The final full Saturday of regular-season college hoops action set up to be a banner day on paper. In practice, however, there were a whole lot of really good teams that got caught looking ahead to the postseason. On the precipice of conference postseason play for all the major conferences, three top-10 teams took losses on the day and five unranked teams toppled ranked teams in a lopsided, can’t-explain-it kind of day.
And that was all before 6 p.m. ET.
No. 2 Alabama was the highest-ranked team to stumble on the day with a 67-61 road loss to No. 24 Texas A&M. The Crimson Tide trailed by double digits at halftime and never recovered in a flat showing just days after clinching the outright SEC regular-season title.
No. 3 Kansas found itself in a similar boat in a 75-59 loss to No. 9 Texas. Kansas officially clinched the outright Big 12 regular-season title with Texas’ loss to TCU earlier in the week and trailed almost the entire game in an impressive start-to-finish showing for the Longhorns. The underwhelming performance for KU resulted in a failed attempt to solidify its resume as the possible No. 1 overall seed.
There were plenty of others who delivered duds and dandies across the college basketball landscape, so let’s break it down winners and losers style below — starting with Kentucky.
Winner: Antonio Reeves leads Kentucky to big road win
Without the services of lead guards Cason Wallace and Sahvir Wheeler, Kentucky stole a huge win on the road over Arkansas in Fayetteville behind a career-high 37-point explosion from sharpshooter Antonio Reeves. Reeves had a respectable 15 points in the opening 20 minutes before going nuclear with 22 in the second half, finishing the game 12-of-17 shooting and a perfect 11 of 11 from the free throw line. Kentucky’s spot in the NCAA Tournament was never in doubt )it is a projected 7-seed according to CBS Sports Bracketology Expert Jerry Palm), but the…
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