Last Night in College Basketball: Ranked Matchups Galore, and a Syracuse Upset

Men’s college basketball, women’s college basketball – there’s no shortage of college ball, every night.

Don’t worry, we’re here to help you figure out what you missed but shouldn’t have. Here are all the best moments from last night in college basketball.

Duke beats Florida, 67-66

College basketball made up for Monday’s limited schedule in no time flat: Tuesday featured a number of games that came down to the wire between ranked teams, as well as a huge upset of one ranked squad, but we’ll get to that. First! No. 4 Duke barely escaped No. 15 Florida, with an Isaiah Evans 3-pointer with 21 seconds left — and steals by both Caleb Foster and Maliq Brown at 4 seconds and 1 second remaining, respectively — sealed the W for them over the Gators.

While Florida might have lost, this defeat is still significant for them: they were upset by TCU during Feast Week, and while they eventually handled Providence in their follow-up game, they had an iffy lead at halftime and looked vulnerable. Losing to the No. 4 team in the nation by a single point is a better sign for them than one convincing half against Providence, as far as Florida’s place in the top 25 and confidence that they’re not going to just keep slipping down the rankings goes.

Sophomore guard Evans scored 13 on the day, with freshman Cameron Boozer leading all scorers with 29 — Boozer also picked up the assist on the game-winning three to Evans. Neither team shot particularly well, especially not on 3-pointers — Florida was 7-for-28 while Duke was 7-for-26 — so they instead spent most of their time scoring in the paint, where the Gators won the rebound battle. Duke won the war as it were, however, but maybe we’ll see these teams get a rematch down the line. And maybe next time, Duke won’t have two — not one, but two! — players with 5 blocks each helping to shut Florida down: both sophomore center Patrick Ngongba II and Evans managed that feat.

North Carolina just makes it past Kentucky

No. 16 North Carolina went on the road and defeated No. 18 Kentucky on Tuesday, 67-64, thanks to two late buckets from Derek Dixon. The freshman guard, coming off the bench, scored 9 points in his 21 minutes, including a 3-pointer with 53 seconds left to give UNC the lead, 64-62, and then a layup with 16 seconds remaining to put them ahead for good, 66-64. A huge effort off the bench when it was needed, as North Carolina’s starters played well, but none of them fully took control of the game, with junior center Henri Veesaar — who scored a game-high 17 points and pulled down 10 rebounds — coming the closest. 

Another highlight: Kentucky missed 13 attempts in a row in the second half, which is the kind of thing that is just going to eat at that team every time they see that they lost by all of 3 points: from 11:58 remaining in the second half when Otega Oweh missed a jump shot to the 2:43 mark, when he made a layup, all of Kentucky’s points came via free throws. UNC took the lead during that time — albeit barely — and it put them in position to win in the end.

Syracuse upset Tennessee

Tennessee entered the game ranked No. 13 in the nation, but you have to imagine that’s going to change after losing to Syracuse on Tuesday. The Orange came into the game 4-3, and without receiving a single vote in the poll this week: now they’re 5-3, and the Volunteers are 7-2 with a road loss to an unranked opponent. 

There was no big, dramatic, game-winning shot here with time expiring: instead, Syracuse hit a pair of free throws late, on two different fouls, to go up first 61-60 and then 62-60. There was drama right at the end, though: freshman forward Nate Ament missed a layup for Tennessee right before time expired, and Syracuse snagged the defensive rebound, ensuring there would not be a second chance shot.

Senior guard Nate Kingz led the Orange in points with 19, while pulling down 7 rebounds and adding a block and steal each. The starters held this thing down: just three players even appeared off the Syracuse bench, for a grand total of 38 minutes, while all but one starter appeared for at least 33 minutes, and four of five scored at least 10 points. 

Kansas can’t beat UConn without Peterson

Star freshman Darryn Peterson once again sat out recovering from a hamstring injury, which meant that No. 21 Kansas had to take on No. 5 Duke without him. They kept it close, but they couldn’t pull off the dub, and instead lost 61-56.

It also didn’t help that UConn’s own freshman and top recruit, Braylon Mullins, is finally healthy. And he sure looked the part on Tuesday.

Mullins, coming off of the bench, played 23 minutes and racked up a game-high 17 points with 5 rebounds and a steal. Not every shot was as pretty as the above, but how could they be? That whole sequence sang. UConn was ranked fifth in the country without Mullins playing, but their already significant depth is going to be that much stronger if they can bring him in off of the bench to spell their starters, and ride him when he’s feeling it like he was on Tuesday.

10 threes. 10!

Drake’s junior guard, the 6-foot-7 Braden Appelhans, isn’t known for his scoring. The New Mexico transfer came into the year with a 3.3 career-high in points per game, and had as many single-digit scoring nights as he had double-digit ones this year prior to Tuesday’s game against Western Illinois. He exploded for 30 points there, though, and did it by shooting 10-for-14 on 3-pointers, while adding 3 rebounds and 2 assists to that eye-opening number.

He had just 15 3-pointers all season before the game, and now he’s averaging 10.8 points per game while leading the Missouri Valley Conference in 3-point percentage, at 49%. He is a career 43% 3-point shooter, for what it’s worth — he just didn’t have many attempts. He’s probably going to be encouraged to take a few more deep shots after Tuesday, though.

Appelhans wasn’t your point leader, though

That would instead be SIU Edwardsville’s Ring Malith. The 6-foot-9 senior guard set a new career-high with 31 points, which also led all Division-I scorers on Tuesday, and added 10 rebounds, 2 assists, steals and blocks each, as well. While Malith was just 2-for-7 on threes, he made up for it with 9-for-11 free-throw shooting. 

Malith got to SIU Edwardsville last year after two years of junior college ball, and scored 11.1 points per game in 30.9 minutes per game. This year, he’s up to 16.2 points per game, and has scored over 20 points on three occasions and over 30 on one — he ranks fourth in the Ohio Valley Conference in PPG, behind Southern Indiana’s Ismail Habib and a pair of shooters from Tennessee State.

An almost perfect night of basketball

Long Island University’s Kadidia Toure, in some respects, had one hell of a night. The junior transfer from Arizona State had 14 points and D-I’s high for the night with 15 rebounds, while adding an assist, 2 steals and a block to those impressive figures.

Toure also had 8 turnovers, however, which also, regrettably, led D-I on Tuesday. And while that wasn’t the only reason that LIU lost to Rider, 58-43, it certainly didn’t help matters. Rider scored 8 points off of turnovers, with LIU making 13 in total — that canceled out a bit, as Rider also made 13 turnovers with the Sharks scoring 8 points off of them, but it’s not difficult to envision the game going a little bit differently if LIU had been able to control the ball a bit better. 

Of course, Toure can’t be blamed too much here: she led D-I in rebounds and had a team-high 14 points while being the only player to reach double-digit scoring. Someone has to step up to help her out there to get a different outcome.

Smith’s no-look overhead pass

Now that’s a pretty play by Purdue senior guard Braden Smith.

You know you’ve done well when the opposing crowd — in this case, Rutgers — is audibly impressed by it. No. 1 Purdue would win this Big Ten matchup, 81-65, moving to 8-0 in the process, while Rutgers fell to 5-4. 

Fears to Carr

Speaking of pretty plays, Michigan State’s Jeremy Fears and Coen Carr sure do work well together. 

No. 7 Michigan State took care of Iowa, 71-52, in another Big Ten matchup. The Spartans are now 8-0 on the season, while the Hawkeyes were handed their first loss and are 7-1. There’s no shame in losing to Michigan State right now, though, not with the way they have been playing.

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