We missed you, conference play.
Now, nobody’s complaining about the epic (and maybe best ever?) nonconference slate that just ended. From Players Era to the ACC-SEC Challenge to longstanding regional rivalries that realignment hasn’t killed (yet), we were spoiled the first two months of this already-terrific season.
But that said, league play — when coaches really know one another and scouting ratchets up a notch — is where teams reveal what they’re truly made of.
Let’s start with Tuesday night, then: specifically, with one result — and an individual player’s situation — that continues to stand out in recent history:
1. The Darryn Peterson saga reaches a crescendo
Kansas is 11-4 after a miraculous home comeback Tuesday against TCU. Peterson, the star freshman guard, has played in six of KU’s 15 games, but finished only one, with a mysterious leg condition that Jayhawks coach Bill Self has now explained about 85 different ways.
Peterson played, and finished, KU’s opener against Green Bay, scoring 21 points and looking every bit like a future top-three NBA Draft pick. But the Jayhawks’ second game, a road loss at North Carolina, was the start of Peterson playing big minutes but not being able to finish. Peterson missed Kansas’ next seven games, including losses to Duke and UConn, with what Self deemed then as a lingering hamstring injury. Peterson eventually returned for KU’s Border War win over Missouri and the Jayhawks’ road victory at NC State, but was unable to finish either game due to what Self called quad cramping. After missing Kansas’ next two games, Self explained that Peterson’s family wanted him as close to 100 percent as possible before returning.
Peterson took the floor Saturday at UCF, looked sensational in the first half and then sat out the final 11 minutes of an eventual 6-point loss. Self said immediately after the game that Peterson sat so long because he was on a minutes restriction — only to contradict himself Monday and say Peterson’s “legs didn’t allow him to” finish that contest.
The word “unprecedented” has gotten thrown around a lot in the past five years, but in this case, it’s absolutely accurate.
The whole saga reached a crescendo Tuesday, with KU looking to avoid its first 0-2 start in league play in 35 seasons. Peterson was terrific early, with 14 points and five rebounds in the first half. But that couldn’t stop the Jayhawks from falling into a 15-point hole with 4:38 to play. At that point, Kansas began making one of its classic comeback surges inside Allen Fieldhouse. Then, with about two and a half minutes left, Peterson asked out of the game:
This Darryn Peterson situation feels specifically designed to make people (especially emotional college sports fans) lose their minds. He asks out of the game mid-play with 2:30 left leading to a Kansas turnover, and immediately exits. I can’t remember anything like this before. pic.twitter.com/bGYVVQNNXk
— Ricky O’Donnell (@SBN_Ricky) January 7, 2026
Imagine the discourse around this if Kansas hadn’t continued chipping away at TCU’s lead. ESPN, naturally, leaned into the drama, split-screening the actual game and Peterson on the bench with thick black wraps around both of his upper legs. It was only fair to assume that, as has been the case in basically every game Peterson has played this season, he was done for the night.
But, aided by TCU mistakes, Kansas kept clawing back and eventually made it a 3-point game with 5.4 seconds left. Cue Peterson’s music. He checked back in for the final few seconds, of course got the ball, was fouled with 1.7 seconds left, and then calmly drained three free throws to force overtime, before returning to the bench, again, for good.
Peterson — who finished with a career-high 32 points in a career-high 32 minutes — didn’t play a second of OT, watching as Kansas outlasted the Horned Frogs 104-100.
Bill Self says it was NOT a minutes restriction that kept Darryn Peterson out of OT against TCU:
“He started cramping again…. For five seconds (at the end of regulation) he could suck it up, but after he made the free throws, he said ‘Okay, get me out.'”
(🎥: @JayhawkSlant) pic.twitter.com/NnA2fDg6YT
— The Field of 68 (@TheFieldOf68) January 7, 2026
There is no comparable situation in recent college hoops history. No player so high-profile, who has shown such tremendous flashes, with such a nebulous, ever-changing “injury” that’s lingered. The only thing that even remotely comes to mind is former Duke star and eventual No. 1 pick Paolo Banchero, whose cramping issues were a major storyline early in Mike Krzyzewski’s final season. Duke, with the help of its sports science staff, worked with Banchero to solve the hydration problem.
But this late into the season, with Peterson’s legs continuing to act up in consequential moments, it’s fair to wonder if the 6-foot-5 phenom will ever play a full game for Kansas.
The situation — and having to explain its twists and turns continually — must be frustrating for Self. But at the same time, you have to work with “the most talented incoming freshman” you’ve ever had if you want this season to go anywhere.
2. Caleb Foster could lift Duke’s ceiling
Much has been made this season about Duke’s real or perceived lack of a consistent No. 2 scorer next to all-world freshman Cam Boozer. Sophomore sharpshooter Isaiah Evans was poised to be that guy, and looked the part in the season-opening win against Texas, but was largely inconsistent for nonconference play. I even hypothesized a few weeks back that Jon Scheyer’s team might not have a consistent No. 2, and instead a Big 3 of Boozer, Evans and fellow sophomore Patrick Ngongba.
Well, what do I know? In three games of ACC play, Evans has looked exactly like the top perimeter option Duke needs him to be, averaging 22.7 points and 4.7 rebounds while making 38.7 percent of his 10.3 3-point attempts per game. And yet, even Evans and Boozer weren’t enough in the first half on Tuesday against No. 20 Louisville, as Duke trailed by nine at the half. No Duke player besides those two made a single shot over the first 16 minutes of the game, as the Blue Devils looked headed for their second straight loss to a ranked foe.
