College basketball’s Feast Week is always chaotic, but this year’s action took things to another level. Five top-10 men’s teams in the previous week’s AP poll lost games, with four of those five dropping games to unranked opponents. UConn’s disastrous 0–3 trip to the Maui Invitational got most of the headlines, but Gonzaga losing to West Virginia, Houston falling to San Diego State and Alabama dropping a game to Oregon all were surprising results. And that’s not even mentioning brutal weeks for teams with high preseason expectations like Arizona, North Carolina and Creighton.
Which teams’ bad Thanksgiving weeks were an ominous sign for things to come and which will we look back on as a blip? Here’s a look at Sports Illustrated’s concern level for several top teams.
UConn Huskies
Feast Week Damage: Losses to the Memphis Tigers, Colorado Buffaloes and Dayton Flyers
The machine the UConn program had been for the last two years put out an all-systems failure in Maui, so much so that Dan Hurley indicated he’d never play in another tournament like it again as long as he’s at UConn. Some of that has to do with separate financial realities that make heading to Maui less attractive, but UConn’s on-court collapse over three days makes a compelling case for why plenty of coaches no longer want to play these three-games-in-three-days formats anymore. After an overtime loss to Memphis on Nov. 25, things went absolutely off the rails, losing to a Colorado team picked near the bottom of the Big 12 on Nov. 26 and getting smoked by Atlantic 10 foe Dayton on Wednesday. UConn isn’t nearly as bad as it showed in Hawaii, but make no mistake, the Huskies have clear flaws.
The most obvious pain point is on defense, where every fear about the Huskies’ ability to remain elite on that end in a world without Donovan Clingan came true and more. Not only did UConn’s center duo of Samson Johnson and Tarris Reed Jr. struggle with foul trouble, but UConn’s perimeter defense was a sieve. Transfer guard Aidan Mahaney and sophomore Solo Ball were a rough watch on that end of the floor, but their replacements (Hassan Diarra and Jayden Ross) aren’t nearly as reliable on the offensive end. Hurley has been an elite defensive coach dating back to his time at Rhode Island, so I’d bet on UConn finding a way to improve on that end of the floor even if it’s not quite up to the Huskies’ lofty standard.
The other significant concern was point guard play. Hurley invested a lot in Diarra, who had backed up Tristen Newton the last two years, as the Huskies’ answer at that spot, but his limitations are evident. Mahaney was excellent at Saint Mary’s on the offensive end, but is more combo guard than true point guard and was at times unplayable in Maui. Hurley now seems intent on force-feeding minutes to freshman Ahmad Nowell, but that doesn’t seem likely to save UConn’s season.
Is UConn an NCAA tournament team? Yes. How much more they are than that remains to be seen, but a third straight national title feels very far away at the moment.
Concern Meter: 6/10
Arizona Wildcats
Feast Week Damage: Losses to the Oklahoma Sooners and West Virginia Mountaineers
At 3–4, Arizona is under .500 in the month of December for the first time since Sean Miller’s first season in 2009–10. The schedule hasn’t been easy, but that’s still quite the shock given how high the expectations were in the preseason and how consistently excellent Arizona has been under Tommy Lloyd. And while each loss individually is explainable, losing all four is well worth the alarm bells.
Arizona’s most obvious flaw is its lack of shooting on the offensive end. Arizona is shooting just 26% from deep in its four losses, and that number is more a personnel issue than cold shooting that will eventually turn around. Starting bruising guards Jaden Bradley and KJ Lewis in the backcourt, a 4-man who made just 12 threes last season in Trey Townsend and a non-shooting center (either Motiejus Krivas or Tobe Awaka) was a spacing concern on paper that has come to fruition. That’s less of an issue against overmatched buy-game opponents that Arizona can overwhelm physically, but the Wildcats get bogged down quickly in the halfcourt against teams with comparable athleticism.
If you’re going to play such a bruising, athleticism-first lineup, you’d hope you’d at least be elite on the defensive end. Instead, Arizona has been outside the top 150 nationally defensively against top-100 teams, per T-Rank. The Wildcats foul too much, aren’t turning teams over at a high rate and have given up a ton of threes early on. Losing neutral-court games to Oklahoma and West Virginia this past week is a big concern given what Arizona is staring down come Big 12 play. Missing the NCAA tournament isn’t off the table.
Concern Meter: 9/10
North Carolina Tar Heels
Feast Week Damage: Losses to the Auburn Tigers and Michigan State Spartans
Given the Tar Heels trailed by 21 early in the second half of their Maui Invitational opener against Dayton, North Carolina is lucky to have escaped the island with at least one win. The Heels’ three star guards have all lived up to preseason expectations and more, but the rest of the roster has lagged behind and created some serious liabilities.
North Carolina has given up at least 1.15 points per possession in all four games against top-100 teams this season, a largely unsustainable number if the Heels have hopes of a deep run in March. The root cause of those defensive woes is UNC’s lack of size: Its center position platoon of Jalen Washington and Ven-Allen Lubin is not befitting of a blueblood like Carolina, and the only other player over 6' 6" in the regular rotation is inconsistent PF Jae’Lyn Withers.
