Plus notes on surging Arkansas, Oklahoma's Austin Reaves and a mid-major diamond in the rough.
Conference title races are coming down to the wire! Games start to mean more this time of year, and Sports Illustrated is here to break down the teams and players in men’s college basketball that stepped up most in the last week of action. Which teams made moves in their league title races? And which players showed out in the process?
Florida State
Florida State appears to not have gotten the memo about struggling after a COVID-19 pause. The Seminoles came out of their first in-season halt with a five-game winning streak and now have come off another two weeks off with two wins in three days.
First up was a gritty overtime win over Wake Forest that saw Florida State find a way to win despite the Demon Deacons’ knocking down 13 threes thanks to RaiQuan Gray’s 24 points, 12 rebounds and three blocks. Then came FSU’s most impressive performance of the season: an 81–60 shellacking of first-place Virginia that helped the Noles make their case as the best team in the ACC. Leonard Hamilton’s team picked apart a stingy Virginia defense, blitzing the Cavs with an early 20–3 run that allowed FSU to take control and never turn back.
The Seminoles still lag three games behind Virginia in the win column in the ACC, but each team has two losses, and Florida State looked like the better team Monday night. It’s unclear how many games FSU will be able to make up before the end of the year, and capturing a regular-season crown may not be worth running players into the ground before March Madness. But it’s clear this group has the talent to make a deep run in the NCAA tournament.
Austin Reaves, Oklahoma
Reaves is one of just two high-major players in the country averaging at least 15 points, five rebounds and five assists per game. He’s doing it on a top-10 team, and yet most college basketball fans would have no idea who he was if they walked by him on the street. Reaves is a silent assassin, and he proved it yet again Saturday with 29 points, nine rebounds and seven assists to knock off West Virginia in Morgantown. Reaves made big play after big play late in this one, willing his team over the finish line against a scrappy Mountaineers club.
The Wichita State transfer has struggled shooting the ball this season, but that hasn’t stopped him from becoming one of the best playmakers in the sport. He’s a high-level passer who gets to the free throw line with regularity. Being surrounded by high-level shooters like Umoja Gibson and Brady Manek certainly helps create driving lanes, and Oklahoma’s success since going smaller with Elijah Harkless at the power forward position has been driven in large part by how much it has opened up Reaves’s game on the offensive end. Reaves should be a household name in college hoops.
Oregon
With two Quadrant 3 losses and mediocre metrics, Oregon desperately needed a strong weekend down in Arizona. It got exactly that, sweeping Arizona State and Arizona to solidify its place in the NCAA tournament field and climb the ladder in the Pac-12 standings. The Ducks had four starters score at least 15 points in Thursday’s win over an inconsistent Arizona State team, then found a way to win a nailbiter Saturday against Arizona after trailing late.
Oregon remains one of the more intriguing teams in the country because it seems like its best basketball is ahead of it. Injuries and COVID-19 disruptions have kept this team from playing together, but with junior guard Will Richardson finally healthy, the Ducks have the closest thing to a complete team they’ve had all year. Richardson forms a dynamic backcourt pairing with Chris Duarte, while forwards Eugene Omoruyi and LJ Figueroa have versatile offensive games that make Dana Altman’s club hard to guard. Because of this, the Ducks will almost assuredly be underseeded come March relative to their talent level and could be primed for a deep run.
Max Abmas, Oral Roberts
Our journey to find college basketball’s best leaves no stone unturned, and Oral Roberts sophomore guard Max Abmas is the true definition of a diamond in the rough. Abmas added to an incredibly impressive season with a combined 72 points in two games this past weekend against South Dakota State. That included a 42-point outburst Saturday in a win over the Jackrabbits, the second-largest point total scored by any player this season. He then followed that performance up with 30 more points the next day, playing all 40 minutes in that one.
Abmas is one of the best pure shooters in college basketball. He’s shooting 44% from beyond the arc this season on almost four made threes per game. No player in the country is currently matching that combination of volume and efficiency. Abmas also almost never leaves the floor, playing all 40 minutes in 10 of his team’s last 12 games. Despite that, he continues to make good decisions and owns close to a 2-to-1 assist-to-turnover ratio. Abmas is well on his way to 1,000 career points before the end of his sophomore season and could be an all-time great in the Summit League if he spends all four years with the Golden Eagles.
Arkansas
While Nate Oats and Alabama have earned most of the buzz in the SEC this season, a fellow second-year head coach in Eric Musselman has this Arkansas team alone in second place in the conference. The Razorbacks likely punched their ticket to the NCAA tournament with two big wins this week. First came an overtime road win at Missouri that gave the Razorbacks their best victory of the season. They then followed that up with a win in Fayetteville over Florida that saw the Hogs not fold after briefly giving away their lead in the closing minutes.
Now that forward Justin Smith is back healthy, Arkansas has so many weapons offensively. Seven Hogs average at least seven points per game, including a pair of freshmen in Moses Moody and Davonte (Devo) Davis. Moody is a potential one-and-done talent, averaging more than 16 points per game to lead the Razorbacks. Arkansas is a unique team in that every player on the floor can take and make threes, but its identity is built around attacking the basket and being aggressive. With a favorable remaining schedule, the Hogs will likely continue to rise on the seed list as we inch closer to Selection Sunday.