Jeff BorzelloFeb 12, 2026, 07:45 AM ETCloseJeff Borzello is a basketball recruiting insider. He has joined ESPN in 2014.Follow on XMultiple Authors
play0:16Flory Bidunga elevates for a critical blockFlory Bidunga protects the paint for the Jayhawks with a late-game swat.
play0:22Miami knocks off UNC, fans storm the courtMiami beats UNC 75-66 and the fans are fired up as they storm the court.
play1:22Mikel Brown Jr. scores career-high 45 points in Louisville’s blowout winMikel Brown Jr. scores 45 points with 10 3-pointers as Louisville takes down NC State.
Kansas takes down No. 1 Arizona without Darryn Peterson (0:43)Myron Medcalf breaks down how Kansas was able to defeat No. 1 Arizona without star guard Darryn Peterson. (0:43)
Flory Bidunga elevates for a critical blockFlory Bidunga protects the paint for the Jayhawks with a late-game swat.
Miami knocks off UNC, fans storm the courtMiami beats UNC 75-66 and the fans are fired up as they storm the court.
Mikel Brown Jr. scores career-high 45 points in Louisville’s blowout winMikel Brown Jr. scores 45 points with 10 3-pointers as Louisville takes down NC State.
We warned everyone last week that major changes to the top of the Power Rankings could be on the horizon, with four of the top five playing road games against other ranked teams between editions.
Well, all four of those teams lost: UConn to St. John’s at Madison Square Garden on Friday; Duke at the buzzer to North Carolina on Saturday; Illinois in overtime to Michigan State on Sunday; and Arizona, for the first time this season, at Kansas on Monday.
When the dust settled, the top seven teams in last week’s Power Rankings went 8-7 in the span of seven days, with Michigan accounting for three of those wins.
The top four teams are still the top four teams — just in a different order. Houston takes over the fifth spot. We did opt for Michigan in the top spot, overtaking Arizona. The Wolverines have the edge in six of seven teamsheet metrics, and though Arizona has better wins overall, the Wildcats haven’t beaten a team in this week’s Power Rankings since Dec. 13.
Few bigs in America are playing at a higher level than Flory Bidunga right now. He’s coming off a game in which he went toe-to-toe with arguably the best interior team in the country, when it comes to scoring in the paint and deterring opponents at the rim — and was the best big man on the court. He finished with 23 points, 10 rebounds and three blocks on Monday, and is now averaging 17.9 points, 9.3 rebounds and 3.7 blocks over his past seven games.
Flory Bidunga protects the paint for the Jayhawks with a late-game swat.
Miami beats UNC 75-66 and the fans are fired up as they storm the court.
It’s impossible to avoid mentioning Tyler Tanner in the Commodores’ write-up every week. The sophomore point guard has been playing at an all-conference level all season, but he has taken his game to a different level since Duke Miles was sidelined. Tanner had 37 points and nine assists in Saturday’s loss to Oklahoma, then finished with 25 points and six assists in a bounce-back win at Auburn. In six games without Miles, Tanner is averaging 24.5 points and 7.3 assists.
Mikel Brown Jr. scores career-high 45 points in Louisville’s blowout win
Mikel Brown Jr. scores 45 points with 10 3-pointers as Louisville takes down NC State.
Kentucky is back in the Power Rankings for the first time in 2026, after winning three in a row and eight of their past nine games — including a sweep of Tennessee and a road win at Arkansas. Otega Oweh has put a disappointing nonconference campaign in the rearview mirror and is performing at an incredibly high level in SEC play. He has scored at least 20 points in five straight games and is averaging 20.6 points and shooting better than 50% from the field over his past 12.
Michigan was pushed in Wednesday’s trip to Northwestern as it had been very few times this season. The Wolverines trailed by 16 points with less than 15 minutes before turning the game completely on its head to win by 12. Over the final 14:05, they outscored Northwestern 45-17, going 14-for-18 from the field while holding the Wildcats to 5-for-25 shooting, including 1-for-13 from 3. The surprise star performer was backup point guard L.J. Cason, who took over for Elliot Cadeau early in the second half and never left the court again. He finished with 18 points and three assists, hitting several big shots during Michigan’s game-changing runs.
Arizona’s first loss featured issues at both ends of the court. Monday’s was the Wildcats’ second-worst offensive game and their second-worst defensive game of the season. One stat that stood out was the free throw shooting. Arizona has been the best team in the Big 12 at getting to the free throw line all season, averaging more than 26 foul shots. Against Kansas, it got to the line only 14 times, and the Jayhawks shot 25 of their own. Because the Wildcats don’t shoot a high volume from 3, not getting foul shots put so much pressure on their half-court offense to get clean looks at the rim, and things became stagnant at that end.
