Jeff BorzelloMar 5, 2026, 09:00 AM ETClose Basketball recruiting insider. Joined ESPN in 2014. Graduate of University of Delaware.Follow on XMultiple Authors
play1:25Highlight: No. 5 Florida puts up 108 in win over Mississippi StateAlex Condon powers the Gators with 26 points as Xaivian Lee puts up 19 and Rueben Chinyelu records a double-double of 11 points and 16 rebounds to defeat the Bulldogs, 108-74.
play1:13Highlight: J.P. Estrella powers No. 23 Tennessee to win over South CarolinaEstrella leads the way with 22 points and seven rebounds as Felix Okpara puts up 20 points to give the Volunteers a 78-59 victory against the Gamecocks.
play1:09Highlight: No. 24 Vanderbilt sneaks past Ole Miss in overtimeTyler Tanner paces the Commodores with 34 points as Duke Miles and AK Okereke each put up 16 to secure a clutch 89-86 victory against the Rebels.
Cameron Boozer’s big night helps Duke clinch ACC regular-season title (1:17)Cameron Boozer scores 26 points and grabs 9 rebounds as Duke locks up the ACC regular-season title with a win over NC State. (1:17)
Highlight: No. 5 Florida puts up 108 in win over Mississippi StateAlex Condon powers the Gators with 26 points as Xaivian Lee puts up 19 and Rueben Chinyelu records a double-double of 11 points and 16 rebounds to defeat the Bulldogs, 108-74.
Alex Condon powers the Gators with 26 points as Xaivian Lee puts up 19 and Rueben Chinyelu records a double-double of 11 points and 16 rebounds to defeat the Bulldogs, 108-74.
Highlight: J.P. Estrella powers No. 23 Tennessee to win over South CarolinaEstrella leads the way with 22 points and seven rebounds as Felix Okpara puts up 20 points to give the Volunteers a 78-59 victory against the Gamecocks.
Estrella leads the way with 22 points and seven rebounds as Felix Okpara puts up 20 points to give the Volunteers a 78-59 victory against the Gamecocks.
Highlight: No. 24 Vanderbilt sneaks past Ole Miss in overtimeTyler Tanner paces the Commodores with 34 points as Duke Miles and AK Okereke each put up 16 to secure a clutch 89-86 victory against the Rebels.
Tyler Tanner paces the Commodores with 34 points as Duke Miles and AK Okereke each put up 16 to secure a clutch 89-86 victory against the Rebels.
The final men’s college basketball Power Rankings of the 2025-26 season shows a clear delineation between the teams at the top of the rankings, and everyone else.
Entering last season’s NCAA tournament, there was a four-team tier at the top — the four 1-seeds. It resulted in a Final Four featuring all four 1-seeds for the first time since 2008. Are we headed for a similar national semifinal this year?
Duke, Michigan and Arizona have separated themselves from the pack for weeks, while Florida’s recent dominant run has the Gators pushing to join that tier. UConn’s predictive numbers are not at the level of those four, but as things currently stand the Huskies have the inside track to the fourth 1-seed.
Highlight: No. 5 Florida puts up 108 in win over Mississippi State
Highlight: No. 24 Vanderbilt sneaks past Ole Miss in overtime
Duke has entered a different level of dominance over the past couple of weeks, moving past Michigan in each of the efficiency-based metrics on the NCAA teamsheets. The Blue Devils’ last ACC win by fewer than 13 points came back on Jan. 10 against SMU, and their average margin of victory in 12 league wins since is 24.5 points. Three of their five most efficient offensive performances of the season have come in the past five games, including scoring 1.44 points per possession in Monday’s win at NC State. They’ve also held six straight ACC opponents to fewer than one point per possession.
Arizona’s two-game lull seems to be firmly in the past, as the Wildcats handled their business this past week, clinching the Big 12 regular-season title with two dominant wins over Kansas and Iowa State by a combined 39 points. Their elite defense had struggled for a few weeks — allowing at least 1.02 points per possession in five straight games — but held both the Jayhawks and Cyclones to below 0.90 points per possession. Monday’s win over Iowa State also featured another big-game performance from Jaden Bradley, who finished with 17 points. Per ESPN Research, Bradley is now averaging 17.6 points against top-10 opponents — and 13.1 against all others.
Michigan bounced back from its loss to Duke with back-to-back wins over Minnesota and Illinois, then received bad news with L.J. Cason suffering a torn ACL and being ruled out for the season. Cason had emerged as one of the best backup guards in the country and was playing his best basketball of the season over the past few weeks. The Florida native had scored in double figures in five of his last seven games heading into the Illinois game, including shooting 54.2% from 3. Without Cason, the point guard duties will fall almost exclusively to Elliot Cadeau, while freshman Trey McKenney will also become more important as the primary reserve in the backcourt.
