College Basketball

Last Night in College Basketball: No. 13 Vanderbilt Passed OT Test vs. Memphis

Published Dec. 18, 2025 11:23 a.m. ET

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

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Vanderbilt survives in OT

No. 13 Vanderbilt took on Memphis on Wednesday, and while the latter is far from ranked and came into the day at 4-5, their early schedule has also been full of Quad 1 and Quad 2 matchups — they have been tested a bit in the time before everything shifts to conference play, and showed as much against Vandy.

While Vanderbilt was up 28-22 after the first half, it was Memphis that came out strong in the second, forcing overtime with a 40-point half. Memphis’ collection of senior guards led the charge: Hasan Abdul Hakim scored 13 points with 10 rebounds for a double-double, Sincere Parker had 18 points, 7 rebounds and one assist, steal and block each, while Dug McDaniel also scored 18 with 5 rebounds, 4 assists, 3 steals and a block. Senior forward Tariq Ingraham got in on the fun off the bench, with 11 points and 4 rebounds in 29 minutes.

This was enough to force overtime by tying things up at 62 — which Memphis did with all of six seconds left on the clock, just enough time for Vanderbilt senior forward Tyler Nickel to miss a 23-footer as the half expired. While Memphis took the lead to begin OT, free throws ended up being their doom. Senior guard Duke Miles — who ended up leading Vandy in points with 22 — gave the Commodores the lead back with a jumper-and one combo, the first of 11 makes from the line in OT. You have to see the shot from Miles that led to that first foul, too.

Memphis had to know they were in trouble once basketball physics decided to work against them like that. Miles alone scored 7 of his 22 points in overtime, and because of this effort, Vandy would come away with a 77-70 win.

We’ll see what the voters think about such a close game come Monday, but as far as the NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET) goes, Vanderbilt still sits 8th, while Memphis hopped up from 124 to 122 with the loss. Digging deep and dominating overtime like they did will probably go a long way towards keeping them from slipping in a meaningful way.

UConn downs Marquette in Big East play

The preseason No. 1 and No. 2 teams in the Big East were defending champion UConn, and Marquette, which brought back every single player from last year’s team for another go in 2025-2026 — they are the only Division I team that managed to do so, thanks to a pair of returning graduate students, six seniors and five juniors that combine for an experienced roster under 2024-2025 Co-Coach of the Year, Cara Consuegra. She shared those honors with UConn’s Geno Auriemma, and the two faced off for the first time this season on Wednesday in Hartford.

UConn entered the game as the No. 1 team in women’s basketball, but Marquette was no pushover, sitting 54th in NET with two of their three losses coming against Quad 1 teams. Make it three losses in Quad 1 games now, though, as UConn played suffocating defense for most of the game, leading to an 89-53 dub.

Sophomore forward Sarah Strong was her usual self, putting together 22 points, 7 rebounds, 2 assists, 2 steals and 2 blocks in 25 minutes, and though she turned the ball over an uncharacteristically high 6 times, the rest of the team made up for it. Freshman forward Blanca Quinonez scored 12 point with 4 rebounds off the bench. Senior forward Serah Williams continued to look more like the player UConn hoped was transferring to them with 11 points on 5-for-7 shooting, 6 rebounds, 3 assists and a steal and a block. Graduate guard Azzi Fudd had 14 points in 23 minutes, along with 3 steals. Even with the 16 turnovers as a team, the Huskies still had 24 assists and outrebounded the Golden Eagles, 37-27, while forcing them into 21 turnovers.

It’s pretty easy to forget that Quinonez is just a freshman when you watch her, but the 19-year-old from Ecuador has experience playing for their national team, and began playing in Serie A in Italy all the way back in 2020. She moved to Italy from Ecuador at 13 years old to attend high school there while playing professionally — this isn’t Quinonez’s first rodeo, as it were, and now much to the dismay of the three Big East opponents undefeated UConn has taken care of before January.

Creighton will take it

Creighton faced off against Xavier in the first Big East action of the season for both teams on Wednesday, and while the game started out close, once the Bluejays got going there was no stopping them. To the point that when sophomore guard Austin Swartz went for a lob near the rim to be tipped in or slammed by a teammate, it instead just went right on in for two.

Swartz was accurate all night — even if this was technically a miss as far as intentions go — shooting 10-for-17 overall and 7-for-13 from three in 23 minutes for a game-high 27 points.

