to Providence. This week looms as make-or-break, with games against UConn and the Marquette Golden Eagles.
And of course, no list of crashing disappointments is complete without the North Carolina Tar Heels (21), who lead a long line of underachievers in the ACC. They’ve gone from preseason top 10 to the wrong side of the bubble—and while that’s still better than 2022–23, when Carolina fell from preseason No. 1 to missing the Big Dance, it’s not good.
Against the top three teams in the ACC—Duke, Clemson and Louisville—the Heels are 0–3 with an average losing margin of 16.7 points. They’ve also got a bad home loss to Stanford. A neutral-court win over the UCLA Bruins in December is doing a lot of work on an otherwise undistinguished résumé.
Hubert Davis didn’t satisfactorily address the loss of forever big man Armando Bacot, and the result has been a disappearance of the Heels’ usual prowess on the offensive glass—they’re 238th nationally in offensive rebounding percentage, down from 59th last year. This is also a pedestrian three-point shooting team.
Four of the final six are at home and the two road games are against bad teams, so there is a path back if Carolina is good enough. A motley assemblage of competitors will report to Charlotte for the ACC tournament, which is taking only the top 15 teams and leaving three at home. As of now, the defending champion North Carolina State Wolfpack (22) are out.
Freshmen—They Do Still Walk Among Us, and Some Are Playing Well
The sport has been moving away from reliance on freshmen for several years, and this season is no exception. But there are a few first-year guys who have had major impacts on high-profile teams and will play vital roles down the stretch. A Minutes rundown:
We’ll start by stating the obvious: Cooper Flagg (23) is good. In fact, the Duke Blue Devils multipurpose weapon is the best player in the college game, validating every syllable of hype that accompanied him on his improbable journey to stardom out of Maine. He leads the nation’s No. 2 team in scoring (19.8 per game), rebounding (7.5), assists (4), steals (1.6) and blocks (1.2). If Flagg finishes the season as Duke’s leader in all five of those categories, it would be the first time in the ACC in at least 25 years and the first time at the school since at least 1977–78, according to the Raleigh News & Observer.
He has some quality freshman company at Duke in Kon Knueppel (second on the team in scoring) and Khaman Maluach (second on the team in rebounding and blocks). The Blue Devils will be the most freshmen-dependent team in the NCAA tournament.
Derik Queen (24), Maryland Terrapins. It was a coup when Kevin Willard kept the big man from Baltimore in his home state, and Queen has delivered upon arrival. The 6' 10", 246-pound (at least) Queen has an intriguing combination of power and soft touch in the paint, averaging 16 points and 8.8 rebounds while making 59% of his two-point shots. He’s made only two three-pointers this season, which could at least give Willard a selling point for staying in school a second year to polish up his perimeter game.
Tre Johnson (25), Texas Longhorns. Only four freshmen have ever led the SEC in scoring, and two of them are all-time greats: Bernard King of the Tennessee Volunteers and Chris Jackson of the LSU Tigers. Johnson is on pace to become the fifth, averaging 19.8 per game to Johni Broome’s 18.1. He’s long and wiry at 6' 6" and 190 pounds, and increasingly assertive—he scored a career-high 30 points in a comeback win over Texas A&M last month, then topped that with 32 in a comeback win over Kentucky on Saturday. Texas will need more big games out of Johnson down the stretch to lock up an NCAA bid.
Egor Demin (26), BYU Cougars. He was the It Guy of November, arriving from Russia and immediately impressing everyone with his overall skill level as a 6' 9" point guard/forward. Then the competition increased, and his production and confidence decreased. Demin is making just 42.6% of his shots overall and 28% from three, but he’s still the go-to table-setter in the BYU offense, averaging 5.5 assists to go along with 11 points per game. This is a big week for Demin and the Cougars, with Kansas coming to Provo, Utah, on Tuesday and then a trip to Arizona on Saturday.
Tahaad Pettiford (27), Auburn Tigers. Bruce Pearl always gets his teams to play confidently, but Pettiford probably arrived on campus with sufficient confidence. The Jersey City product is never reluctant to take a big shot, and he made several in the final minutes of Auburn’s showdown with the Alabama Crimson Tide on Saturday in Tuscaloosa, Ala. Pettiford also scored 20 points in his first true college road game, which happened to be against Duke in Cameron Indoor Stadium.
Kasparas Jakucionis (28), Illinois Fighting Illini. Straight out of Lithuania, Jakucionis immediately became the hub of the Illini offense. His averages of 16.0 points, 5.5 rebounds and 5.0 assists put him in elite company nationally: If he can maintain those numbers, he will be the first freshman from a power conference since Markelle Fultz eight years ago to average 15-5-5. (Also, watch out for fellow freshman Will Riley, who is coming on fast. Riley averaged 18 points over Illinois’s last six games.)
VJ Edgecombe (29), Baylor. He’s leading the Bears in minutes (31.7), second in scoring (14.6), tied for second in assists (3.3), third in rebounds (5.3) and first in steals (2.2). Born and raised in the Bahamas, he didn’t come to the U.S. until he started high school and should have considerable upside. But as noted above, a struggling Baylor team needs him (and fellow freshman Robert Wright III) to be as good as they can be right now.
