College Basketball Catchup: Michigan Rebounds, Vandy Got Better, UCLA Is Hot

Michigan bounced back after a loss to UConn. A second-year forward looks like she’s taking the leap for Mississippi State. UCLA is hot, hot, hot to start the season. Here’s what you need to know from yesterday’s slate of college basketball. Michigan is in a tough position. At least, relative to a year ago, when the Wolverines were one of the top teams for almost the entire season, and then ended up being national champions. Now, though, Michigan has a new coach — Mike Boynton — and some new players, too, and lost to UConn already. On Wednesday, Michigan faced off against Marquette at home, and came away with an 84-70 victory. Tennessee transfer J.P. Estrella played a significant role, with the senior forward scoring 18 with eight rebounds and two assists in his 31 minutes, but right up there with Estrella was freshman Quinn Costello. In 25 minutes off the bench, the forward scored 15 points, all on threes: he was 5-for-6 from beyond the arc, and didn’t shoot once from inside it. Mike Boynton had nothing but positive things to say about Costello postgame. “I’ve coached some really good shooters, I’ve never coached a 6’10″ guy who can shoot like he can.” Boyton explained that Costello is a “high achiever” who works hard on the non-shooting aspects of his game to help the team win, but on Wednesday it was absolutely his shot that helped Michigan the most. Mississippi State’s Favour Nwaedozi is no stranger to rebounding. As a junior last year, the 6-foot-3 forward — who had arrived for her first NCAA season after spending two years playing for Mukogawa Women’s University in Japan — pulled down exactly 10 boards per game, and did so while averaging 12.2 points per, as well. That’s averaging a double-double right there. On Wednesday against Troy, Nwaedozi was right back at it, only better. She had eight rebounds just about halfway into the first quarter, and would finish the night with 19 boards and 22 points. Nwaedozi had an assist and two steals just for good measure, and shot 10-for-14 while scoring another two from the line for the top showing of the day. She currently leads all players in the SEC with 14.7 rebounds per game as well as total boards, with 44, and what’s most wild about that is she’s playing about 22 minutes per game. Her per 40 minute numbers are cartoonish: Nwaedozi is averaging 25.9 rebounds per game there. Just three games, yes, but in her second season in the SEC, a better performance than an already great one wouldn’t be a surprise. Ethan Roberts joined Notre Dame history last night, sinking 10 threes in 13 attempts — he’s one of just three Fighting Irish, along with Kyle McAlarney and Matt Farrell, to make 10 threes in a single game. Roberts didn’t just score from deep, even if that was mostly where his points came from. He added another six from inside the arc to lead all scorers, men and women, on Wednesday. Notre Dame didn’t need quite that level of performance out of Roberts — the Irish defeated South Carolina State, 99-59 — but they got it all the same. Roberts is the first D-I men’s hooper this year to hit double-digit threes, but not the first D-I  player to accomplish the feat in 2026: Chloe Donnell dropped 14 against Ecclesia for Northwestern State on Nov. 2. Roberts is, however, the first of the year to manage it against a Division I opponent instead of a team from a lower division. Unlike with Notre Dame and Roberts, the women’s scoring leader on Wednesday absolutely needed to go that hard in order for her team to win. Nadia Moore, a junior guard from Duquesne who has only this year become a regular starter, dropped a career-best 33 against Marist in a game the Dukes would win by a mere five points. Moore started hot, and finished scorching: she scored 15 of Duquesne’s 22 points in the fourth quarter, in a game the Dukes would win 72-67. She helped out with more than just pure scoring, too, as Moore dished out four assists, grabbed a steal and secured five rebounds, and shot accurately at 69% overall and 4-for-7 on treys. She had never scored even 20 points in a game before, with her previous career-best sitting at 18. Coming into Wednesday, Moore had just three games on her résumé in which she scored more points than she did in the fourth quarter of this one alone. Marist certainly wasn’t ready for that shift. Mia Woolfolk had two pretty good seasons for Georgia before transferring to Vanderbilt for the 2026-2027 season. With the Commodores, she’s going to have more help than she did on the Bulldogs, and Woolfolk is also going to make Vandy better than it was, too. Against Western Kentucky last night, Woolfolk was unstoppable in the paint. She took 14 shots and missed just two, sank three of four from the charity stripe, and grabbed three boards and a steal while she was busy in the paint, too. Sophomore guard Aubrey Galvan — see above clip — is already enjoying having Woolfolk hanging around in the paint as another scoring option to pass to, and her constant threat there is going to create opportunities for All-American Mikayla Blakes to take better shots this season, too: a terrifying proposition, considering Blakes led Division I in scoring last season with 27 points per game. No. 9 UCLA is off to a terrific start this year. The Bruins have averaged 101.3 points per game across their first three contests, dropping 84, 114 and 106 points so far. That 84 was no joke, either, because it came against then-No. 5 Arizona in the Bruins’ first dub of the season. UCLA’s women’s team is the defending national champion; the men’s team hasn’t won since the 1994-1995 season, however, when the Bruins won their still-men’s-record 11th title. Mick Cronin’s squad has quite a bit of season left to get through, but that win against Arizona and the subsequent beatdown against opponents the Bruins should be winning is at least making this team seem like one that has something to show the rest of the league this year.