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Many fans and pundits alike felt that Ohio State's trip to Madison would be the point where they'd suffer their first loss of the season. But after a first half that didn't do much to separate either team those prospects didn't look good as Thad Matta's group went on a 23-6 run to push their lead out to 15 points with 13:21 left in the game. Thankfully for the Badgers Jordan Taylor and company had other ideas, answering with a 30-8 run of their own and eventually going on to win 71-67 at the Kohl Center.

Outperformed, outworked and outclassed. That would sum up what happened to the Connecticut Huskies in the second half at Madison Square Garden, where the St. John's Red Storm built upon the momentum gained from a Malik Boothe buzzer-beater before halftime to win 89-72 in one of their best performances of the season. Just days after scoring 32 points in a losing effort at UCLA, Dwight Hardy once again lived up to his nickname ("Buckets") in scoring a new career-high 33 points and D.J.

The question going into Wednesday's matchup between rivals North Carolina and Duke at Cameron Indoor Stadium was how the young Tar Heels would respond to the atmosphere. They responded quite well in the first half, scoring the first seven points of the game and leading by as many as 16 points before taking a 43-29 lead into the locker room. If anything the first half was a case of the more experienced Blue Devils being caught up in the moment, as getting away from the things they do best in addition to failing to truly compete inside landed them in the early hole.

A lot of the talk leading into Tuesday's matchup between Kentucky and Tennessee at Rupp Arena surrounded the return of Bruce Pearl to the Tennessee sidelines after an eight-game SEC suspension. The Vols won five of eight with associate head coach Tony Jones in charge but there's something to be said in regards to the comfort level a team has when their head coach is on the bench. But the return to normalcy means nothing if you get outworked and that's exactly what happened to the Vols, ultimately falling 73-61 to the 18th-ranked Wildcats.

Missouri played one of their best offensive halves of the season in the first half on Monday night, making 57.7% of their shots and scoring 42 points. But they were down four at the break thanks to the combination of suspect defense and superior execution by the Kansas Jayhawks. And as the Tigers slid closer to their season average in regards to field goal percentage Kansas got even better offensively, making 66.7% of their shots in the second half to win going away 103-86.

Heading into Saturday's action the Arizona Wildcats were already up by a game in the Pac-10 standings thanks to their win over Stanford combined with Washington's loss at Oregon State on Thursday night. With a golden opportunity to make themselves the clear favorite to win the regular season title at their fingertips as Washington lost at Oregon earlier in the day, the young Wildcats took a big step in that direction in Berkeley. It's just hard to imagine that anyone involved realized just how much effort would be needed to do so.

The crazy nature of the Pac-10 is highlighted by this simple fact: Oregon State, a team who has lost to the likes of Seattle, Texas Southern and Utah Valley this season, is the lone conference team to own wins over both Arizona and Washington. The second of those Pac-10 victories came on Thursday night as the Beavers outscored Washington 36-24 in the second half of the 68-56 victory. Jared Cunningham scored a team-high 19 points and Calvin Haynes added 11 off the bench, but it was the foul and three-point lines that made the difference in Corvallis.

The Syracuse Orange made their way to Hartford knowing that head coach Jim Boeheim had never lost five consecutive games at any point in his illustrious career. But if that wasn't a heavy burden for this group to bear they had to deal with silly rumors of possible point-shaving (something that began as a message board joke became a "story" that some media outlets thought credible for a short period) Tuesday night. But the Orange took care of business, especially on the defensive end, as they beat the Huskies 66-58 to end their skid and get back on the right track.

In a game that didn't provide much separation in terms of the starters and their production it was a reserve who proved to be the difference in Wisconsin's 66-59 win over Purdue in Madison. Ryan Evans supplied 10 points and some sold defense off the bench, most importantly tying up E'Twaun Moore on a drive to the basket with 25 seconds remaining and the Badgers up 63-59.

Monday was an important day for a number of teams in non-BCS conferences as the eleven televised matchups for the ESPNU BracketBusters event were announced. The remainder of the teams in participating leagues will find out their assignments later this week but there are some very good matchups on the televised schedule, beginning on Friday, February 18th. The eleven matchups are as follows:

Fri., 2/18
7 p.m. VCU at Wichita State (ESPN2)
9 p.m. Kent State at Drexel (ESPNU)
Sat., 2/19
11 a.m. Hofstra at Wright State (ESPNU)