Liam McNeeley (30), UConn. He delivered what might be the most impressive non-Flagg freshman performance of the season last week at Creighton, racking up 38 points and 10 rebounds and allowing coach Dan Hurley to walk out of the gym crowing to a Bluejays fan, “Two rings, baldy!” McNeeley’s eight-game absence with an ankle injury set the Huskies back—but they’ve also lost two out of three since he returned. Regardless, UConn will need him to back up his coach’s mouth if it is going to make a serious run at a threepeat.
Jeremiah Fears (31), Oklahoma Sooners. He decommitted from Illinois in the summer of 2024, flipped to Oklahoma and nearly reclassified before staying in the Class of ’25. Fears’s fast start under Porter Moser helped the Sooners jump to a 13–0 record. Life has been harder in SEC play, with Fears’s scoring average dropping from 18.1 to 12.1 and his shooting accuracy decreasing 9% from two-point range and 5% from three. But he remains Oklahoma’s most vital player in pursuit of an NCAA bid after narrowly missing out last season.
Bailey and Harper, Rutgers. Both are mentioned above in the context of their struggling team, but the Nos. 2 and 3 recruits in the country are filling the stat sheet—Bailey leads the Scarlet Knights in scoring (18.6), rebounds (7.4) and blocks (1.2) and Harper leads in assists (4.0) and steals (1.1) while scoring 18.5 per game.
This Week in SEC Murder Ball
The SEC is the best league in America by a wide margin at this point, with as many as 13 teams crowding into some mock brackets, up to three No. 1 seeds and the top three teams in the AP poll this week. It’s a week-by-week brawl that The Minutes will track through the stretch run. Here are the highlight games this week in SEC Murder Ball:
Tuesday: Texas A&M Aggies at Mississippi State Bulldogs (32). Mississippi State is zigging while everyone else conventionally zags—the Bulldogs have won their last three road games and lost their last three at home. They’re hosting a veteran A&M team that keeps pulling out the close ones since giving away a game at Texas on Jan. 25. At 9–3 in the league, the Aggies are trying to keep hold of a top-four finish and SEC tourney double bye.
Wednesday: Alabama Crimson Tide at Missouri Tigers (33). This should be a breakneck track meet, matching two teams that love to play fast and fire up threes. Mizzou is 16–1 at home, but Alabama is 8–1 in true road games. The Tigers are in sole possession of fifth place at the moment at 8–4, one game behind Florida and Texas A&M.
Saturday: Tennessee Volunteers at Texas A&M (34). This is shaping up as a quien es mas macho battle on the glass and defensively. In league play, the Aggies lead the SEC in both offensive and defensive rebounding—and there figure to be a lot of second chances at both ends. Tennessee leads the league in overall defense and two-point field goal defense. Tennessee heads to College Station, Texas, off a week of rest, while A&M will be coming off that showdown in Starkville, Miss., on Tuesday.
Stock up: Florida Gators (35). Their four-game winning streak elevated them to a No. 1 seed in the selection committee’s early top 16 reveal Saturday. Florida followed up big road wins over Auburn and Mississippi State with significant personnel news, getting 7-footer Micah Handlogten back nearly a year after he broke his leg. Handlogten produced three rebounds, five assists, two blocks and two steals in 20 minutes in a win over the South Carolina Gamecocks.
Stock down: Oklahoma (36). The Sooners took the kind of loss a bubble team can’t afford—at home to 15th-place LSU—on Saturday. Oklahoma has now lost four in a row heading into a daunting trip to Florida on Tuesday. At their present rate, the Sooners figure to be one of the more strenuously debated bubble teams by the selection committee.
Minutes Shot of the Week
This masterpiece by the Oakland Grizzlies (37) may be the clutch sequence of the year. Down three to Detroit, junior forward Isaiah Jones stepped in to steal a pass with 14 seconds remaining. Jones drove into the frontcourt and passed to guard DQ Cole, who nearly launched but instead passed back to Jones, who then passed it once more back to Cole for the tying three.
Isaiah Jones intercepts the Titans' pass and plays keep away with DQ Cole (@Dqcole) who sinks the game tying 3 with 5.6 left. The crowd goes crazy and Oakland forces OT where they would win 93-83 over Detroit Mercy pic.twitter.com/R5duUR6FiO
— NCAA Buzzer Beaters & Game Winners (@NCAABuzzerBters) February 17, 2025
With 100 made threes in two years, Cole was definitely the right choice for the shot instead of Jones (26 threes in three seasons) jacking it up himself. But it took some patience and wherewithal to move the ball faster than the defense for the open look.
Oakland went on to win in overtime.
Coach Who Earned His Comp Car This Week
Tom Izzo (38), Michigan State Spartans. He’s now the winningest coach in Big Ten history, surpassing Bob Knight. Izzo’s 354th conference victory came Saturday at Illinois, not only making history but keeping the Spartans within a game of the Michigan Wolverines at the top of the league race. Michigan and Michigan State still have two games remaining against each other, Friday in Ann Arbor and March 9 in East Lansing. Relentlessly consistent, Izzo will take Michigan State to the NCAA tournament next month for the 27th consecutive time.
Coach Who Should Take the Bus to Work
Mike Rhoades (39), Penn State Nittany Lions. At the other end of the Big Ten standings we find Penn State, losers of seven in a row and 11 of the last 12. The Nittany Lions haven’t won a road game this season, and three of the last five are away from home. A Puff Johnson injury hurt, but that’s part of the game and not a blanket excuse for this collapse.
Buzzer Beater
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Forde Minutes: NCAA Tournament Expansion Talk Is Back and Worse Than Ever.
