Malam Terakhir di Bola Basket Perguruan Tinggi: Cameron Boozer Melakukan Semuanya Untuk Duke

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 the weekend in college basketball.

Cameron Boozer and Duke are looking good

Cameron Boozer is seven games into his college basketball career, and the Duke freshman is helping to fill the gap left by 2025 No. 1 pick in the NBA Draft, Cooper Flagg. Boozer is averaging 21.1 points per game, adding 9.9 rebounds, 4 assists, 1.7 steals and 1.3 blocks per game to that figure. He’s shooting 54.9% overall, and 62.5% inside the arc. On Sunday against Howard, Boozer led all scorers with 26 points, and kept those averages up: 12 rebounds, 4 assists and 2 steals in just 26 minutes.

Duke is now 7-0 on the season — they defeated Howard 93-56, and also won against Niagara, 100-42, on Friday — but have faced just one ranked team to this point: they took down No. 24 Kansas, 78-66, on Nov. 18. That’s not being said to dismiss their start, but to bring you up to speed with where their schedule is going: Boozer and the rest of the Blue Devils will face No. 21 Arkansas, No. 10 Florida and No. 17 Michigan State in their next three games — a real test for a team in the No. 5 spot.

UConn vs. Michigan lived up to the hype

Yes, this was all the way back on Friday, but we’d be shirking our duty here if it didn’t get a mention. No. 1 UConn got their first real test of the season against No. 6 Michigan, and it told us a lot about both teams. UConn’s starting five is incredible, and their depth is real, but the bench has to be able to provide more for them than it did against the Wolverines. Michigan started out looking completely overmatched — they scored just 5 points in the first quarter — but turned around in the third quarter and limited UConn to just 4 points in that quarter, closing the gap between the two. 

UConn never actually fell behind as they struggled to sink even open looks in that quarter, but were able to hang on and win thanks to forward Sarah Strong — who played all 40 minutes and scored 16 points with a career-high 20 rebounds, while adding 6 assists, 3 steals and 4 blocks — and graduate guard Azzi Fudd, who was 6-for-6 from the line — including when UConn desperately needed points at the same time Michigan was desperately fouling to try to get the ball back late — and led all scorers with 31. Fudd had 5 boards of her own, as well as an assist and a pair of blocks and steals a piece.

UConn would win, 72-69, in a game that felt more March than November: part of the reason for that is that sophomore guard Syla Swords was a match for Fudd, playing 40 minutes while scoring 29, which included late-game threes that could have taken all the fight out of a lesser opponent. These two had never faced each other before this matchup, that was part of the Hall of Fame showcase — if we’re lucky, they’ll face each other again this spring with much more at stake.

This was forgotten as everything escalated and the score got a whole lot closer, but check out this early pass from Sarah Strong, too. Basketball!

As part of the weekend’s Hall of Fame Showcase at Mohegan Sun, each team played a second game on Sunday. Michigan played like a team both licking their wounds and on a mission: they defeated the to-that-point undefeated Syracuse 81-55, and did it despite using eight bench players for a combined 89 minutes. Olivia Olson was the only starter who reached double-digits in scoring, but sophomore guard Te’Yala Delfosse made up for that with a game-high 21 points. The starters showed on Friday they are more than capable of doing what they have to against a tougher opponent — Sunday was for the team’s depth to put in their time.

As for UConn, they took on Utah, and it was the Azzi Fudd show again. She scored 24 points and pulled down 8 boards in 27 minutes to lead the Huskies to a dominant 93-41 dub. Oh, and then the Dallas Wings won the WNBA Draft lottery the same day, which means we’re about to hear months of rumors about Fudd reuniting with last year’s teammate and UConn facilitator, Paige Bueckers, for the upcoming season. A real big November weekend for the grad student.

Purdue crushes Texas Tech

The men’s No. 1 was also in action on Friday, in their own ranked matchup. Purdue took on No. 15 Texas Tech for the Baha Mar Championship in the Bahamas, and the Boilermakers were more dominant here than they have been, at times, against unranked teams. Purdue defeated Texas Tech by 30 points, 86-56, and they did it without a single player on their team having an all-out dominant performance. What they had instead was a showcase of their depth: every starter scored at least 10 points, with senior forward Oscar Cluff leading the way with 15, while two players on the bench each scored 11. 

Cluff had 15 rebounds to go with his scoring, too, in what was an impressive double-double that helped Purdue dispatch Texas Tech with ease. What’s wild about the final score, too, is that it took a 9-2 run for the Boilermakers to go up 26-20 with 7:22 left in the first half — once they got going, though, they exploded, ending the first half up 49-26, then keeping it going in the second, 37-30.

Purdue isn’t in action again until Friday, but that dominant win over a ranked opponent could be what helps them hang on to the contested top spot in men’s ball for another week.

Collins drops an efficient 40

On Sunday, Utah State’s MJ Collins gave us the weekend’s lone 40-point performance, and he did it about as efficiently as possible. The senior guard — and transfer from Vanderbilt — scored exactly 40 points, and added a rebound, 2 assists, 2 steals and had zero turnovers. He shot 8-for-12 on threes and 14-for-19 overall, with a perfect 4-of-4 on free throws, too. 

Collins’ performance came during the Shriners Children’s Charleston Classic tournament, and is the record for points in that tourney — St. Joseph’s Carl Jones held the previous record of 38, set in 2011 — and gave Utah State the LowCounty bracket title, as well, as they would take down Davidson in a commanding 94-60 win.

39 points… without a single three

Senior Gracie Merkle had a huge game for Penn State on Sunday, scoring 39 of her team’s 93 points in just 26 minutes of play. She did so on 19-for-23 shooting, and somehow scored 39 points without a single 3-pointer even attempted — that’s not her game, though, as Merkle works from much closer to the basket, and the 6-foot-6 center Merkle literally never shoots from beyond the arc. She added 7 rebounds, 2 assists and a block, as well, and logged her 1,000th career point from, as you probably guessed given the above, the paint. 

She’s leading the Big Ten in points per game with 23.4, and in field goal percentage at 70.7% — don’t fix what ain’t broke and all that.

And yet! Penn State would lose to Princeton despite this performance, 100-93. The difference wasn’t in long-range points — Princeton shot 55% on threes, but only sank one more than Penn State did — but instead free throws. The Tigers went to the line 21 times compared to the Lady Lions’ nine, and they made 19 of those shots. Shooting 90% on free throws in college, at that volume? Yeah, you can survive even a Gracie Merkle explosion when that happens.

Northwestern wins it late

There’s a great pass in here that gets Northwestern’s Arrinten Page the ball and the opportunity for a game-winning layup against South Carolina, courtesy Nick Martinelli. The 6-foot-7 senior forward already had a game-high 25 points before that point, but saw that Page had the better path to the basket, and notched the game-winning assist, instead.

Let your attention also be drawn to South Carolina’s desperation attempt at reversing this lead — the heave hit the ceiling! That’s not one you see every day — they might need to expand vertically at the Greenbrier for next year’s tournament.

So close to a triple-double, but records nonetheless

Freshman guard Aubrey Galvan just missed a triple-double, and one of the even more fun variants. She picked up 16 points and 15 assists — standard stuff — but then had 9 steals to go with it for Vanderbilt on Sunday. 

She played 31 minutes, and you sure wish it had been 32 to see if she could get that one last steal. As is, though, Galvan helped No. 17 Vanderbilt crush Tennessee State, 99-43, and in so doing tied freshman records for the program in both assists and steals: the 15 assists tied a record from 1998, set by Ashley Smith, while the 9 steals went all the way back to 1987 and Deborah Denton.