College Basketball

Last Night in College Basketball: Iowa State, Iowa Played a Wild Back-And-Forth

Published Dec. 12, 2025 11:11 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.

Iowa State comes back against Iowa, stays undefeated

No. 4 Iowa State and Iowa had a back-and-forth affair on Thursday, with the former going down 13 and then up 10 before, with just over 30 seconds left, the latter was once again within two. It was all Iowa in the early going, though, a vibe encapsulated by this ridiculous bit of ball movement between junior forward Cam Manyawu and sophomore guard Isai Howard:

It feels like you should be able to get an assist on your own score there, but alas, basketball’s scoring systems don’t leave room for that kind of acknowledgment.

It was all Iowa… until it wasn’t. With 3:04 left in the first half, the Hawkeyes were up 30-17, but the Cyclones had cut that to 33-25 by the half, and then the run continued into the second half — after pushing it to 10-0, suddenly Iowa State had a lead.

And they would push that lead to 10 with a bit more than half of the second half left, going up 47-37, but Iowa wasn’t done yet. Howard would hit a 2-pointer with 7:01 left to cut the lead to 50-47, and then senior guard Bennett Stirtz — who would play all 40 minutes — would hit a three to bring the Hawkeyes to within a point, 62-61, with 1:38 remaining. That was basically the end of their own comeback effort, however. Iowa State called a timeout on a loose rebound the moment that coach T.J. Otzelberger felt his team had possession of it, avoiding the decision of the possession arrow, and with 32.9 seconds to go and a one-possession lead, Iowa State was able to get the ball back.

Iowa State was worse at shooting overall, worse at 3-point shooting, didn’t move the ball as well and were slightly outrebounded, too. However, they hit 74% of their free throws and shot 18 more of them than Iowa did, owing to the Hawkeyes committing 19 fouls, and Iowa turned the ball over 16 times — thanks in large part to 11 steals by Iowa State — resulting in 18 points off turnovers for the Cyclones. These two factors were enough to make up for what should have been a huge deficit owing to shooting 42% and 33% on threes.

That being said, the No. 4 team in the country just defeated Iowa by all of four points — Iowa might not be ranked by the AP poll, but they entered play on Thursday night ranked 29th in the NCAA Evaluation Tool, or NET, and woke up Friday morning 24th — directly ahead of last year’s national champions, Florida — by that same measure after pushing their rivals as far as they did. This is a good team, W against Iowa State or not, and they are sure to make more noise as the season goes on.

Novik notches a triple-double

DePaul faced off against UMass Lowell on Thursday, and junior Kate Novik had herself a game. The guard from Belarus — who transferred from Morehead State to play for DePaul in the Big East this year — pulled off a triple-double by scoring 12 points, grabbing 12 rebounds and dropping 10 dimes. Just to round things out, Novik also had a pair of steals and blocks each in her first career triple-double, and the eighth in DePaul history.

Let’s take a moment to appreciate one assist in particular: this no-look gem.

That kind of trust in your teammates to pick up on what you’re doing is what makes good basketball, folks. DePaul would win, 78-48, with three other Blue Demons reaching double-digit scoring alongside Novik, including senior forward Michelle Ojo, who scored a game-high 20 off of the bench.

Ohio State’s sister act

Guard Kennedy Cambridge transferred to Ohio State in 2023 after one season at Kentucky, and before the end of the year her sister Jaloni Cambridge — also a guard — would commit to playing for the Buckeyes, as well. On Thursday, the two partnered together for No. 21 Ohio State against Northern Kentucky, and they stole the show.

Kennedy Cambridge, now a junior, led all of Division I with a career-high 10 steals — ten! — while pulling down 4 rebounds, dropping 5 dimes, blocking a shot and scoring 6 points. Sophomore Jaloni Cambridge had herself an even better night, scoring 33 points — the second-most of anyone in D-I on Thursday — on 12-for-21 shooting and a perfect 9-for-9 on free throws, while grabbing half-a-dozen rebounds, stealing the ball 4 times herself and logging a pair of assists.

Ohio State defeating Northern Kentucky 94-62 is probably not surprising after seeing how much damage one pair of sisters did themselves, but they weren’t alone. While the Cambridge sisters accounted for 14 of Ohio State’s steals, as a team, they had a program record 27 of them against Northern Kentucky, which helped lead to 46 points off turnovers. It didn’t matter that the Buckeyes shot 17% from three on 23 attempts, because they scored 50 points in the paint and 46 points off turnovers, and it all started with the performances of Kennedy and Jaloni Cambridge.

What is hard to believe looking at the final score is that this was a close game at one point: Ohio State was actually losing, 22-20, after the first quarter, and at the half were down even more, 43-38. In the second half, however, they outscored Northern Kentucky 56-19, and that was that. Never mind simply avoiding an upset, the Buckeyes turned this one into a beatdown.

