College Basketball

Last Night in College Basketball: BYU Freshman Star AJ Dybantsa Makes History

Published Dec. 23, 2025 11:25 a.m. ET

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.

Dybantsa triple-doubled, and good thing for BYU

No. 10 BYU won on Monday, and they did so by 28 points. Eastern Washington put up a valiant fight in some ways, but they are now just 2-11 and remain winless on the road where they have spent most of their season. Given the Eagles’ struggles this year and the fact they still scored 81 points here, the Cougars didn’t win because of their defense, but because their offense was unstoppable. And freshman forward AJ Dybantsa was a huge part of that.

Dybantsa posted a triple-double with 33 points on 11-for-13 shooting with 10 rebounds and 10 assists, managing to stand head-and-shoulders above the rest of BYU despite the fact that four of the starters scored at least 17 points, and the only one who didn’t — senior center Keba Keita — pulled down 8 rebounds. Dybantsa, who turns 19 at the end of next month, is the youngest-ever player to put up a 30-point triple-double: not just in Division I, not just in men’s basketball, but in NCAA history, and it was the first such game in BYU’s history as well.

You can pick some nits here with BYU’s performance overall: they won by 28 points, yes, but they allowed 81 despite keeping the starters in for the vast majority of the game against a team that is in the bottom quarter of Division I teams this year, one that has as many wins as it does in part because it defeated a Division II school. However! Dybantsa was incredible and certainly did his part in crushing Eastern Washington, and lucky for BYU, having their fate decided by whether or not AJ Dybantsa is balling or not is a pretty good place to be, considering.

Turner’s 36 points not enough for Temple

Junior Kaylah Turner led all of Division I in scoring on Monday with 36 points while draining 8-of-12 threes, continuing what has been a breakout year for the guard. In 12 games, she’s scoring 17.8 points per game while shooting 45% overall and 46% on 3-pointers, all three of which lead the American Conference. That wasn’t enough against No. 25 Princeton, however, which, despite Turner’s big game that also included 3 rebounds, 3 assists and a pair of steals, ended up winning 87-77.

Princeton lacked a star performance, but they had a more complete effort, and it won out. Four players scored in double-digits, between 10 and 22 points, with the two starters who didn’t reach that mark getting to 8 and 9. Despite the fact that both teams shot 30-for-60 from the field for the day — and Temple sank 12 threes, three more than Princeton — the difference in free throws was stark. Princeton went 18-for-20 from the line, a 90% clip, while Temple only had 12 attempts and didn’t hit them with nearly that accuracy, either.

Credit to Temple for closing the gap as much as they did, as they were down by 26 points with 6:16 left in the fourth quarter and cut that deficit down to 10, but a 13-point gap in free throws ended up being too much to overcome in the end.

Illinois crushed Missouri to the point of history

To understand No. 20 Illinois’ route of Missouri in Monday night’s annual Braggin’ Rights showdown, you really just need to see one clip, as the entire game basically felt like this.

It’s difficult to believe that, at one point, Missouri was 27-20 and looking like they were very much in this matchup. And that’s because the end result was a 91-48 defeat at the hands of the Fighting Illini, which is the most points that Illinois has ever beaten Missouri by in their longtime rivalry. It’s also difficult to believe that this is the year that it happened this way: Illinois is ranked 20th, sure, but Missouri was ranked 67th in the NCAA Evaluation Tool, or NET, prior to the game. That’s bubble-team territory for March, with nearly 300 other Division I teams behind them.

Not anymore, though: Illinois’ beatdown dumped Missouri all the way to 92nd in NET despite their 10-3 record, with nine of those wins coming in low-level Quad 4 matchups.

Take a break, Brad Underwood, you’ve earned it

A win, a wedding and Christmas in four days, that’s a busy stretch.

Villanova dominated St. John’s

Villanova vs. St. John’s was a good reminder that you can’t just go by a team’s record to determine how good they are. Both are Big East teams, and St. John’s came into the matchup at 11-2, while Villanova was 9-2. There was a much larger gulf between the two than that, however, as Villanova is basically just outside of the top 25 — they began Monday ranked 30th in NET — while St. John’s was at 104, well, well outside the bubble even if they are still comfortably among the top third of Division I women’s basketball teams.

On top of that gap, their styles are very different: St. John’s plays a defense heavy, grind-it-out style of basketball that features lower winning scores, while Villanova ranks 24th out of 363 teams in 3-pointers made and scores over 75 points per game. On Monday, they dropped 85 on St. John’s in a 37-point blowout where they got uncomfortably close to doubling up on the Red Storm.