But out of the break, Scheyer’s team looked a totally different version — in large part because of Foster.
A top-25 recruit in the 2023 class, Foster has had a tumultuous college career. The guard was a solid but unspectacular freshman, but missed the Blue Devils’ run to the Elite Eight two years ago with a season-ending ankle injury. He was expected to be Duke’s starting point guard as a sophomore last season, next to Cooper Flagg, only to lose that role in December and fall almost entirely out of Duke’s rotation.
But despite that, Foster opted to return for a third go-round in Durham, where he’s been at his best in Duke’s biggest moments. The 6-foot-5 guard had 15 points and a career-high eight rebounds against Arkansas, helping stave off a Hogs comeback attempt, and 12 points at Michigan State in the team’s best win this season. But his performance against the Cards — a career-high 20 points and nine made shots, plus four rebounds and two assists — was his best effort in 80 career games.
And also, not to overreact, it’s the kind of showing that should make us rethink Duke’s ceiling.
The secret to Foster’s success was simplicity: driving downhill, using his frame to his advantage and playing off two feet. That was evident in transition, like after the Cards turned it over on their first second-half offensive possession:
And as a pick-and-roll ballhandler, where he’s “excellent,” per Synergy, and in the 87th percentile nationally as a scorer:
If Foster can maintain even 75 percent of the level he showed Tuesday, watch the trickle-down effect it has on the Blue Devils offense. There have been ample times when Boozer is cooking, and Duke’s other players stand around watching him. But having Foster as such a driving threat in the pick-and-roll naturally unlocks the rest of Duke’s parts. In Foster/Boozer ball-screen scenarios — especially ones in which Foster finds Boozer on the short roll, with Ngongba at the dunker spot and Evans spaced to either corner — Scheyer’s squad suddenly looks like a more complete offense:
Check out Louisville’s defense once Boozer got the ball at the elbow. UL center Aly Khalifa can stay back and let the best player in the country have an unimpeded path to the basket (not advised) or step up to contest him, leaving Ngongba wide open for the alley-oop, which he did. Dame Sarr and Evans’ corner spacing prevents further help.
With No. 24 SMU coming Saturday to Durham, it will become clearer if Foster’s breakout was a one-off or the start of something greater.
3. What history says about the remaining unbeaten high-majors
Despite a few scares this week — looking at Penn State for almost knocking off No. 2 Michigan — five undefeated high-major teams remain: Arizona, Michigan, Iowa State, Nebraska and Vanderbilt. (Plus Miami of Ohio, now 16-0 with a win over its top MAC counterpart, Akron.) That’s especially impressive after Vanderbilt, led by sophomore guard Tyler Tanner, outlasted Alabama 96-90 late Wednesday.
Objectively, five felt like a lot of undefeated teams, especially after the new year. Nebraska’s win Monday over Ohio State gave it 15 wins, but with Michigan still 14-0 entering this weekend, I used 14-0 as my cutoff for historical reference.
Since the 2004-05 season, 52 high-major teams — not including this year’s group or 2020 Auburn, which saw its season cut short because of COVID-19 — have started the season at least 14-0. Of those 52:
• 44 (or 84.6 percent) went on to be top-four seeds, and 23 (44.2 percent) went on to be No. 1 seeds. So, don’t be surprised if at least two of our remaining undefeated teams wind up on the top seed line.
• 14 (or 26.9 percent) made the Final Four, while five such teams — 2005-06 Florida, 2007-08 Kansas, 2014-15 Duke, 2018-19 Virginia and 2020-21 Baylor — eventually won the national championship.
• The past 10 teams to do so before this season were all top-three seeds.
• Only two teams — 2006-07 Clemson and 2015-16 South Carolina — went on to miss the NCAA Tournament entirely after starting so well. (The following season’s Gamecocks sort of made up for that, making the program’s only Final Four appearance.)
• 12 (or 23.1 percent) weirdly lost their 15th game, including Tennessee last season, when the Vols got rocked by 30 on the road at Florida, which started “only” 13-0. Caution to Michigan, then, which hosts Wisconsin this weekend.
Three seasons stand out as the best comparisons to this season: 2008-09, 2010-11 and 2013-14. Each of those seasons also saw five teams reach at least 14-0, although their postseason fates varied dramatically.
The first was the first time all four No. 1 seeds made the Final Four. All of Kansas, UNC and Memphis — which I’m including, despite it playing in the American — started at least 14-0, as well as Tony Bennett’s penultimate Washington State team and Vanderbilt.
But in the latter two comparable seasons, none of the 10 teams that started at least 14-0 made the Final Four, despite four of them — Ohio State, Duke and Kansas in 2011, plus Arizona in 2014 — being No. 1 seeds. Both of those tournaments were won by UConn and are considered among the more chaotic in recent memory.
So, what does it all mean?
It’s impossible to say now, but it’s likely that at least two of Michigan, Nebraska, Arizona, Iowa State and Vanderbilt will wind up as top seeds — and that, barring the floor falling out, the Cornhuskers have a great shot to earn the program’s second top-four seed (and first since 1991). And if history is any indication, we’re headed for another stacked Final Four — or a return to chaos, after last season’s Cinderella-less March.
Or, if we’re lucky, a bit of both.
