With NCAA basketball tipping off this week, early season upsets and hard-fought wins are already humbling some of college's top-ranked programs.
No. 19 Florida State fell to unranked Illinois 83-74 on Thursday despite 27 points from junior guard Ta'Niya Latson and a 22-point, 14-rebound double-double from senior forward Makayla Timpson. Behind 20-point performances from both Makira Cook and Adalia Mckenzie, the Fighting Illini took a 10-point first-quarter lead that they never relinquished.
Also on Thursday, No. 25 Indiana lost to unranked Harvard 72-68, with the Crimson dropping 21 first-quarter points to the Hoosiers' mere seven to put Indiana on their heels. The Big Ten squad mounted a comeback to force overtime, but between Harvard guard Harmoni Turner's 24 points and Indiana's 27 turnovers, the Ivy Leaguers took the win back to Cambridge.
Proving that ambitious non-conference schedules can be both risky and rewarding, No. 1 South Carolina, No. 3 USC, and No. 5 UCLA all narrowly fended off upsets in their respective season openers earlier this week.
Ultimately, even though recruitment and transfer opportunities can consolidate talent at the league's top, parity in college basketball has never been more widespread — and the 2024/25 competition's just starting.
Final Four rematch headlines NCAA weekend lineup
Continuing the non-conference drama this weekend will be Sunday's 2024 Final Four rematch between No. 1 South Carolina and No. 9 NC State.
Last April, the Gamecocks resoundingly defeated the Wolfpack 78-59 in their NCAA semifinal before finishing the 2023/24 season as undefeated national champions.
Former South Carolina transfer Saniya Rivers will once again star for the Wolfpack, though sophomore guard Zoe Brooks was NC State's leading scorer with 21 points in their season opener against East Tennessee State on Tuesday.
As for the Gamecocks, they relied on junior forward Chloe Kitts to lead the scoring in their 68-62 opening win over unranked Michigan on Monday. In narrow victory, the reigning champions trailed for all but 32 seconds of the first half. Of course, the struggle highlighted the fact that South Carolina is still figuring out how to respond to missing Chicago Sky rookie Kamila Cardoso in the paint.
Sunday will also feature another ranked matchup, as No. 11 Duke visits No. 18 Maryland. Though both teams enter the weekend undefeated, Duke faces a particularly tough non-conference schedule this season, capped by a December 5th date with South Carolina.
How to watch women's college basketball games this weekend
Duke and Maryland tip off Sunday's action at 1 PM ET, airing live on FS1. Then at 3 PM ET, South Carolina visits NC State, with live coverage on ESPN.
Elizabeth Kitley delivered big on Sunday, helping No. 13 Virginia Tech upset previously undefeated No. 3 NC State with a last-second layup.
The layup came off of a cross-court inbound pass from Cayla King, leaving less than a second left for NC State to respond and avoid the upset. But the Wolfpack were unable to deny the Hokies of their victory.
ELIZABETH KITLEY HITS THE GAME WINNER 🚨 @HokiesWBB pic.twitter.com/UkawwYeH2U
— ACC Network (@accnetwork) January 7, 2024
Kitley finished with 27 points for Virginia Tech, who rallied from a 13-point deficit in the second half for their seventh-straight win. It was also their 19th straight win at home.
“I think we’ve gone over that play multiple times in practice,” Georgia Amoore said, calling the play “Old Faithful.” “And you know, Cayla has great vision and great accuracy with that pass, and I knew that it’s worked before. So, I was very, very confident.”
“Coach [Kenny] Brooks is really good in those situations, and he had something in his back pocket,” Kitley said. “Cayla had an absolute dime of a pass and it ended up working out for us.”
The Hokies’ coach said the team “needed” the win after two early season losses to ranked opponents.
“We just kind of like dug in and said, ‘Hey, we’re not trying to prove anybody wrong,” Brooks said. “We’re just going to continue to prove ourselves right,’ and that worked for us last year, and it continues to work for us.”
