College Basketball

Last Night in College Basketball: Michigan State Downs USC For Tom Izzo's 750th W

Published Jan. 6, 2026 11:28 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.

Izzo wins his 750th game

Tom Izzo is an active legend, and on Monday the latest win by his Michigan State Spartans brought him to a milestone. The W over the recently unranked USC Trojans — dropped from the poll after Michigan tore through them over the weekend — was the 750th of coach Izzo’s career.

The Hall of Famer — Izzo was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame back in 2016 — has been the Spartans’ head coach since 1995, picking up every single one of those wins there over the last 31 years. This is the latest in a string of notable wins for Izzo, as well: back in February, he passed Bobby Knight for the most Big Ten conference wins with his 354th, earned against Illinois, and it was also last season that Izzo made his way into the top-25 for wins by men’s college basketball coaches, passing first Phog Allen and then Ray Meyer.

It’s unclear how long Izzo, 70, plans to continue coaching for — following a $401 million gift to Michigan State last month, the coach said he plans to "be around for a while." He needs another 39 wins to move into the top-15 in Division I history, though, and another 114 to get into the top-10, which, depending on how long "a while" is, could get him there.

With the way Michigan State has been playing, none of those numbers seem that big, but even if Izzo changed his mind and retired tomorrow, 750 is still a significant number, one just 23 coaches D-I men’s basketball coaches have ever reached.

"Coen Carr dunks" is two sentences in one

Some players just know how to dunk in an extremely forceful way. Michigan State’s Coen Carr is one of them.

What, not enough evidence for you? Well fine, here’s another from the hands of the junior forward.

Carr isn’t Michigan State’s most important scorer, as he’s averaging 11.9 per night, but he’s a force in the paint when everything is clicking for him as it was on Monday, when he led the Spartans with 18 points en route to that convincing conference win.

Sullivan’s gem not enough to topple ranked Iowa

Northwestern senior forward Grace Sullivan put up 28 points to lead all women’s D-I scorers on Monday, and added 7 rebounds, 2 assists and 4 steals to go with it. Alas, it wasn’t enough against No. 14 Iowa, which defeated the Wildcats 67-58 to drop them to 6-9 on the season. While senior forward Hannah Stuelke wasn’t at her best with just 8 points on 2-for-11 shooting, Iowa’s starting sophomore guards made up for it. Ava Heiden went 9-for-11 on the night and 5-for-6 from the line to lead all Hawkeyes with 23 points, and Chazadi Wright scored 12 with 5 rebounds, 7 assists and 3 steals.

Sullivan is averaging 23.4 points per game to lead the Big Ten, and that’s also good for fifth in women’s D-I basketball behind Iowa State’s Audi Crooks, Notre Dame’s Hannah Hidalgo, Vanderbilt’s Mikayla Blakes and Florida’s Liv McGill. For Sullivan, it’s a massive leap from her junior year in which she scored 10.1 points per game while averaging 23 minutes in her first season with Northwestern after transferring from Bucknell. On top of that, she has a career-best 7.4 rebounds per game and is good for at least a steal and a block per game, on average.

A fine year, but sadly she’s just not getting enough help from the rest of the Wildcats. The bench scored a combined 4 points on Monday against the Hawkeyes, while the other two leading scorers put up 11 and 8 points, respectively, on a combined 7-for-20 shooting night. Northwestern is now 0-4 in Big Ten play, while Iowa remains undefeated in the conference through four.

Michigan’s shooting struggles continue

Michigan fell in the rankings to No. 9 in this week’s poll, owing to suffering another loss — and this time, not in a way that can be easily waved off a la the UConn game. The Wolverines’ shooting has been a struggle lately, which led to an overtime win over a game (but unranked) Oregon team to close out 2025, and then a 12-point loss against Washington in which Michigan scored just 52 points on 33% shooting while also hitting barely half of their free throws.

This has been going on for a bit, too: while the Wolverines dropped 97 on Oakland on Dec. 21, they also went just 7-for-26 from deep — 26.9% — in that game, and were 26.7% in the previous W against Akron. Michigan was better from beyond the arc at one point, as for the season it’s at 32.5% percent, but since December began Michigan is just 36-for-137 on threes, or 26.2%. While the Wolverines were able to defeat Minnesota, 70-60 — and the Gophers are a far better team than their unranked status suggests, given they entered play against Michigan 15th in the NCAA Evaluation Tool, or NET — this is still all a cause for concern, as it they shot 4-for-19 from deep even with sophomore guard Syla Swords hitting a buzzer beater from way beyond the line to end the first half.

