The Super Bowl, sadly, was a snoozer. But the past week of college hoops has been anything but.
You had St. John’s upsetting UConn to close the gap in the Big East. UNC beating Duke in the first rivalry meeting, only to turn around and lose days later at unranked Miami. Illinois fell — twice — to Michigan State and Wisconsin, to widen Michigan’s path to the Big Ten title. Arizona, finally, dropped its first game all season, to Darryn Peterson-less Kansas.
And that’s without mentioning Houston over BYU, Kentucky over Tennessee, Purdue over Nebraska and so on. … You get the point.
As for how to make sense of that flood of results? Well, let’s try to tier the best teams by contender status, among this week’s 10 thoughts.
1. Let’s start at the Tier 1 summit, with the favorites: Arizona and Michigan.
They’ve been 1 and 2, in some order, almost all season, yo-yoing for the top spot at KenPom and Bart Torvik. Arizona has one more Quad-1 win than Michigan (nine to eight) and the “better” loss at Kansas, which is a Q1 defeat, compared to Michigan’s Q2 home loss to Wisconsin. But Michigan, narrowly, has the better season-long adjusted offensive and defensive efficiency rankings: fifth and first, respectively, compared with seventh and second for the Wildcats.
It’s a coin flip, honestly. If you really pressed me, I narrowly lean … Arizona? Just because I trust Brayden Burries and Jaden Bradley a little more than Michigan’s backcourt? But either of these teams making it to Indianapolis wouldn’t surprise in the least.
Kind of reminds me of 2024, when UConn and Purdue were the two best teams all season, and we were lucky enough to see ’em face off for the national championship.
2. Tier 2 isn’t quite as ironclad as the top group, but nobody will think twice if any of UConn, Duke, Houston or Illinois cuts down the nets in April.
Before Friday’s 81-72 loss to the Johnnies at Madison Square Garden, it appeared UConn had turned a corner offensively, looking more like the Death Star version of itself from ’23 and ’24. But what do I know? Because instead, the Huskies had 15 turnovers, seven missed free throws and posted their second-lowest offensive rebounding rate all season against St. John’s. Put together, that resulted in UConn’s second-least efficient offensive performance in 24 games. That said, one loss on the road, to a ranked Rick Pitino-coached rival, does nothing to scare me off Dan Hurley’s team, which still has one of the best defenses in the sport. Plus, come NCAA Tournament time, Hurley’s teams always turn it up offensively.
Likewise, Duke led for 39 minutes and 59 seconds on the road against its archrival before Seth Trimble delivered a shot for the ages. Both of Duke’s losses this season have come down to the final possession, in games the Blue Devils led by double digits, against top-15 teams. Maybe it’s not great that Jon Scheyer’s squad allowed UNC’s three best statistical shooters — Trimble, Derek Dixon and Henri Veesaar — to all hoist 3s in the final two minutes, but Duke still had the ball and a chance to win with 20 seconds left. And for anyone criticizing Scheyer’s late-game tactics, including last season, need I remind you how the Florida game ended in December in Durham?
Houston, meanwhile, has one loss since Thanksgiving — at Texas Tech, by 4 — and is tied atop the Big 12 with Arizona. (Circle that Feb. 21 meeting between the Coogs and Wildcats, which should decide who wins America’s toughest conference.)
As for Illinois…
3. Yeah, the Illini need senior guard Kylan Boswell, who suffered a broken hand in January, back, and soon. Especially defensively, after consecutive backcourts went bonkers to deal Brad Underwood’s team a pair of pivotal Big Ten losses. First, Jeremy Fears Jr. became the first Division-I player in the past 25 seasons to drop at least 25 points and 15 assists against a ranked team, almost single-handedly carrying Michigan State to an 85-82 overtime win. (And, just as importantly, Fears did so without any extracurricular activity. Maybe Tom Izzo’s “come to Jesus” talk worked, after all.)
Tuesday night was more of the same, as Wisconsin’s dynamic duo of Nick Boyd and John Blackwell combined for 49 points and nine assists, with only one turnover. (Not that Andrej Stojakovic is an amazing defender, but his being a late scratch meant one less perimeter body to throw at the Badgers backcourt, too.) Illinois’ offense is still elite enough — and its size overwhelming enough defensively — that it takes a team’s best to beat the Illini, which is why they’re included here. But admittedly, without Boswell’s physicality on D, it’s been a little easier for opposing guards to boost their GPA.
4. Tier 3 encompasses two groups of teams: those that started hot but have shown some cracks, and those that started slow but are now rolling downhill. Not hard to figure out which is which among Florida, Michigan State, Iowa State, Kansas and Nebraska.
Florida has won eight of its last nine, while grading out as the nation’s best team over that stretch, per Bart Torvik. UF is now the favorite to win the SEC by multiple games, according to KenPom’s projections, and it gets its biggest conference challenger, Arkansas, at home on Feb. 28. But the Gators are listed here because they did still drop three of their biggest nonconference games, albeit all to top-eight KenPom teams in Arizona, Duke and UConn. And secondly, because Todd Golden’s backcourt still isn’t shooting the ball well — and nobody’s expecting it to at this point.
As for Michigan State and Iowa State, the latter of which fell Tuesday at TCU, both have elite defenses and just enough question marks offensively that it’s tough to totally trust them. Sparty has also dealt with recent injury woes. Of the two, I’ll take Iowa State’s upside, but my confidence in the Cyclones has admittedly dropped a bit since their outstanding 16-0 start.