Syracuse downs Saint Joseph’s, but

Syracuse has had a solid start to the year, but they find themselves kind of on the bubble of the bubble. By NET ranking, they’re the 81st team, angling for a national tournament that adds 37 at-large squads to 31 conference champions to round out the field. In short, if they are going to be under consideration for March Madness, they need to play even better than they have.

That makes a game like Thursday’s a little difficult, as Syracuse won — a positive — against Saint Joseph’s, but that’s a team that hasn’t played all that well in 2025-2026, too. The Orange probably should have won by more, not just won, but instead this was a mere 71-63 victory, which is why you see that the Orange were ranked 73rd in NET before the win, and still slipped to 81, anyway.

That being said, one of the things that hurts teams in NET rankings the most is losses to Quad 3 and Quad 4 teams — meaning, losses against poorer opponents in conditions that should be ideal. A win against a worse team at home, even if it’s not by a huge amount, is a positive comparatively — Syracuse is going to have to do better the next time out to avoid falling any further behind the March pace, though.

Missouri slipped a little, too

In the same way that Syracuse needed to be even better against an opponent they were supposed to crush, Missouri saw themselves drop from 72nd in NET to 78 despite defeating Alabama State. Winning 85-77 at home against a team that started out the day No. 237 in the NET rankings is not going to cut it — and that’s also why, despite losing, the Hornets moved up in NET to 221st.

Again, this is a little nitpicky, but it’s the kind of thing that could be the difference between playing for the national championship in March and heading elsewhere, such as the NIT. It might come off as a little boring on occasion when a good team obliterates a lesser opponent, but they are simply taking care of business by proving that they actually are as good as everyone says — something Missouri and Syracuse both need to do a better job of showing in the future than they did on Thursday.

That being said, a trio of Missouri starters had fine games. Junior guard Anthony Robinson scored 19 points on 7-for-11 shooting with 4 rebounds, 5 assists, 2 steals and a block. Senior guards Mark Mitchell and Jacob Crews scored 15 with 4 rebounds and 3 assists and a team-high 20 points with 4 rebounds, respectively. Things just would have gone a bit better for the Tigers if they could have figured out a way to slow down Hornets’ senior guard Asjon Anderson, who scored a game-high 23 points, or if they could have limited the contributions of Alabama State’s bench, which combined for 29 points in 57 minutes. The game was as close as it was because of those performances — tighten it up in the future, and Missouri’s NET ranking will head back in the right direction.

Oklahoma, Beers crush Little Rock

Now, No. 9 Oklahoma took care of business: they dominated Little Rock, 103-48, improving to 7-0 at home and 10-1 overall. Senior center Raegan Beers was the star, scoring a game-high 26 points with 15 rebounds, 5 assists and a pair of steals. She took just two shots from three, hitting one of them, but was deadly overall on 10-for-16 shooting, and Little Rock didn’t have an answer for her shot or on the boards.

Of course, no one usually does have an answer for Beers. This was her eighth double-double of the year, which leads Division I, and she also picked up her 1,000th career rebound in the game, too. Beers is one of just four active players in D-I with at least 1,000 rebounds, and is averaging a career-best 10.6 rebounds per game in 2025-2026, good for third in the SEC behind South Carolina’s Madina Okot and Texas A&M’s Fatmata Janneh.

Hannah Hidalgo keeps on scoring

Notre Dame junior guard Hannah Hidalgo has been having one hell of a season. On Thursday, she kept that going, scoring a game-high 26 points with 11 rebounds against Morehead State to lead Notre Dame to a dominant 97-48 dub.

It was Hidalgo’s second double-double of the year — her first came in her record-breaking 16-steal performance back on Nov. 12 against Akron — and it also helped her build on her scoring lead in the ACC. She leads the conference at 25.9 points per game, and no one else is even close: second place is Virginia’s Kymorah Johnson, at 16.4 points per game. Hidalgo is also 16th in the ACC in rebounds per game at 6.6, assists per game at 4.7, and first in steals per game and steals at 5.6 and 50, respectively. Notre Dame is ranked 19th in the poll, and while she has talented teammates, Hidalgo is the No. 1 reason why.

34 points for Clark

Norfolk State’s Da’Brya Clark was your leading scorer in Division I ball on Thursday, as the junior guard put up 34 points with 7 rebounds, 3 assists, 5 steals and a block, earning her the top Game Score on Thursday across D-I, as well.

She did most of her damage, at least as far as scoring goes, in the first half, with 22 points, but there was a little less need for her to go all-out after that. Norfolk State was playing Dillard, and were up 58-26 at the half. The Spartans eventually reached the century mark in a 100-54 victory, but they didn’t go to the bench very much — just three players came off of it, albeit for a combined 58 minutes — and instead let their starters cook for most of the duration. Clark played for 32 minutes and didn’t even lead her team in that category.

This was quite the explosion on offense for Clark, in what has already been a career-best year for her. She’s had a few clunkers in her first dozen games of the season, but this is also the fourth time she scored at least 21 points, and her first game with 30. Next up is consistently putting those kinds of performances together against D-I schools, and not just the many D-II opponents that Norfolk State has scheduled to this point.

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