Shoutout the Indiana Hoosiers football team, man. What a story, what a run and what an incredible moment in college sports.

I know I’m the millionth person to say it, but it was truly unlike anything I had seen in the college football world. It was a delightful national championship, and it ended with the most deserving champion. Sports are cool sometimes.

Last Hoopla: Notables from the Mess

Basket Under Review: Vanderbilt’s Road Back

The Big Ten still has two undefeated teams for another week. UCLA continues to Destroy Everyone, having played in one single game — at Ohio State — that has finished with a margin less than 18 since the loss to Texas on Nov. 26. My largest takeaway from this stretch has been Kiki Rice, who is playing awesome, awesome basketball, the best of her impressive career.

Rice is up to 15.2 PPG (career high), 6.3 RPG (career high) and 4.4 APG on 50.8/40.5/88.4 shooting (all career highs). Her 2.96 assist-to-turnover ratio (career high) is among the best in the country. She’s been such a complete player for the Bruins this season, and has been even more of an engine for this monstrous unit than ever before.

But I’m here to talk about Iowa.

Last week I said this:

Now, here we are. Sure, the Hawkeyes’ 7-0 start has not been that smooth. It has involved a decent amount of scrapping, clawing and fighting, but they are 7-0 all the same for very good reason.

Unlike UCLA’s run of dominance, Iowa has not played a game that finished with a margin above 10 yet in 2026. In previous weeks, the Hawkeyes were forced to buckle down for second-half nail-biters: They were tied with Nebraska in the final five minutes, Northwestern had it within 4 with a minute to go and Indiana led by 16 in the third quarter. But Iowa kept finding a way and finding a way and finding a way.

Yes, this week the Hawkeyes played in two more single-digit victories. But these ones felt different, and they felt different against some of their best competition in the Big Ten to date. In both wins against Oregon and Michigan State, Iowa did not trail at any point after the first quarter. The Hawkeyes led by 19 late before letting the Ducks cut the margin in garbage time, and while they couldn’t quite pull away from the Spartans, they never let Michigan State within a score during the comeback efforts.

As said before, this Iowa team is led more by committee than the program’s teams of recent memory. It’s a three-headed monster of Ava Heiden, Hannah Stuelke and Chit-Chat Wright, but it’s also a well-rounded rotation with eight players averaging at least 14 minutes and 5 PPG during conference play.

That said, what a massive week it was for Iowa’s starting frontcourt.

In the Oregon and Michigan State wins, Heiden and Stuelke combined for 73 total points, 32 total rebounds, 15 assists and seven steals. They both played tremendously, but Stuelke especially was a monster, with 20 PPG, 8.5 RPG, 6.5 APG and 2.5 SPG by herself.

That playmaking is an extremely exciting development for the forward that continues to expand her game around Heiden, a clear dominating scoring presence. Stuelke now has six games with 4+ assists this season, half of which have come this month. It’s a huge boost to a team that has been tremendous at moving the ball all season, and ranks second in assist rate (70.7%) during Big Ten play.

Wright’s also a massive jolt for this team, leading the team in assists (3.7) and steals (1.7) in the seven conference games. Her three-point shooting has also been significant while Taylor McCabe has gone through a very rare shooting slump (29.4 3PT% in Big Ten play).

That said, this is not the Caitlin Clark Iowa teams, and they are not interested in winning on the perimeter. The Hawkeyes have, in fact, attempted the fewest threes during the conference slate and are 16th in three-point rate. They’re much more interested in dominating the glass (2nd in rebound rate) and stuffing your three-point shooting in a locker (28.4 3PT% for Big Ten opponents, 2nd in conference).

This Iowa team plays some damn DEFENSE under Jan Jensen in a way this program has not seen in a long time. The Hawkeyes are currently allowing 61.8 PPG this season, which would be the lowest allowed by an Iowa team since at least 2009-10, as far as the Her Hoop Stats database goes back. This is a hard, frustrating team to play in completely new ways, and it makes this upcoming Iowa schedule all the more interesting:

Four gigantic tests await the nation’s No. 10 team. They will go a long way in showing us what exactly this group is made of.

We love some absolutely massive mid-January non-conference games that feel like they could be a taste of what’s to come this NCAA Tournament.

The opener of the Coretta Scott King Classic when the Big Ten’s way. Ohio State came out of an absolute war with No. 9 TCU with a 72-69 win. The Buckeyes were either tied or trailed for the first 29 minutes of the game, but held the lead for much of the fourth — barely, I should add — before a Chance Gray three late made it a four-point game that TCU couldn’t recover from, even with some Not Good free throw play by Jaloni Cambridge.

