The week that was in college basketball: 5 biggest takeaways

Arizona Is Back!

Not only is Deandre Ayton built like a future WWE World Heavyweight Champion, but he’s also great at playing basketball. In fact, he’s much better than most other unpaid laborers trotting about the country who do it for the name on the front of the uniform.

With the Arizona Wildcats slipping, while media members and fans just began to write the team’s obituary, Ayton had his best game of the season on Saturday, helping ‘Zona topple Oklahoma.

By the game’s end, the freshman big man had 29 point and 18 rebounds.

Absurd, I know, so let’s wait for that to sink in for a second.

Done? Good.

On the season, the 7-foot-1 projected top-five NBA Draft pick is shooting 61 percent from the floor while scoring 20.5 points and grabbing 11.9 rebounds per game. This is with opposing teams trying like hell to gameplan against him.

Early losses to NC State, Purdue and SMU made many people want to hurl Ayton and Zona’s hype to the wayside, but rattling three straight against Texas A&M, UNLV and Alabama has put everything Wildcats related back to the forefront.

As we mentioned at the start of this column, Arizona State might be the nation’s best team (based off merit). Couple that with Arizona finding itself, as Ayton becomes an eater of worlds, mark Dec. 30 on your calendar, my friends.

Arizona-Arizona State should be the good sort of in-state blood bad