The busiest week of college basketball’s opening two months is in the books, and per usual, there was a ton of moving and shaking.
Here are three of the biggest winners and three of the biggest losers from a jam-packed Feast Week:
Through nearly one month of play, there are 25 undefeated teams remaining in college basketball. Seven of those teams — Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Michigan State, Nebraska, Purdue and USC — play in the Big 10.
The Wolverines were arguably the biggest overall winner of Feast Week, rolling to the Players Era Festival championship in historic fashion.
As a result of their dominance in Vegas, the Wolverines are No. 1 in the first NET Rankings and are without question the “eyeball test” champions of the season’s first five weeks. But they weren’t alone in wowing the college basketball world during Thanksgiving Week.
Sure it was a depleted field, but winning the Maui Invitational still matters, and that’s exactly what USC did. The Trojans moved to 7-0 on the young season with consecutive wins over Boise State, Seton Hall and Arizona State.
Michigan State proved its triumphs over Arkansas and Kentucky weren’t flukes by hammering East Carolina by 33 and then topping No. 16 North Carolina by 16 to capture the championship at the Fort Myers Tip-Off.
Iowa beat Ole Miss and Grand Canyon to win the Acrisure Classic. Indiana pummeled Kansas State in its toughest test of the year to date. Top-ranked Purdue won by 47 in its only game of the week. Nebraska extended the nation’s longest winning streak to 12 games.
So, yeah, pretty solid week for the Big 10.
Belief that Florida could follow UConn’s lead and repeat as national champion this season took another early hit on Thursday with an 84-80 loss to unranked TCU at the Rady Children’s Invitational in San Diego. The Gators then followed that performance up with a less than stellar win over Providence in the event’s consolation game a day later.
While the case can still easily be made that Florida has the best frontcourt in America, the play of the Gator backcourt continues to be troubling. Point guard Boogie Fland’s shooting numbers are woeful, and his assist rate isn’t anywhere near where it was last season when he was a freshman at Arkansas. Perhaps more worrisome is the play of prized Princeton transfer Xaivian Lee, who is averaging 9.0 ppg, shooting 26.7 percent from the field, and simply has not look cut out for this level of basketball.
The Gators have two massive opportunities — this Tuesday against Duke and next Tuesday against UConn — to prove that concern over how they looked in November was an overreaction.
The A-10 sent more than two teams to the NCAA Tournament for 11 consecutive years between 2007-08 and 2017-18. It hasn’t sent more than two teams to the NCAA Tournament in any season.
That could be about to change.
The A-10 has eight teams in the top 100 of the first NET Rankings, which were released on Monday morning. That’s three more than the Big East and four more than the Mountain West.
George Mason, although relatively untested, is 8-0 and has the nation’s second-longest active winning streak. Dayton blasted previously unbeaten Georgetown and nearly knocked off No. 9 BYU to win the ESPN Events Invitational. The Flyers are now 6-2 with their lone losses coming against the Cougars and at Cincinnati. VCU has three losses to quality opponents (Vanderbilt, Utah State and NC State) and a pair of impressive wins over Virginia Tech and South Florida. George Washington, Saint Louis and Rhode Island have also pieced together non-conference resumes have them in the top 65 of the NET.
If the conference can avoid eating itself in January and February, this should be the first time in what feels like ages that the A-10 won’t need a bid thief to win its conference tournament in order to send multiple teams to the Big Dance.
Aztec fans were irate when San Diego State didn’t pop up in anyone’s preseason top 25 a month ago. Their main point of contention was that Brian Dutcher was returning 76.2 percent of his scoring from a team that won 21 games and earned an 11-seed in the NCAA Tournament last season.
SDSU has not done a good job of making its detractors look silly thus far.
Already hurting from a double overtime home loss to Troy the week before, the Aztecs went 1-2 at the Players Era Festival in Las Vegas. A nice win over a reeling Oregon team was sandwiched in between a 40-point loss to Michigan and a 10-point loss to Baylor.
San Diego State sits all the way down at No. 123 in the first NET Rankings. While it’s incredibly early to be talking about such things, it is notable the Aztecs only have one non-conference game left — a semi-away contest against Arizona on Dec. 20 — that could really bolster their resume before starting league play in a Mountain West Conference that isn’t going to provide as many opportunities for quality Ws as it has in the past.
Winner: Duke/Cameron Boozer
The biggest college basketball game of Thanksgiving Day was Duke’s 80-71 triumph over Arkansas at the United Center in Chicago. The Blue Devils actually trailed by seven with just over 10 minutes to play, but seemed to make every big play down the stretch to pull away and win fairly comfortably.
The game also marked the biggest performance of the season so far from freshman superstar Cameron Boozer, who scored 35 points and grabbed 9 rebounds inside the same building where his dad, Carlos, played for the Chicago Bulls for four seasons.
Boozer’s numbers have been spectacular all season long, but it was notable that his worst performances had come against the two most talented teams (Kansas and Texas) that Duke had played before their matchup with the Razorbacks. Any concerns about Boozer’s ability to finish over length or compete with elite athletes was heavily silenced on Thanksgiving night. This wasn’t just an outrageous statistical performance, it may have been the first major step towards a Wooden Award.
The Golden Eagles’ tough start to 2025-26 continued on Friday with a brutal 75-74 loss to Oklahoma in Chicago. The defeat dropped Marquette to 4-4 and marked the first time in the 109-year history of the program that it has lost four games before the month of December.
A year ago, Shaka Smart was being hailed as a shining example of how to achieve roster retention and culture continuity in this age of perpetual turnover. Now he’s being widely referenced as a cautionary tale when it comes to the dangers of not embracing the transfer portal.
