Owen Short is a sophomore who is studying quantitative economics. He can be reached at owen.short@tufts.edu.
It has now been three weeks since the Michigan Wolverines became the 2026 National Champions in college basketball, but you could argue the sport is even more hectic now than it was during the tournament. With the season over, free agency has begun for both players and coaches.
A champion is here. For just the second time in school history, the Michigan Wolverines are the last team standing in the NCAA Tournament. And looking back, this was a team that always felt destined for this moment.
Finally, we are in the middle of the best month of the year: March. As always, there have been countless amazing games and we have gotten to see almost all of the nation’s best players hoop thus far. Not to mention, the coaching carousel has already taken its course, whether it’s Providence hiring USF’s Brian Hodgson, Gerry McNamara returning home to Syracuse or one of the best jobs in the sport opening up at UNC. But the tournament is the real focus this time of year. Here are the most important storylines from the first weekend.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
Officially a week into the college hoops season, the storylines are already rolling in. As usual, there weren’t many ranked matchups, but the ones we did have offered good insight into the year ahead. Let’s take a look at three early storylines.
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.
