Last Night in College Basketball: Iowa State Ended Arizona State's Season in Rout

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Iowa State crushes Arizona State in Big 12 tourney

Arizona State’s season is over — as is the era of coach Bobby Hurley — thanks to defeat at the hands of No. 7 Iowa State. The two faced off in the second round of the Big 12 tournament, and the Cyclones made life difficult for the Sun Devils out of the gate. When the first half ended, Iowa State was already up by 29 points, 45-16. Things got better from there for Arizona State, in the sense it scored 26 points in the second half, but the damage was done: the Sun Devils were routed, 91-42, against a rested Iowa State team that ended up giving 12 different players minutes and shot 51%.

Arizona State, meanwhile, shot 32% and went just 1-for-19 on 3-point attempts — if not for shooting 11-for-12 on free throws, the Sun Devils would have somehow lost by even more. They turned the ball over 23 times, with Iowa State converting those into 25 points, were outrebounded and outscored in the paint, 44-25. Yes, Iowa State had more points in the paint than Arizona State had points total.

The Sun Devils were already teetering on the wrong side of the bubble before this defeat, with a Wins Above Bubble ranking of 56 and score of -0.53. A win against Iowa State — ranked 8th in the NCAA Evaluation Tool, or NET — would have pushed Arizona State into positive territory and onto the correct side of the bubble, but instead, its season is over now, that fact being recognized by the school’s decision to publicly announce that it would not bring its coach back before waiting to hear what the Selection Committee has to say about March.

As for Iowa State, it’s as good as anyone in the Big 12, but the chaos of the conference had it playing in the second round as the 5-seed. Next up is 4-seed Texas Tech in the quarterfinals on Thursday, which defeated the Cyclones on Feb. 28, 82-73, but then lost its next two games against unranked opponents. See? Chaos.

BYU downs West Virginia

One of the teams that Texas Tech lost to in the final week of the season was BYU, which slipped in the rankings and in the quality of its play after losing senior Richie Saunders for the rest of the season to an ACL tear. The 10-seed Cougars took out Kansas State in the first round of the Big 12 tournament on Tuesday, thanks to freshman forward AJ Dybantsa scoring a freshman tournament-record 40 points, and then faced off against 7-seed West Virginia on Wednesday. While Dybantsa wasn’t all-world this time around, he still scored a game-high 27 points on 11-for-24 shooting with 7 rebounds, 3 assists and 2 steals. The 20-point outing gave Dybantsa 26 for the season, tied for the second-most in Big 12 history for a freshman with Michael Beasley, and behind only Kevin Durant per ESPN Insights.

He also had help in the form of junior forward Kennard Davis Jr., who scored 20 points, and BYU’s defense showed up for the first time in too long, as well: the Mountaineers shot just 38% and made 22 turnovers, while West Virginia couldn’t crack the Cougars’ defense in the paint, scoring just 20 points there.

BYU now faces its first true test of the tournament — no offense to K-State or the Mountaineers — in the form of 2-seed Houston, which is also the No. 5 team in the nation and still fighting for a top-line seed in March Madness. BYU is going to get into The Big Dance regardless of how it finishes in the Big 12 tournament, but whether it can actually do damage in March is up for discussion — how it plays against Houston will provide some definitive insight.

Idaho men and women win Starch Madness

Idaho’s women defeated Montana State in the Big Sky championship on Wednesday, earning its first spot in March Madness in a decade in the process. The Vandals dominated in conference play this season, going 17-1 to earn the top seed in the Big Sky, but here they came up against the Montana State Bobcats, themselves 16-2 in the regular season and the 2-seed. Oh, and the only team to beat Idaho in Big Sky play this season: 99-66, back on Jan. 10.

Things were very different this time around. The Bobcats offense did not run all over Idaho, but instead, they were held to just 35% shooting and rarely fouled to help make up for that. Sophomore guard Taylee Chirrick, who averaged 17.8 points, 6.9 rebounds and 3.6 assists per game in 2025-2026, was held to 12, 3 and 3 here, with the points and assists leading Montana State.

Idaho didn’t put up eye-popping offensive numbers, either, but shot 44% and outrebounded Montana State 37-26 while, again, keeping fouls to a minimum. What the Vandals did poorly, though, was hold onto the ball: they turned it over 19 times, and Montana State stayed in the game as well as it did thanks to converting those into 22 points. Idaho was able to hang on despite this significant issue, though, and won 60-57, and this despite being held to just 7 points in the fourth quarter.

The women’s team then hung around the arena to see Idaho’s men take on Montana in the other title game. While Idaho’s women last played in March Madness in 2016, the men haven’t participated since 1990. And they were not favorites like the women, either: the men’s team entered Starch Madness as the 7-seed, and had to defeat 8-seed Sacramento State, 2-seed Montana State and 3-seed Eastern Washington State just to get to this point. In its fourth game in five days, Idaho faced 4-seed Montana, which had defeated 1-seed Portland State the day before. Idaho would win thanks to a dominant second half, 77-66, and punch a ticket to its first March Madness in nearly four decades.

Senior guard Isaiah Brickner led all scorers with 23 points and secured a double-double by grabbing 10 rebounds, too. While he didn’t quite strike a blow against nominative determinism by going 7-for-17 from the field, Brickner made up for that at the stripe with an 8-for-10 performance, and Idaho better capitalized on turnovers than Montana did, leading to 14 points there. What truly helped the Vandals to their first conference championship in ages, though, was the rebounding: outrebounding the Grizzlies 42-28, and picking up 13 offensive boards, helped end dozens of possessions and extend others.

