College basketball schedule and results: Texas, Cal win to set up Friday matchup

Didn’t count, but who cares? What a throwdown by the SMU guard.

North Carolina State’s Beejay Anya is a PRESENCE -- 6’9 with a 7’9 wingspan -- and he likes to block stuff. Jacksonville found that out directly. Anya recorded 10 blocks in the game’s first 25 minutes, and did so off the bench. That’s over a quarter of Jacksonville’s early attempts, and it includes a sequence of four blocks *in one possession*:

That video does not deceive. Look at this:

Myles Turner was one of the best recruits in the high school class of 2014. He’s a 6’11, 240-pound big man who will likely be an NBA lottery pick after this season. If he keeps shooting like this, there will be no “likely” involved with that statement.

The correct answer is: it doesn’t matter if it was done on purpose or not. Double alley-oops are to be cherished regardless of circumstance.

via @akulawolf

It appeared Gonzaga’s Josh Perkins was just thanking this referee for hearing him out, but we’ll also accept the explanation that nearly tripling your opponent’s score gets you official high fives:

(h/t Matt Norlander)

Rondae Hollis-Jefferson is 6’7. The man in front of the rim here, UC Irvine’s Mamadou N’Diaye, is listed at 7’6. No matter. RHJ can elevate even with a mountain of a man standing in front of him.

via Avinash Kunnath

DUDE I’M OPEN. DON’T WORRY ABOUT THE SUIT AND TIE I’M OPEN. NO *YOU* AREN’T ALLOWED TO STAND HERE. GIMME THE ROCK BRO:

Meanwhile, the ref doesn’t seem to mind Sean Miller’s presence on the court one bit.

Pretty nice finish by Oklahoma’s TaShawn Thomas, EXCELLENT celebration by the hugging, convulsing, fainting Oklahoma bench:

(via Royce Young)

Keifer Sykes is one of the most explosive guards in the country, mid-major or not. He *almost* put one down on Frank Kaminsky on Wednesday. I *almost* called it!

That can get you an underage drinking ticket on campus.

via Royce Young

Kansas got absolutely smoked by Kentucky -- like, the Wildcats nearly outscored their whole game total in the first half -- and coach Bill Self’s got jokes:

(via Will Brinson)

A season ago, Kentucky carried the No. 1 ranking into its Champions Classic game against Michigan State and wound up taking the first of their 11 losses. This year, the top-ranked Wildcats made it clear from the get-go that they were not going to accept a similar fate.

Kentucky had just two players score in double figures, no player score more than 11 points, and the Wildcats still throttled No. 5 Kansas, 72-40, in one of the more one-sided games featuring two top-five teams in recent memory.

Despite a game effort from the Spartans, Coach K’s team was in command of things from start to finish. After trailing by seven at halftime, the Spartans cut the lead to three at 51-48, but Duke responded with a 7-0 run and remained in control from there.

Four players scored in double figures for Duke, which shot 54 percent from the field and won convincingly despite being out-rebounded by Michigan State, 35-25.

Bill Walton is calling Utah-San Diego State, which is amazing, because it means Bill Walton is calling a college basketball game and asking his broadcast partner if he’s ever been to Austria and stuff like that. It’s also great because it means Walton was able to show the ESPN crew in town to broadcast the game around his house, which features an enormous outdoor tepee.

“My goodness! Levon! This magazine doesn’t even have UCLA in the top five in the Pac-12! Can you believe it?”

I’m excited about Bruce Pearl as Auburn’s coach for a lot of reasons. I think he has the opportunity to reinvigorate that program, which is always good, and he’s perennially excited, which is fun. How excited is he? This excited:

There are several distinct visible patches of Bruce Pearl’s sweat on that turtleneck. Bruce Pearl will be the runaway winner of the sweatiest coach in college hoops award. He might even be sweatier than some players.

Gonzaga vs. SMU was ostensibly a matchup between two top 25 teams, but the game lost some of its luster when Mustangs star Markus Kennedy was ruled ineligible for the first semester of the season. Larry Brown’s SMU squad is still a talented group out of the American, but Gonzaga showed the Mustangs simply aren’t ready to compete against the best teams in the country without Kennedy in the lineup.

That’s right: with a 72-56 victory in Spokane, the Zags left little doubt they’re among the best teams in college basketball. It’s early, of course, but the Zags have the size and shooting to remain near the top of the polls all season.

Gonzaga had a student shoot a shot at halftime from halfcourt as part of a contest. We thought there were three possible results here. Either the person nails it, they miss it barely, or they miss it by a whole ton and we laugh. We’d never seen this one before:

The thing about a half-court shot is that it has to pretty much swish or maybe hit the backboard right above the net to go in. It’s thrown so hard that if it hits any part of the rim, it’s probably going to clang away with a lot of force. But this one hits the very top of the backboard (like a Ben Wallace shot), hits it at exactly the right angle that it goes up at about an 89 degree angle about 15 feet in the air, and then falls perfectly down into the rim.

The UConn women’s basketball team saw its 47-game winning steak snapped by the same team and in the same place where the Huskies’ record 90-game winning streak died almost four years ago.

No. 6 Stanford got 24 points from sophomore Lili Thompson and a clutch three from Amber Orrange in the closing seconds of regulation to send the game into overtime. In the extra frame, the Cardinal outscored the top-ranked Huskies 11-9 to pull off the 88-86 upset.

The season may have officially gotten underway last Friday, but for most fans, the unofficial start of every college basketball season has become the ESPN tip-off marathon.

The annual spectacle that leaves me unaware of what day it is for the rest of the work week kicks off Monday night at 7 p.m. and should last until the final minutes of Tuesday. If real world duties like family, work or sanity are going to keep you watching from every dribble this year, here are the 10 best games of this year’s event to pick and choose from.