The Wildcats were 11-of-21 from deep, while St. John’s tried to play catch up but couldn’t, and instead went 2-for-15 — that’s 13% shooting — from three. Villanova shot 51% overall, so it’s not like it was just the deep ball that hurt St. John’s: they played stretches of good defense for a few minutes at a time, but Villanova would poke holes in the defense and overwhelm them again and again, and you see the result.

Villanova takes on No. 1 UConn on Jan. 15 at 7 p.m. ET on Fox Sports 1, by the way. Might want to mark that one down if you’re a Big East fan.

30 points on 100% shooting

Wake Forest sophomore Grace Oliver had herself a night against Gardner-Webb. The forward scored 30 points with 7 rebounds, 4 assists and 3 steals, and she didn’t miss a single shot from the field while doing it. Oliver was a perfect 14-for-14 on field goals on Monday, the lone blemish in the evening a missed free throw.

Oliver set a career-high with the performance, and is now up to 14.1 points, 5.5 rebounds, 1.7 assists and 1.4 steals per game in what has been a breakout season for the Colorado transfer. Whereas she played just over 14 minutes per game for Colorado as a freshman, Wake Forest has had her in for over 30 per, and it’s paying off: she has the highest effective field goal percentage (eFG%) in the ACC, at 68.1%.

Double double-doubles for North Carolina

No. 12 North Carolina took on East Carolina on Monday, with the Tar Heels playing host, and they crushed their fellow Carolinians, 99-51. North Carolina used 11 different bench players throughout the game while keeping all of their starters between 17 and 26 minutes, but even in that limited time there was enough for two of them to register double-doubles.

Freshman forward Caleb Wilson scored 21 points in 24 minutes while pulling down 12 rebounds, and he still had time for 3 steals and 4 blocks. Or, twice as many blocks as Eastern Carolina picked up as a team. Junior center Henri Veesaar wasn’t quite as dominant in his 26 minutes, but he still scored 16 points on 6-for-9 shooting with 10 rebounds and an assist, with 8 of those boards coming on the defensive side, so he still contributed more than enough to the W.

Wilson has been exceptional in his first year, with 19.6 points and an ACC-leading 10.8 rebounds per game, helping North Carolina to their 12-1 record. The lone loss came against a ranked Michigan State team that now finds itself ranked No. 9 in the country — the Tar Heels are having a pretty good season so far.

Lemmilä stars off the bench for Buckeyes

Ohio State has made it into the top-20, as they are now the No. 19 team in the latest poll after entering it for the first time in Week 5. On Monday, in their final game before the holiday break, the Buckeyes crushed Western Michigan, 95-47. The starters certainly did their work in limited minutes — four of them scored at least 10 points with Jaloni Cambridge and Kylee Kitts both getting to 14 despite playing 22 and 23 minutes, respectively — but let’s take a moment to shout out Elsa Lemmilä off the bench.

The 6-foot-6 sophomore center from Finland scored a game-high 15 points in just 14 minutes, thanks to 6-for-6 shooting and a trio of free throws. She also pulled down 4 rebounds, dropped a dime, stole the ball twice and blocked two shots. All in all, a fine day’s work.

Ohio State has now won nine-straight games, their lone loss of the season a blowout on the road against UConn, in which the Huskies dropped 100 points on them. Games like that can help a team grow, though: Ohio State faced one of the greatest challenges the 2025-2026 season has to offer, and they got the opportunity to do it early enough to learn from the loss and apply those lessons to the rest of their opponents.

Kansas once again thrived without Peterson

You have to give Kansas credit: they are 10-3 on the season and the No. 17 team in the nation, and they have managed that much without freshman star Darryn Peterson. The 6-foot-5 guard has played in just four games this season, and while he’s been great whenever he’s on the floor to the point he is still in the discussion to be the No. 1 pick in next year’s NBA Draft, a hamstring and now a quad injury have had him miss considerable time already. He won’t be back until he’s healthy, as his family has spoken up on the matter, but Kansas at least seems to be doing pretty well without him.

Against Davidson on Monday, all five Jayhawks starters scored between 10 and 18 points, and freshman guard Kohl Rosario added another 13 off the bench in his 19 minutes. No one on Kansas achieved a double-double, but three near-misses is a pretty good result, too: sophomore forward Flory Bidunga put up 18 points and 8 rebounds, senior guard Melvin Council Jr. came close to a triple-double with a 10/7/9 night that also included 2 steals and a block and senior guard Tre White had 18 points, 8 rebounds and 4 steals.

If this is what the Jayhawks can do without Peterson, where they sit in the top 25 in December doesn’t matter all that much. What will matter is having him healthy by March, in time for tournament seeding and play. Kansas is going to be a dangerous team if that all goes down to plan in a way the season just has not yet.

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