UConn has rebounded nicely from its mini slump in the first half of February, when it lost twice in four games, and we’re starting to see elite-level performance at both ends of the floor. The Huskies are ranked 11th nationally in adjusted offensive efficiency since Jan. 27. But, after a couple of weeks of subpar defense, they’re back to playing their best at that end of the floor, ranking fifth in the nation in adjusted defensive efficiency during their current three-game winning streak. While some of that is buoyed by their dominance against St. John’s, they were also highly impressive against Villanova and overcame an uncharacteristically strong 3-point shooting night from Seton Hall.
We won’t go as far as saying Florida is playing better than it was at this point in last year’s national championship run. But it’s not far off. The Gators are absolutely obliterating opponents. They’ve had one win by fewer than 13 points since Jan. 28, and they won both games in the last week by a combined score of 219-151. There are some eye-popping stats coming out of their recent stretch, but this might have been the best one: According to ESPN Research, Florida’s streak of 90-plus points in six straight games against ranked opponents is the third longest in a single season in AP poll history. The only teams with longer streaks are UNLV and Loyola Marymount, with both coming in 1989-90.
Order has been restored in Houston after the Cougars had previously lost three in a row to tumble out of the Big 12 title race. Kelvin Sampson’s team won both of its games this past week, and it was the perimeter group that — unsurprisingly — sparked the wins. Against Colorado, Milos Uzan broke out for 26 points and six assists, while Kingston Flemings and Emanuel Sharp were also in double figures. And against Baylor, Flemings was the star with 21 points and seven assists, while Sharp went for 19 points and Uzan has 12. We would be remiss, however, if we didn’t mention the interior production from Joseph Tugler. One of the knocks on Houston during its losing streak was the lack of a go-to post option that it had last season in J’Wan Roberts. But Tugler had 14 points in each of his past two games, his first time since mid-January scoring in double figures in back-to-back games.
The Spartans have rattled off four straight wins, including road victories at Purdue and Indiana, and they’re now squarely in the hunt for a 2-seed in the NCAA tournament — with room to improve after favorable results in the regular-season finale against Michigan as well as the Big Ten tournament. They rank in the top 10 in four of the seven metrics on the NCAA teamsheet, and their 15 combined Quadrant 1 and 2 wins ranked behind only five teams nationally entering the week. In fact, only four teams entered the week with more than Michigan State’s eight Quad 1 wins.
Since suffering a high-ankle sprain on Feb. 7, Andrej Stojakovic — who started the 21 of the first 24 games of the season — missed two games then came off the bench for the last four. But the former Stanford and Cal transfer hasn’t exactly found it easy to get into a consistent rhythm. He scored 22 points in his first game back from injury, then had eight points on 1-for-5 shooting against UCLA and was scoreless in 12 minutes against Michigan. Brad Underwood will hope Stojakovic’s performance against Oregon on Tuesday — 21 points, 12 rebounds, 7-for-12 from the field in just 21 minutes — gets him back on track.
Iowa State is trending in the wrong direction down the stretch of the season. The Cyclones were blown out at Arizona on Monday, their fourth loss in seven games. So what’s going on? During this stretch, the defense has remained very good, ranking 13th nationally over that span in adjusted defensive efficiency at Torvik. The other end of the floor, though? Not so much. Iowa State is No. 82 in the country in adjusted offensive efficiency in those seven games, shooting under 49% from 2 and just over 31% from 3. Star forward Joshua Jefferson is shooting just 33.7% from the field in those games, 19.2% from 3.
After three losses in four games, Purdue had to avoid a loss at Northwestern on Wednesday to salvage its Selection Sunday seeding and regain some semblance of momentum heading down the stretch. And the Boilermakers’ savior was not one of their three program stalwart seniors — it was sophomore guard C.J. Cox. Cox finished with a career-high 27 points, with 21 points coming after halftime. He had 11 points in the final 4:30, including multiple go-ahead 3-pointers — and the eventual game-winning 3 with 48 seconds left.
Nebraska is now just 5-5 in its past 10 games, with its two worst offensive performances of the season coming in the past two weeks, sandwiched around a three-game winning streak. Tuesday’s 20-point loss at UCLA was the Cornhuskers’ worst game of the season, in which they scored just 0.86 points per possession and allowed 1.19 points. So what happened? Star transfer Pryce Sandfort had his first single-digit scoring outing of Big Ten play, while game-changing sixth man Braden Frager had just two points on 1-for-7 shooting. At the other end, UCLA made 10 3s — only the fifth team to make double-figure 3s against Nebraska in 2026 — and only gave the ball away eight times, which caused issues for the Big Ten’s best team at forcing turnovers.