Williams thrives again with a triple-double

On Monday, Quion Williams had the best day in Division I ball as measured by Game Score, thanks to scoring 25 points on 10-for-13 shooting, grabbing 16 rebounds, and adding 7 assists, 6 steals and a block to go with it. He one-upped himself on Wednesday night when Arkansas-Pine Bluff took on Champion Christian: 29 points, 14 rebounds and a school-record 18 assists for Arkansas-Pine Bluff all added up to a triple-double. All those assists meant someone else was scoring a bunch of points, too: two other Golden Lions scored at least 20 points, with senior forward Jacquan Scott posting a game-high 33, and Arkansas-Pine Bluff ended up winning, 138-73.

And yet! This wasn’t enough for the top individual performance of the day in D-I. Instead, that honor goes to…

An ACC record 11 threes

…NC State’s Paul McNeil Jr., who dropped 47 points with 10 rebounds on Texas Southern while tying an ACC record with 11 made 3-pointers. The sophomore guard had scored all of 20 combined points across four games in December before this outburst, but here he scored a career-high 47 in just 27 minutes. Sometimes, you’re just feeling it.

McNeil came out firing from the start, too: five minutes hadn’t even elapsed yet, and he was 5-for-5 from deep.

The Wolfpack had a game plan here, and McNeil saw it through: Texas Southern’s defense struggles against 3-pointers, and McNeil just kept being left open — or finding ways to get open — again and again from deep. He attempted just one 2-point shot (and made it), with all the rest of his points coming from the foul line: McNeil was a perfect 12-for-12 on free throws to go with 11-for-17 from three. That’s a fine night of shooting.

Texas just got better

The Longhorns are already No. 2 in the poll and in NET ranking despite having to face ranked giants like UCLA and South Carolina in the early going, and they managed that despite not being at full strength. They got a little closer to that goal on Wednesday, however, as senior guard Ashton Judd made her season debut against Northwestern State after missing the start of the year with a knee injury.

Judd scored 11.6 points and pulled down 5.0 rebounds per game in 2024-2025 while averaging 27.4 minutes, so getting a player of that caliber back in the lineup is significant for Texas. They also aren’t exactly hurting for talent at the moment, either: junior forward Madison Booker scored 28 points on 12-for-17 shooting, while senior guard Rori Harmon added 11 points, 10 assists and a career-high 7 steals in her 34 minutes. Those steals also led all of D-I on Wednesday, in a tie with Davidson’s Charlise Dunn.

Texas is now 13-0 after defeating Northwestern State, 96-38. What’s wild is that it’s not as if the Lady Demons are a bottom-tier team, despite the score suggesting as much: they ranked 154th in NET before the game out of 363 teams, but Texas treated them like a squad at the bottom. That’s a good basketball team right there.

Mississippi State freshman goes off

Madison Francis is a freshman forward for Mississippi State, but she has already made quite the impact just a dozen games into her career. For one, she’s leading the SEC in both blocks (40) and blocks per game (3.3), owing to having a 7-block game and two 6-block games already behind her. On Wednesday, she had another 4, but that’s not what stood out: Francis scored 30 points and pulled down 10 rebounds for a double-double, and on top of that and the blocks also had 2 assists and 3 steals.

Francis had the top Game Score in D-I women’s basketball on Wednesday, even eclipsing the two players who scored more than she did — New Hampshire’s Eva DeChent and Marshall’s Timaya Lewis-Eutsey, who had 33 and 31 points, respectively. Neither had a game anywhere near as well-rounded and dominant as Francis, who is now averaging 13.1 points and 6.8 rebounds per game to go along with all of those rejections.

Mississippi State improved to 11-1 on the season, and while they are unranked, they have a budding star in their freshman, and moved up to 41st in NET. The SEC is a tough road to travel, but the Bulldogs are a good team.

Huff has himself a night for No. 7 Gonzaga

Gonzaga took on Campbell on Wednesday, and won 98-70 to improve their record to 11-1 and a perfect 6-0 at home. As the score suggests, the team as a whole played well, but the Bulldogs were led by a standout performance from junior forward Braden Huff: he scored 37 points on an absurd 16-for-18 shooting in 33 minutes, while adding 8 rebounds.

Huff didn’t miss a shot during the first half, and it’s not as if he wasn’t shooting yet — he had 26 points at halftime, nearly half of Gonzaga’s total for the half and just 10 less than Campbell managed.

Senior forward Graham Ike also had a quality game, posting a double-double on 14 points — including a 6-for-6 showing from the line — and 11 rebounds. The team’s defense was also stellar here, as they limited Campbell to just 22% shooting from beyond the arc. And they kept trying, too, with 23 attempts as a team, but the shots were not falling. Gonzaga spent most of their time dominating in the paint, which is why Campbell had to keep shooting from deep — the Bulldogs outscored the Fighting Camels 64-38 there.

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