College basketball scores, winners and losers: Arizona stunned at home, UConn

The first full Saturday of 2023 produced a college basketball slate featuring everything we love about the sport. With conference play hitting full stride around the country, there were blowouts, thrilling finishes and stunning upsets. 

No. 7 Alabama provided the most eye-catching blowout by crushing Kentucky 78-52, while No. 25 Iowa State provided the thrilling finish in a 69-67 victory at No. 17 TCU. As for the stunning upset, there is little question that belonged to Washington State.

The Cougars took down No. 5 Arizona 74-61 on the road for the program’s first-ever road win against a top-five foe. The victory also marked the Cougars’ first win over a top-five team anywhere since 1983 and was particularly stunning given WSU’s poor start to the season.

Arizona (14-2, 3-2 Pac-12) shot just 31.7% from the floor and got just two points from its bench as it fell behind by as much as 18 in the second half. Mouhamed Gueye led Washington State with 24 points, including 13 in the second half, as the Cougars improved to 7-10 (2-4).

Such an unexpected outcome only cemented that there are few truly dominant teams in college basketball this season. Of the top six teams in the AP Top 25, four lost games this week as chaos begins to engulf the sport with the arrival of a new calendar year.

Let’s dive a little deeper into Saturday’s action by examining who the winners and losers were from around the country.

Winner: UConn back in the winner’s circle

Lotta folks abandoned the UConn ship and swam thousands of miles the opposite direction after it dropped two straight games – both in Big East play — to Xavier then Providence to end the 2022 calendar year and open the new year. Now, lotta those folks are looking pretty silly right now. The No. 4 Huskies handled their business to trendy contender Creighton 69-60 to end their two-game skid in a game that wasn’t all that close. Both teams traded punches into the second half, but UConn took control midway through the final frame and ballooned its lead to as many as 12 before settling on a ho-hum nine-point home win. 

After two straight losses in league play, UConn needed not only a win, but one over a good team that could help catapult it back into the mix for the regular-season race. It got exactly that in limiting the visiting Bluejays – the third-best 3-point shooting in the Big East – to a dreadful 2 of 16 shooting from 3-point range. It was just the third time since Greg McDermott took over the program in 2010-11 that Creighton made two or fewer 3s in a regular-season conference game. 

“Our identity is elite defense, top-five defense,” said UConn coach Dan Hurley. “What makes teams special is when they are super efficient on both ends of the court, when our defense is on point.”

Loser: Kentucky comes out flat again on the road

Kentucky suffered its second-largest loss against an SEC foe since John…