Gray had perhaps the best game of her Ohio State career: 22 points on 6-of-8 three-point shooting in a game the Buckeyes absolutely needed it. It’s in competition with… her previous game: A 23-point effort against Penn State where she added five rebounds and five assists. After a bit of a deep-ball slump, she’s hit 13 threes over her last two games.

Sophomore forward Elsa Lemmilä was equally massive and did it across the box score: 17 points, 7 rebounds, 5 assists, 2 steals and 6 blocks. These were two huge performances, especially with the typical superstar in Cambridge finishing 7 of 22 from the field, though she made up for it with six rebounds and eight assists with ZERO turnovers.

Ohio State committed only 10 turnovers to TCU’s 20 on the day, a massive discrepancy that was likely the difference in the game. Olivia Miles still had a big day (24 points, 11 rebounds, 7 assists), but Ava Watson had some tremendous defensive effort to help contain her late.

This win was perhaps the most telling of Ohio State’s ceiling yet. Cambridge still made a massive impact, but had an off shooting night that the Buckeyes were able to overcome against a Top 10 team.

Michigan came up just short against an undefeated team, losing 72-69. Their opponent went up big, helped by a sluggish first half by the Wolverines, but Michigan fought back hard, getting Syla Swords more involved late and really shutting down an elite offensive unit. Ultimately, a late Swords three at the buzzer fell short, and it was a close-but-no-cigar defeat to a great team on a neutral court.

Now, you tell me: Was I talking about the UConn loss or the Vanderbilt one? If I had a nickel!

This is not meant to be some sort of insane dig on the Wolverines for losing two games by identical scores to literally the only remaining undefeated teams in the country. UConn and Vanderbilt are excellent teams — I wrote about how good I think Vanderbilt is! —and Michigan thoroughly shut both of them down for about 20 minutes apiece. It’s those other 40 minutes that now become a talking point.

Michigan was outscored 47-30 in the first half against the Commodores and 45-27 against the Huskies. Both sides of that score could be improved, but it’s the defensive woes in both that surprise me. If Michigan can hold UConn — UCONN — to a four-point third quarter, I know the Wolverines can do better than a 45-plus-point first half showing.

There were absolutely bright sides in this loss, outside of another impressive comeback effort. Kendall Dudley was tremendous off the bench offensively — 16 points on 8-of-10 shooting to go with four rebounds and four assists. Brooke Quarles Daniels continues to wreak unprecedented levels of havoc on even the best guards in the country, helping to hold National Player of the Year candidate Mikayla Blakes to 14 points on 5-of-14 shooting.

The ceiling for the Wolverines remains unchanged: Again I must emphasize that this was a one-score loss to a 19-0 team. There is just this feeling that Michigan is leaving a little bit on the table when it comes out so flat in these first halves. A 12-point loss to Washington also exists, so the Wolverines have plenty to work on in these final two months to capitalize on what is so clearly an immensely talented unit.

What is your deal, Wisconsin? What do you want me to think of you?

The Badgers make no damn sense, they compel me though, and they found a way to sneak another extremely significant home win out of thin air, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat in a double overtime win against Oregon.

Wisconsin was fresh off defeats to Purdue (at home), Michigan and Northwestern. Its most recent win was by one point, at home, over still-winless-in-the-Big-Ten Penn State, and it needed a 17-7 run late to steal it. Bart Torvik listed Wisconsin’s chances to win that game at 11.2% when it trailed by nine in the fourth.

Child’s play.

Wisconsin trailed by six with 51 seconds to go. The Badgers trailed by three with nine seconds left in the first OT. It was tied with 16 seconds left in double OT. And here we are, with the Badgers getting back to .500 in Big Ten play.

They forced the first overtime thanks to three free throw makes by Destiny Howell, two misses at the line by Katie Fiso, and a Kyrah Daniels three to level the score. Howell hit the three late in the first overtime to reach a second, then Howell sunk the game-winning free throws to put Wisconsin over the edge for good.

If you weren’t sure how the Badgers did it, look at the name that kept showing up. Destiny Howell finished with 39 points, hitting 10 of her 16 attempts from three. Kyrah Daniels added 18 points as well, but this was Howell’s takeover that managed to pull Wisconsin to a massively important victory.

The Badgers now have two Quad 1 wins according to Torvik, a sentence that Robin Pingeton should frame on her wall for the progress the team is showing during her first season. The other, of course, was the wire-to-wire victory over Michigan State that continues to be, perhaps, the most insane win of them all for the Badgers.

Wisconsin’s four Big Ten victories matches its total from last season with 10 games to go. Yes, the schedule is absolutely lopsided for this team and the remaining opponents are quite a gauntlet, but at this point I feel like the Badgers might have another silly one up their sleeve at any moment’s notice.

(TTQ: Torvik Thrill Quotient)

Photo Credit: Iowa Women’s Basketball (@IowaWBB), Twitter

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