A latecomer's intro to an awesome college hoops season

The South's got something to say and we're back in the 1-and-done era.

Typically, my college basketball season starts after the Super Bowl. This is not a zing about how November, December, and January are pointless in college basketball–it’s just that my job was always to write about football until football ended, then spend the next month cramming.

This year, I got to set my own schedule. As a college basketball junkie, that means I dove into hoops way earlier than I’ve gotten to in recent years—and it’s been incredible. The ball is good, as scoring is at its highest per-game average in over 30 years. The stories are fun, as a ton of non-traditional schools are having great seasons and should be contenders down the stretch. And I’ve got my eye on some Cinderellas who should be able to make a run in March—over the coming weeks, I’ll dive deeper into my favorite storylines on here.

But for now, here’s a brief overview of what’s been great about this season.

The SEC is basketball country now

They’re hooping in Footballia. The SEC got zero teams into the college football national championship, but the conference is arguably the best men’s college basketball conference of all time. And it’s not even a realignment thing! A bunch of programs in the land of linemen have all shifted into hoops mode at the same time.

If you’re just diving into the season, you’ve come just in time for one of the best men’s regular-season college basketball games of all time: Saturday’s matchup between top-ranked Auburn and #2 Alabama: The IBOB. (That’s the Iron Bowl Of Basketball.)

If you rolled your eyes at the “best regular-season college basketball game of all time,” read Matt Norlander’s piece at CBS Sports about IBOB-mania. 1-2 matchups are pretty rare—the last one was in 2021, the last one between schools from the same conference was in 2016. Ken Pomeroy’s “thrill score” gives Auburn-Alabama its highest rating of all time, since the two teams are also #1 and #2 in offensive rating. And that doesn’t even factor in that it’s Auburn and Alabama, two schools that already hate each other and are figuring out a new, exciting way to do it.

And if you rolled your eyes at “best college basketball conference of all time,” here are the facts. Five of the top eight teams in the AP Poll are from the SEC: #1 Auburn, #2Alabama, #4 Florida, #5 Tennessee, and #8 Texas A&M. (I’m personally pulling hardest for Tennessee, led by 5-foot-9 senior point guard Zakai Ziegler, because I believe college basketball is at its purest when pipsqueak point guards from New York take over the sport. Shoutout to Markquis Nowell!) Four more teams—Kentucky, Ole Miss, Missouri, and Mississippi State—are also ranked.

The record for most teams from one conference in the NCAA Tournament is 11; there are currently 14 SEC teams in Joe Lunardi’s latest bracket projection and the Bracket Matrix. Every game is a banger. The lowest-ranked team in the league in Ken Pomeroy’s rankings is LSU, which is still the 82nd-best team in the country. The two men’s teams not projected to make the NCAA Tournament are South Carolina and LSU… which both have top-5 women’s teams. So basically, the whole conference is good at basketball.

Why did an entire region of the country suddenly realize it’s more fun to watch someone dunk a basketball than it is to spend 364 days of the year dreaming about beating Georgia before losing to Georgia? Who knows, but it’s gotta be pretty nice having two things to call into Finebaum about.

Women’s hoops has gone Hollywood

OK, so this was supposed to be an entry about how UCLA was college basketball’s last undefeated team. But last night, USC’s JuJu Watkins had a legendary performance in the crosstown rivalry game, putting up 38 points, 11 rebounds, and eight blocks. Watkins is the only player in college basketball history (men’s or women’s!) with a statline of 35 points, 10 rebounds, five blocks, and five threes. (The only pro player to do it is Kristaps Porzingis.)

The whole thing was pretty similar to what I expect from Alabama-Auburn tomorrow—a special atmosphere for a great game between two killer teams from two rivals discovering something new.

UCLA is now 23-1 with a win over defending champs South Carolina; USC is 22-2 with a win over UConn. They’re ranked #1 and #6 for now, although they’ll probably be something like #3 and #4 in the next poll. They’re in the Big Ten now, so teams fly in from the Midwest, get their asses kicked by one, then get their asses kicked by the other two days later, and fly home.

This rivalry feels right. USC and UCLA were two of the first schools to have success in the early days of women’s college hoops, with the Bruins winning the 1978 AIAW national championship and Cheryl Miller leading USC to championships in two of the first three NCAA women’s tournaments in 1983 and 1984. But it’s been a long time since either program was a legit contender. Last year, USC made their first run to the Elite Eight since 1994—they hadn’t even won a tournament game since 2006. UCLA has made more tournament appearances than USC in recent decades, but still has never made a Final Four.

They’ve got a rematch in Westwood in two weeks, and we can expect this rivalry to stay good through next year. Watkins is a sophomore, so she’s not eligible for the next WNBA Draft, and UCLA’s star, center Lauren Betts, is planning to stick around for another year to play with her sister, Sienna, the #2-ranked recruit in the class of 2025. Good job by Hollywood quickly greenlighting a second season of this show.

Salute the Flagg

It’s time to get back to the good ol’ days of college hoops. In recent years, fans have become bored as well-constructed rosters of upperclassmen have won championships for programs like UConn, Baylor, and Virginia. We must hearken back to the One-and-Done Era, glory days that everybody remembers fondly.

Duke’s Cooper Flagg is having the best season by a freshman since Zion Williamson. Flagg is the heavy favorite to be the #1 pick in the NBA Draft, the slightly-less-heavy-but-still-heavy national player of the year and Duke is the light favorite to win the NCAA Tournament. Here’s his most recent outing, a casual 27-point, 5-rebound, 3-steal performance against Cal. (Classic ACC matchup.)

Flagg is a do-everything prospect who somehow anchors one of the best teams in the country without ever seeming like their focal point. He’s not the greatest at anything yet, and he doesn’t need to be, because right now, his talent level is high enough that he just glides over opponents. It’s fascinating to watch him figure out what type of player he wants to become—and frustrating to watch him do it for Duke. It’s a perfect college basketball dichotomy.

UConn (probably) isn’t 3-peating

It kinda seemed like UConn men’s basketball had become an unstoppable basketball machine over the past two years. They cruised to a national championship in 2023, then lost three of five starters and their two leading scorers, and cruised to another national championship in 2024. It was less about building around one elite talent and more about smartly built rosters and exceptional development. How many in a row could they reel off?

I think the answer is “two.” These Huskies are clearly a rung below the last two years, currently out of the AP Top 25 and currently projected as an 8-seed per the Bracket Matrix. Their defense has dropped from 4th to 97th on Kenpom—apparently, “having a 7-foot-2 guy” was a key part of UConn’s success. It feels like UConn’s hopes of winning a national title rest on the women’s team and Paige Bueckers, who returned for a fourth year and has the Huskies sitting at 22-3, good for seventh in the AP Poll.

But who knows. Two years ago, UConn was 16-6 and had lost six of their last eight games. Then March came, and they figured everything out. Now, they’re 17-7 and have lost four of their last nine. So basically, nothing I wrote here matters and UConn is going to win it all in a few weeks anyway.