The weekend after Thanksgiving was a slow one. So was Monday. But Tuesday will get college basketball back on track with the start of Big Ten play and a trio of games featuring six of the best programs of this century.
Here’s that trio of games:
7:30 p.m. ET: Florida at Duke9 p.m. ET: UConn at Kansas9:30 p.m. ET: North Carolina at Kentucky
As I noted in Monday’s Top 25 And 1, the six schools playing in those three games have combined to win 16 of the past 21 national championships. Put another way, in a sport with 365 schools competing for the national championship, Florida, Duke, UConn, Kansas, North Carolina and Kentucky have combined to win 76.2% of all national titles since 2003.
That’s incredible.
Tuesday night should be great.
The biggest question entering the day was whether Kansas freshman Darryn Peterson would play for the first time since Nov. 7 — and just the third time this season. At 12:29 pm ET, Kansas coach Bill Self announced on social media that he will not.
“Darryn is not going to play tonight,” Self said. “He is very close [to returning]. He has worked his butt off, but he is still not 100%. He is day-to-day.”
That’s a bummer, for sure. But this is still a match-up of top-15 teams in Tuesday morning’s updated CBS Sports Top 25 And 1 daily college basketball rankings, where Arizona remains No. 1 for the 13th consecutive day.
UConn is No. 4. KU is No. 13.
UConn is a 1.5-point favorite at Allen Fieldhouse, which means this is just the third time Self has been an underdog at home in 22 years at Kansas. The first time came Feb. 27 2021, when Kansas was a 4.5-point underdog at home to Baylor. The Jayhawks won that game, 71-58. The second time came Feb. 3, 2024, when Kansas was a 1.5-point underdog at home to Houston. The Jayhawks also won that game, 78-65.