5. But let’s talk about Kansas. I’m done diving into the Darryn Peterson waters, but are we sure the Jayhawks aren’t Final Four-good even without him?
This isn’t just about the win against Arizona, either, although that proved definitively that KU can hang with anyone. But Kansas has now won eight straight, with a top-10 defense that keeps getting better, emboldened by role players who refuse to stay role players (complementary), with a two-time championship-winning coach who’s showing as much emotion as he has in years.
One stretch in particular really sold me Monday: The seven second-half minutes in which KU held Arizona to one basket on 11 shots, grinding together a 12-2 run that took the Jayhawks from down 3 to up 6. No team in the country has shut Zona out like that all season.
And that didn’t even include Flory Bidunga’s thunderous (and effectively, game-sealing) block:
Block city pic.twitter.com/kJ6pMQCZpf
— Kansas Men’s Basketball (@KUHoops) February 10, 2026
Bidunga and Melvin Council Jr., who has quickly become a KU cult hero, combined for 32 of Kansas’ 40 second-half points, looking like more-than-capable anchors of a team that can make a run this March.
Peterson has people nervous, but I’ll take all the Kansas stock, please.
6. And quickly, on Nebraska: No, three losses in four games — all by single digits, to top-10 KenPom teams — is no reason to panic.
In fact, it looked like Fred Hoiberg’s team was going to complete an all-time comeback Tuesday against Purdue, after trailing by 22 early in the second half. Rienk Mast missed a free throw in the final seconds of regulation that would’ve sealed the deal, and then this happened on what should’ve been the final possession of overtime:
With four seconds left in OT, Jamarques Lawrence slips bringing the ball up the court. pic.twitter.com/7jLcVjwABc
— FOX College Hoops (@CBBonFOX) February 11, 2026
No telling if Nebraska actually scores there or not, but what a blah ending to a spectacular game. The Huskers are fine, though, and still just as well-positioned as they were two weeks ago to win their first NCAA Tournament game(s).
7. Tier 4, made up of Purdue, Texas Tech, Gonzaga and North Carolina, is a little messy. Teams with some glaring vulnerabilities, but also some great wins.
Purdue’s 2-point defense is still petrifying, but it did just pick up its first win over a ranked Big Ten team after losing three straight in late January. Texas Tech beat Duke and Houston — but has almost no depth, and regularly gets exposed defensively. Gonzaga’s only here if the Zags are healthy, which they haven’t been for weeks without Braden Huff, and which they may or may not be for the rest of this season.
And North Carolina has now beaten all of Kansas, Kentucky and Duke for the first time since 1981-82, but also has four losses to unranked teams in league play, including Tuesday’s letdown after the emotional high of beating the Blue Devils.
8. Of the four, I’m probably least confident in Purdue, but Tuesday showed the Boilermakers haven’t totally fallen apart. Plus, as a hoops fan, I’m immensely curious how close Braden Smith can get to Bobby Hurley’s all-time NCAA assists record — or if he can actually topple it.
Smith is 109 dimes away from breaking Hurley’s record of 1,076 with at least nine games left: seven in the regular season, plus one apiece in the Big Ten and NCAA Tournament. That would require an aggressive pace of 12.1 per game, though, to pass Hurley. However, if the Boilermakers win at least one Big Ten tournament game and then make the Sweet 16? That gives Smith 12 games, and drops the per-game pace to a more-manageable 9.1 — or just above his average of 8.8 per game.
All of which is to say, it sure seems like Smith’s record pursuit will go only as far as Purdue does.
9. Four more teams piqued my interest, but I couldn’t picture them winning four straight postseason games, for one reason or another.
BYU has one of the five best players in college basketball in AJ Dybantsa, but can’t stop gifting teams double-digit, first-half cushions. And until it actually beats one of the sport’s elite teams, we’re past the point of trusting potential. St. John’s, meanwhile, has won 10 straight and is one of the sport’s hottest teams, but even with Dillon Mitchell and Dylan Darling tag-teaming as lead ballhandlers, I don’t fully trust the offense.
Vanderbilt was a personal favorite earlier this year, and I still like the Commodores. But between a glaring lack of frontcourt size and pesky injury issues, this increasingly feels like a team with a Sweet 16 ceiling.
And lastly, Arkansas, with freshman point guard Darius Acuff Jr., one of the more slept-on rookies in the country. But the Razorbacks’ best wins — over Tennessee and Vandy — haven’t aged super well, and despite being in the SEC mix, John Calipari’s team no-shows too often for my liking.
10. Finally, a team that isn’t a true contender, but is still fascinating: Wisconsin.
Over the Badgers’ past 10 games — a stretch that includes two of the best wins any team has all season, at Michigan and at Illinois — Greg Gard’s team is fourth nationally in adjusted offensive efficiency, according to Bart Torvik. But rather than just flippantly saying those are “big” wins, I love using Bart Torvik’s “Wins Above Bubble” (WAB) stat: the same one the NCAA Tournament selection committee uses when assessing bubble teams.
Both wins over Michigan and Illinois register as worth at least +0.9 WAB. For reference, when I compared the most valuable nonconference wins earlier this season, the high-water mark was Arizona’s win at UConn, which was worth +0.89 WAB.
Which is to say, those two Badgers victories aren’t just among the best wins this season. They might very well be the best.
Wisconsin is too inconsistent and porous defensively to be considered a real Final Four threat, but nobody is gonna want to see the Badgers across from them in the first weekend.