What are the biggest men’s college basketball storylines just past the halfway point of the 2025-26 season? What are the biggest things to keep an eye on over the season’s second half? We are about two months away from the 2026 NCAA tournament, so let’s talk about five major storylines to follow the rest of the season.
1. The Freshmen
We said it after two days of the regular season, but it’s even more apparent now: This college basketball season is “The Year of the Freshman.”
Look at just about any of the major national title contenders in the sport right now, and there’s a member of the recruiting class of 2025 who’s at or near the center of that team’s success. And that’s happening with guys like Darryn Peterson at Kansas and Mikel Brown Jr. at Louisville being largely limited because of injuries.
The success of players like Cameron Boozer (Duke), A.J. Dybantsa (BYU), Caleb Wilson (North Carolina), Koa Peat (Arizona) and Darius Acuff (Arkansas), but there are also freshmen like Keaton Wagler (Illinois) and Ebuka Okorie (Stanford) who were ranked outside the top 150 in their own recruiting class and who are now playing like All-Americans in their first collegiate season.
NIL and transfer portal talk remain a primary focus of the conversation surrounding the state of college basketball, which is understandable, but that talk shouldn’t overshadow how sensational the sport’s freshman class has been in 2025-26.
2. Will a Cinderella return this March?
Men’s college basketball is coming off a historically chalky March. Not only did all four No. 1 seeds advance to the Final Four for just the second time ever, but we also saw almost nothing shocking during the tournament’s opening weekend .
Every top four seed advanced out of the tournament’s first round for the first time since 2017 and just the fourth time in the modern era of the event. The average margin of victory in the round of 64 was the highest of all-time.
The madness only got more predictable in the second round, with zero teams seeded higher than 10th advancing to the tournament’s second weekend for the first time since 2007. Power conference teams represent the entirety of the Sweet 16 for the first time ever, and a record low of only four total conferences (the four most powerful) are represented in the second weekend. The previous low was seven conferences.
The Big Ten won its first 10 games of the tournament. No conference had ever done that before. The SEC sent seven teams to the Sweet 16. No conference had ever done that before.
Put simply, the haves of the sport dominate the tournament at levels previously not seen.
Was this simply a blip? Or was it a sign of things to come in this brave new world? We’ll have a better idea of how to answer that question in a couple months.
3. The Point Shaving Scandal
For the second time in as many years, college basketball has been hit with a fairly widespread point shaving scandal.
An unsealed indictment earlier this month resulted in charges against 20 men for their parts in a point-shaving scheme involving more than 39 college basketball players on more than 17 teams, leading to more than 29 games being fixed. Only one of the teams involved, DePaul, plays in a major conference, and the Blue Demon team in question went 3-29 overall and lost all 21 of its Big East games.
The gambling scandals of the last two years have all followed a similar set of circumstances: The players involved have all been lower-paid NIL athletes, and the teams involved have almost all been mid/low major squads having bad seasons and playing in games that wouldn’t draw much (or any) national interest.
The question now for college basketball is whether or not this is where it ends. The follow-up question that nobody wants to entertain at the moment is what would happen if another scandal breaks where at least one of the players involved is more of a national name, and at least one of the teams involved is one of the sport’s biggest brands.
4. A Big Ten or West Coast national champion?
In news that might shock anyone born after the turn of the century, three of the 10 NCAA tournaments that were played in the 1990s were won by teams that resided West of the Rocky Mountains. The news might stun a teenager because the last of those three — Arizona’s upset of Kentucky in 1997 — also marks the final time that a team from the West Coast (regardless of what your definition of that area is) has claimed college basketball’s top prize.
If that didn’t blow your Gen Z mind, then how about this: The Big Ten — the league that has charted as the best in the sport multiple times over the last handful of seasons — hasn’t produced a national champion since Michigan State cut down the nets in 2000. Even with a fairly astounding eight appearances in the national title game — Indiana in 2002, Illinois in 2005, Ohio State in 2007, Michigan State in 2009, Michigan in 2013, Wisconsin in 2015, Michigan in 2018 and Purdue in 2024 — the league hasn’t claimed the sport’s top prize since Y2K.
There’s a decent chance that one of these streaks goes down on the first Monday of April.
Arizona and Michigan have been the two best teams in the sport so far this season, and Purdue, Gonzaga and Illinois aren’t far behind them. That group makes up five of the current top six teams on KenPom. Toss in Michigan State, Nebraska and Iowa, and you have even more potential streak-breakers.
5. The next coaching carousel
NIL and the allure (demand?) of winning right now has resulted in more seemingly quick triggers on previously successful college basketball head coaches in recent years than we’ve ever seen before. Toss in a handful of the sport’s biggest names choosing to walk away from the game rather than try to adjust to its new challenges, and we’ve had back-to-back extremely wild coaching carousels.
Is another one just around the corner?
Power conference coaches like Jeff Capel (Pitt), Jake Diebler (Ohio State), Earl Grant (Boston College) and Wes Miller (Cincinnati) are pretty clearly coaching for their jobs. The bigger question is whether or not, for a third straight cycle, one or more of the premier coaching positions in the sport opens up.
Which fan base’s message boards will be swearing that Jay Wright was looking at a house in their university’s city? We’ll find out soon enough.