Even when UConn was struggling from the perimeter, coach Dan Hurley maintained that his team was getting good looks — the shots just weren’t falling. “We haven’t changed anything on offense,” he said after last week’s win over Xavier. “We’re just starting to make shots at the clip and at the level that this team should be making shots.” Whatever it is, UConn’s newfound shotmaking is real. The Huskies have now made at least nine 3s in five straight games after doing it five times all season; over that span, they’re making 11.8 3s per game at a 44.7% clip.
In both of Duke’s losses this season, the Blue Devils have blown double-digit leads and looked far too reliant on Cameron Boozer for offense late in games. The national Player of the Year favorite is good enough to oblige, but coach Jon Scheyer will hope Tuesday’s win over Pittsburgh helps Isaiah Evans regain the form that made him one of the most dangerous wings in the conference early. After averaging 24.0 points in the first three games of January, the sophomore guard averaged 13.1 points and shot 25.6% from 3 in his next seven. But against Pitt, he scored 21 points and was 5-for-6 from 3.
Michigan State bounced back from a two-game losing streak with a win over Illinois last weekend. Though Jeremy Fears Jr. was the headliner — he had 26 points and 15 assists, the first Big Ten player to do that in more than 30 years — coach Tom Izzo will have come away very happy with the production from his role players and bench. Jordan Scott moved into the starting lineup for the past two games and responded with a combined 25 points and 4-for-8 shooting on 3s. Kur Teng had 10 points and a couple of big 3s. Freshman Cam Ward had a monster dunk early and finished with eight points and seven rebounds.
Illinois has dropped two straight, both in overtime, after winning 12 consecutive games to rise into the top five nationally. Though Andrej Stojakovic was missed against Wisconsin, Kylan Boswell’s absence for the past seven games was finally felt this past week. One of the best defensive guards in America, Boswell probably would have provided some sort of resistance against the guards of Michigan State and Wisconsin. Jeremy Fears Jr. had 26 points and 15 assists against the Illini, and Wisconsin’s backcourt of John Blackwell and Nick Boyd combined for 49 points and nine assists. Both teams scored above 1.19 points per possession against Illinois, a threshold only two other opponents have reached all season.
There is arguably no better team in the country playing better defense than Florida. Here is the Gators’ performance on the defensive end in their past four games: held South Carolina to 48 points and 0.69 points per possession; held Alabama 15 points below its average; held Texas A&M to 67 points on 30.6% shooting; and held Georgia to 66 points on 34.7% shooting. Three of those games were on the road, and three were against likely NCAA tournament teams. Per ESPN Research, the past two games mark only the fifth time in the past 20 seasons that Florida has held back-to-back SEC opponents below 35% from the field.
In Tuesday night’s loss to TCU, Iowa State had its worst offensive performance since its 2023 NCAA tournament loss to Pitt. Against the Horned Frogs, the Cyclones scored just 0.81 points per possession, and all the areas in which one would expect an Iowa State team to thrive were disappointing. The top-10 3-point shooting team went just 21.7% from beyond the arc. The top-10 team in forcing turnovers lost the turnover battle, and is now 14th out of 16 in the Big 12 in offensive turnover percentage. The conference’s best offensive rebounding team also lost the battle on the boards. The Cyclones also made only two free throws all game. With upcoming games against Kansas, Houston and BYU, coach T.J. Otzelberger will have to hope Tuesday was an anomaly.
Nebraska has now dropped three of four games since starting the season with 20 consecutive wins. When looking at the three defeats, two things stand out: the rebounding disparity, and the free throw disparity. Three of the Cornhuskers’ six worst rebounding performances at both ends of the court happened in those three losses. Their two worst games with free throw margin came in the losses to Michigan and Illinois. Neither should be a surprise, given that Nebraska ranks at the bottom of the Big Ten in both offensive rebounding percentage and free throw rate, but Purdue grabbing 21 offensive rebounds Tuesday was not part of the plan. Nor was Michigan and Illinois outshooting Nebraska from the free throw line by a combined 49-9 margin.
Gonzaga didn’t let the stunning defeat at Portland last week snowball into a losing streak, beating both Oregon State and Washington State by a combined 50 points this past week. The Bulldogs do have arguably their three toughest matchups of WCC play over the next two weeks: road games at Santa Clara, San Francisco and Saint Mary’s. Star big man Graham Ike returned from the ankle injury that forced him to sit out three games and had one of the better four-game stretches of his college career: 27.3 points, 7.0 rebounds, 64.1% shooting. He even made five 3s at a 55.6% clip over that span.