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Owen Short

Owen Short is a sophomore who is studying quantitative economics. He can be reached at owen.short@tufts.edu.

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Moments ‘til Madness: Naming the nation’s best

By Owen Short | March 11

March is finally here. With less than a week until Selection Sunday, conference tournaments are well underway and the upcoming Power 5 matchups are going to be must-see TV. As the season wraps up, I thought it would be a great time to take stock of the best players in the nation who have defined this year in college hoops with my picks for the All-America first team. The trend of first-year dominance continues, with three of the five selections being in their first college basketball seasons, while the two others are senior leaders for their squads. Let’s get into the list.

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Moments ‘til Madness: The Darryn Peterson dilemma

By Owen Short | February 25

The 2025–26 season has been one of the most entertaining and competitive seasons of recent memory. It seems like every Saturday offers multiple marquee matchups. The one thing that hasn’t delivered is No. 1 recruit Darryn Peterson’s health. The Kansas first-year is facing lots of backlash for his unpredictable availability that has plagued the Jayhawks all season: It’s one of the biggest stories in sports right now.

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Moments ‘til Madness: An abysmal year for the Big East

By Owen Short | February 12

Coming into the 2025–26 college basketball season, the Big East was projected to earn five to six bids in the NCAA Tournament. With about a month remaining until the conference tournament, the league is now projected to receive just three. Last year, the Big East had five teams in March Madness and appeared relatively strong compared to the rest of the Power Five. This year, however, the conference is rated comfortably last among the five in most metrics. What happened to the so-called ‘basketball-first’ conference?

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Moments ‘til Madness: The season of the first-year

By Owen Short | January 28

Saturday marked a historic day for first-year in college basketball. At 2 p.m, Houston’s Kingston Flemings dropped an absurd 42 points. An hour later, Illinois’ Keaton Wagler broke the first-year single-game scoring record with 46 points on just 17 shots, followed by BYU’s AJ Dybantsa’s 43-piece at 5:30 p.m. This marked the first time in at least the past 30 years that three first-years scored 40 points or more on the same day. It then feels like the perfect time to rank the first-years performing best at this point in the season.

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Moments ‘til Madness: Midseason question marks

By Owen Short | January 15

We are now almost halfway through the college basketball season and there has been no shortage of storylines up to this point. With every team well into conference play, the top contenders are becoming clearer, while bubble teams are striving to build their resumes before Selection Sunday. So far, these are the most important questions regarding the state of college basketball as I see it.

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Moments ‘til Madness: The key clashes of opening week

By Owen Short | October 29

The first day of the NCAA hoops season is less than a week away. We’ve already had our first taste of basketball, with a plethora of great NBA games kicking off the league’s opening week. Not only that, but the college preseason exhibition games have been highly competitive this year. This is almost entirely thanks to the rule change implemented in January, which allows these matchups to be streamed and officially scored for the first time.

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Moments ‘til Madness: What to make of the preseason Top 25

By Owen Short | October 16

With about three weeks to go until the opening tip of the college hoops season, we finally have the first official Associated Press Poll of the 2025–26 season. Most of the names and general rankings aren’t very surprising, given all the time spent analyzing these now mostly finalized rosters, but ...

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Moments ‘til Madness: The pecking order of the Power 5

By Owen Short | October 2

Just like everything else in college basketball, the pecking order of the top conferences seems to shuffle from year to year. With the constant churn of the transfer portal and a fresh round of coaching changes, this feels like the right moment to take stock of the Power 5. The goal: to predict which leagues are poised for the most success, whether by racking up tournament bids, producing true championship contenders or simply standing out in overall competitiveness.

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Moments ‘til Madness: What’s Shaping the Season Ahead

By Owen Short | September 24

The first tip-off of the 2025–26 college basketball season comes on Nov. 3. With just under six weeks left, the excitement leading up to opening day is starting to build up. Still, we don’t have official preseason rankings, schedules are being finalized and, apparently, the coaching carousel is still taking its course. While we wait for the actual basketball to start, these are the offseason storylines I found to be interesting and also important for this year of college hoops.

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