“It came down to just willing yourself to win,” he added. “A game like that, a win like that, is like feeding a monster because I think people are going to continue to come back.”
For the Wolfpack, it was their first loss this season. It also leaves just three undefeated teams left in women’s college basketball: No. 1 South Carolina, No. 2 UCLA and No. 6 Baylor.
“I think the heartbreaking thing is we have a lot of respect for their program, and you’re two seconds away from beating them on the road,” NC State coach Wes Moore said. “That’s heartbreaking. As a coach, you think I could have done something different, and we’d have won that game.”
Just 11 teams remain undefeated in NCAA women’s basketball.
Pac-12 rivals UCLA and USC are among them, with both likely to remain so heading into their Dec. 30 meeting. Before that top-10 contest, No. 2 UCLA will face Hawaii at 4 p.m. ET Wednesday, and No. 6 USC will go up against Long Beach State at 5 p.m. ET Wednesday.
USC is led by freshman phenom JuJu Watkins, who has five 30-point performances through nine games. Her 26.8 points per game is second among all scorers, behind only Iowa’s Caitlin Clark. UCLA also features a star-studded roster, including sophomores Lauren Betts and Kiki Rice.
The undefeated South Carolina Gamecocks remain the unanimous No. 1 pick in the AP Top 25. Their next game against a ranked opponent comes on Jan. 25 against No. 7 LSU.
The full list of teams undefeated as of noon ET on Dec. 20 includes:
- No. 1 South Carolina (11-0)
- No. 2 UCLA (10-0)
- No. 3 NC State (11-0)
- No. 5 Texas (11-0)
- No. 6 USC (9-0)
- No. 10 Baylor (9-0)
- No. 18 Marquette (11-0)
- No. 23 Washington (11-0)
- No. 25 TCU (11-0)
- West Virginia (10-0)
- Oregon State (9-0)
In the 2022-23 season, South Carolina went undefeated until the Final Four, when the Gamecocks lost to Iowa. Just nine teams have gone undefeated en route to a national championship: Texas (1985-86), Tennessee (1997-98), Baylor (2011-12) and UConn (1994-95, 2001-02, 2008-09, 2009-10, 2013-14, 2015-16).
A number of teams this season have just one loss so far, including Iowa (11-1) and LSU (11-1).
No. 2 UConn basketball was upset by an unranked NC State team on Saturday evening, 92-81. The last time the Wolfpack beat the Huskies came in the 1998 Elite Eight.
NC State junior Saniya Rivers stood out as the player of the match, draining 33 points and grabbing 11 rebounds for her squad. Rivers also drew fouls throughout the game, and she shot 10-14 from the free-throw line.
UConn head coach Gino Auriemma told his NC State counterpart Wes Moore that the Wolfpack team is “10 times better than last year,” as CT Insider’s Maggie Vanoni reported after the game.
“Everything they did was better than ours. … They were just on top of their game more than I remember. We got our asses beat plain and simple,” Auriemma said.
The Huskies made a palpable offensive effort, with two of their starters bagging over 20 points — Paige Bueckers dropped 27, while Aaliyah Edwards contributed 21. Bueckers was playing in her second game since her return from an ACL injury.
However, UConn struggled on the defensive end of the court. Four out of five Husky starters were in foul trouble by the end of the game, racking up at least four fouls, with Nika Mühl fouling out.
“We weren’t mature enough to handle it,” Auriemma said of his team.
UConn grabbed 11 fewer rebounds than NC State, with 29 to the Wolfpack’s 41. NC State cashed in on 12 points off rebounds and 12 second-chance points.
“We’ve got a sh— attitude towards rebounding … and that’s got to change,” Auriemma said.
With UConn’s loss to NC State and No. 1 LSU’s season-opening loss to Colorado, the top two teams in the preseason AP Top 25 have lost before the second AP poll for the first time in at least 25 years, according to ESPN.