Teams need to be able to win in different ways to be ready for any opponent’s strengths and weaknesses, and if a defense is talented enough to cut off scoring from inside the arc from Michigan’s plan, well. That loss to Washington wasn’t an accident, you know.

For now, though, Michigan is 12-2 overall and 3-1 in the extremely competitive Big Ten, having survived another poor night from deep with a W despite that. The Wolverines will have to improve their shooting to at least back to where they were before this became a liability if they want to ensure they are getting out of the conference on top over the next couple of months. As is, even with the better 3-point shooting from earlier in the season buoying them for now, Michigan ranks 109th out of 363 teams in 3-point percentage, and one look at the schools around them in those rankings will tell you how far that the Wolverines might get in 2026 if that doesn’t change.

A 32-point game

Prairie View fifth-year guard Tai’reon Joseph led all Division I scorers on Monday, with 32 points, and added 5 rebounds and 2 steals to that total. The Panthers needed every one of those buckets, too, as they barely defeated Southern, 89-85.

A little wild is that there were just three 30-point nights in college basketball on Monday, men’s and women’s, and two of them were in this one game: Southern’s senior guard, Michael Jacobs, dropped 30 points on Prairie View, which was why this game was so close to begin with despite Joseph’s performance and those of his fellow starters, senior forward Cory Wells (17/6/3) and senior guard Dontae Horne (21/4/2). The other? That was by Rutgers junior guard Tariq Francis, who scored 30 points with 4 assists and rebounds each in a Big Ten-W against Oregon.

Thomas pulls down 19 rebounds

New Orleans forward MJ Thomas scored 12 points with 2 assists and a steal and block each, but the highlight of his performance was on the boards. The sophomore pulled down a career-high 19 rebounds against East Texas A&M, tops in Division I on Monday by a not-insignificant amount: next up for the men was Oregon’s Kwame Evans with 13, which Brown’s Alyssa Moreland tied on the women’s side.

The Privateers would end up with the dub thanks in no small part to Thomas’ performance, 83-73, to move to 3-3 in Southland conference play. While he’s not leading the conference in boards as he did a year ago, Thomas has actually bumped his numbers up by half-a-rebound per game, from 7.8 to 8.3, and done so in nearly three minutes fewer played per game, as well.

No. 10 Nebraska outlasts Ohio State

What a big day for Nebraska men’s basketball on Monday. The Cornhuskers were ranked 10th in the poll earlier on, the first time that they have been there since 1966, and then they took on Big Ten conference rival Ohio State later that day and won. The W brought Nebraska’s record to 15-0, keeping them going as one of just six undefeated teams in Division I men’s basketball. Freshman forward Braden Frager, coming off the bench, led Nebraska with 15 points, one of four players to reach double-digit scoring, while senior guard Sam Hoiberg just missed a double-double with 8 points and a game-leading 9 rebounds (tied with Ohio State’s freshman forward Amare Bynum).

Ohio State is one of the more accurate shooting teams in D-I, ranking 23rd overall at 50.6%, but Nebraska was able to slow them down just enough on Monday: the Buckeyes shot 46% overall and 35% from three, with Nebraska outscoring them in the paint, 32-30. The Huskers don’t have much going for them offensively — it ranks 116th in field goal percentage, for instance — but their defense stifles opponents to the point that Nebraska looks like worldbeaters in comparison most nights.

Its 37.9% opponent field goal percentage is the 354th-lowest in D-I, and opponents shoot just 30.4% on threes against them, as well. Nebraska doesn’t need to score 90 points per night to beat you — it just has to keep you from scoring that many. And it does, as opponents are scoring 65.7 points per game, on average, against the Huskers, while they themselves average 81 per game.

Nebraska has never started a season 4-0 in Big Ten play. It’s 15-0 record is also the best start that the program has ever had — that aforementioned 1965-1966 team lost its third game of the season, and didn’t make it to the poll until February. There is a whole lot of season left for the Huskers, but what’s already happened has been a huge success for them.

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