Meanwhile, transfer combo forward Cade Tyson (Belmont) has been a bust, falling out of the Heels’ rotation entirely in Maui, while five-star freshmen Ian Jackson and Drake Powell have had uneven starts to the season. Powell’s 18 points against Michigan State could be a building-block performance, and he possesses a lot of defensive upside if he can earn big minutes consistently.
The floor here is quite high given how good UNC’s guards are, but the ceiling appears capped given the poor frontcourt play and porous defense.
Concern Meter: 7/10
Houston Cougars
Feast Week Damage: Losses to the Alabama Crimson Tide and San Diego State Aztecs
Two of Houston’s three losses (Alabama, Auburn) are on neutral courts to elite teams. But for a program that hasn’t lost more than six games in a season since 2019–20, the Cougars’ 4–3 start is sure to set off alarm bells. If nothing else, it’s an early sign that replacing Jamal Shead at point guard wasn’t as easy as hoped.
The core of Houston basketball under Kelvin Sampson has been utter dominance of the glass and the turnover battle. Houston’s still quite good in those categories, but is showing some cracks from its usual complete takeover of both categories. The Cougars gave up 20 offensive rebounds against Alabama, 14 against San Diego State and tied Auburn on the glass. Houston also wasn’t quite as disruptive in those games, forcing no more than 15 turnovers in any of those three and just seven against SDSU. If you can play Houston to a largely level playing field on the backboards and turnover margin, you have a real chance to beat the Cougars, and that’s what teams have done so far.
Those more even games are where the Shead effect really came in: The Cougars’ longtime star point guard was an elite disruptor who won his team plenty of extra possessions and lived in the paint offensively. Oklahoma transfer Milos Uzan has been solid but not spectacular thus far, and neither LJ Cryer nor Emanuel Sharp is off to a particularly hot start from beyond the arc.
Houston should be the fairly clear favorite in its next 11 games after this rough-and-tumble start, and the Cougars are still in KenPom’s top five, so the sky is certainly not falling. But early on, Houston doesn’t look quite as dominant as some expected.
Concern Meter: 3/10
Arkansas Razorbacks
Feast Week Damage: Loss to the Illinois Fighting Illini
Arkansas’s loss to a ranked Illinois team doesn’t raise the same alarm bells on paper as some of the other teams on this list, but the film from that game is pretty concerning for the Razorbacks’ outlook going forward. And given the Hogs’ light nonconference schedule, Arkansas’s early-season struggles against good teams could set it up poorly on Selection Sunday.
Illinois is one of the most potent ball-screen offenses in the country, but watching Arkansas get absolutely torched for 40 minutes with no real adjustments Thursday was rather concerning. Getting Tennessee transfer Jonas Aidoo back to full health eventually would help the defense, but playing this collection of smaller guards this much does seem likely to tank the Hogs defense some. Beyond ball-screen defense, Arkansas’s highly touted transfer guards in D.J. Wagner and Johnell Davis have struggled. Wagner has a higher turnover rate than assist rate, hasn’t been overly efficient and is still an inconsistent three-point shooter, while Davis was very quiet against Illinois and has scored in double figures just twice in seven games to start the season.
If Arkansas isn’t an elite three-point shooting team, isn’t particularly good on the boards and struggles to defend in ball screens, what are the Razorbacks? In the loaded SEC, wins won’t be particularly easy to come by. It’s early, but this looks far more like a mid-pack squad in college basketball’s best conference than a contender.
Concern Meter: 6/10
A Few Notes on the Net
The NCAA debuted its first NET rankings of the year Monday. The Tennessee Volunteers came in at No. 1, with fellow SEC foe Auburn at No. 2 and the Gonzaga Bulldogs, Duke Blue Devils and Pittsburgh Panthers rounding out the top five. These rankings are very much still based on a small sample size and shouldn’t be read into too heavily, but a few thoughts on what the initial rankings might mean:
- The ACC and Big East each had slow starts to the season that were reflected in the first rankings. Seven of the ACC’s 18 teams found themselves outside the top 100, while four of the Big East’s 11 were ranked 100-plus on Monday. If those numbers don’t improve, significant portions of those leagues’ conference slates will be “land mine” games that do little to help you if you win, but hurt a lot if you lose.
- On the other side of the coin is the SEC’s outright dominance of the first month. Fifteen of the SEC’s 16 teams are ranked No. 62 or better, meaning that all but one road trip in the league (South Carolina Gamecocks) is solidly in Quad 1 range at present. That’s a recipe for a ton of NCAA tournament bids.
- Some early signs of optimism for mid-majors hoping to crash the March party: The Mountain West has five in the top 75 of the initial rankings, with five more Atlantic 10 and four from the WCC also in that initial 75. Add in the UC Irvine Anteaters at No. 24 and a few other impressive presumed one-bid league teams, and there looks like a path early on for several at-larges outside the high-major ranks.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Men’s College Basketball Panic Meter After Feast Week Flops.