The only way either Idaho squad — or any team from Big Sky — was making it to March Madness was through the conference championship. That both got there after extended absences — a significantly longer extended absence in the case of Idaho’s men — makes it that much more impressive that it happened at all. Next up, Selection Sunday, to see where these two slot into the field.

McNeese wins Southland auto bid

While the Cowgirls advanced in Southland’s tournament with a convincing win over UTRGV, McNeese’s Cowboys have already come out of the conference tournament as its champions. McNeese, the 2-seed, took on top-seed SFA in a final that was just never close. The Cowboys were up 42-25 at the half, and while both teams scored 34 points in the second, that did nothing to erase the deficit that the Lumberbacks found themselves in after the first 20 minutes.

Senior guard Javohn Garcia was at the center of the Cowboys’ offense, scoring a game-high 31 points on 11-for-18 shooting that included 5 3-pointers. He also pulled down 5 rebounds with 3 steals and a pair of blocks. Two other starters combined for 35 more points, and while the bench had just one bucket on 1-for-7 shooting, it added another 15 rebounds to help McNeese hold the advantage there, too.

This is McNeese’s third conference championship in a row, after going two decades between trips to the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. It is, however, the Cowboys’ first title under coach Bill Armstrong, who took over for this season after the previous coach, Will Wade, left for a job at North Carolina State.

The 1-seed Cowgirls, by the way, face SFA’s 3-seed Ladyjacks on Thursday for Southland’s women’s title.

Lehigh defeats BU for Patriot League title

Regardless of whether it was Lehigh or Boston University winning the Patriot League championship, the result was the automatic bid going to a team that had not been to the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament in some time. The 2-seed Mountain Hawks last participated in 2012, while the 4-seed Terriers last made it in 2011 while a member of America East — while BU won the Patriot League title in 2020, that was also the year The Big Dance was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Lehigh was in full control by the end of the first half, outscoring BU 41-30. Things went much better for the Terriers in the second, as they better limited the Mountain Hawks’ offense, but they still couldn’t narrow the gap any, and lost 74-60. BU shot just 38% from the field and went 1-for-16 from 3 — it’s difficult to catch up when you can’t hit from deep. Sophomore forward Ben Defty, a 7-footer from Germany, scored a game-high 21 points for the Terriers on 8-for-11 shooting, but the rest of the team went 12-for-42, or 29%. 

Lehigh gave the Terriers plenty of opportunities, as it shot 44% — better, but not outstanding — and fouled often enough to send BU to the line 23 times, but with no long game to speak of, even BU controlling the paint (34-20) wasn’t enough to make the game close. Lehigh at one point led by 22, and was on top for 88% of the 40 minutes — the game was never quite as close as the final score suggests, and it’s the Mountain Hawks that get to go dancing this year.

Big West tourney opens up with a winner

Cal State Fullerton took on Cal State Northridge in the first round of the Big West women’s tournament on Wednesday, and Titans’ sophomore forward Cristina Jones made sure it was one to remember. She scored 32 points on 10-for-26 shooting in 38 minutes, pulling down 14 rebounds with 5 assists and 5 steals, along with 12-for-15 free-throw shooting: this gave her the top GameScore of the night in women’s and men’s Division I college basketball, at 29.9.

It’s a good thing Jones was money from the line, as her 10-for-26 night from the field was actually better than the average for Cal State Fullerton — the rest of the Titans went 13-for-44, or 29.5%, and shot 68% from the line.

The final score of 80-65, with the Titans winning, makes it look like the game was never that close, but it was Jones having a more pedestrian night away from being a real problem, considering how the rest of the Cal State Fullerton offense looked. The 5-seed Titans advance to take on 4-seed Hawaii on Thursday, while 3-seed UC Davis faces 7-seed UC Riverside in the other half of the quarterfinals. The 1- and 2-seeds, UC Irvine and UC San Diego, await in the semifinals for the winners of those matchups.

Oh, and one more thing: a halfcourt buzzer beater to end a very competitive first quarter:

Louisville eliminates SMU (but maybe not for good)

Not only did No. 24 Louisville end SMU’s bid at the ACC championship and its automatic bid with a 62-58 win, but it’s entirely possible that this marked the end of the Mustangs’ season altogether. Maybe not a good chance, but that’s the problem with living on the bubble come conference tournament time — you are left in a constant state of wondering whether you did enough to get a chance at March.

SMU entered the matchup about as on-the-bubble as can get — FOX Sports analyst Mike Decourcy had the Mustangs in his Last Four In on Wednesday afternoon prior to the game, and they were 46th in Wins Above Bubble with a score of 0.35. The next day, following a 62-58 loss, SMU is still on the right side of the bubble, at 0.14, but has lost just a little bit of cushion.

The good news for the Mustangs is that Louisville is a ranked team that is actually better-liked by NET than the poll, coming in at 14th there. In fact, beating SMU by just 4 points caused the Cardinals to slip a spot in those rankings — the Mustangs played them extremely well even if they could not, in the end, pull off the upset.

Basically the worst thing you can say about SMU’s performance is that it led for nearly half the game, but still ended up losing in the end. There are nits to pick — the Mustangs should have tried to pick up more shooting fouls in the lane, they should have protected the ball a little bit better — but this was a 4-point loss to a team whose ticket is already punched and has been for some time. SMU will get another chance to play in 2026 if the Selection Committee sees things the same way.