With the new year approaching, only a handful of teams in college basketball boast unblemished records. There are five men’s (Mississippi State, Utah State, New Mexico, UConn and Purdue) and 10 women’s teams (Rice, South Carolina, LSU, Arkansas, Utah, Ohio State, Indiana, St. John’s, Kansas and Virginia). Of those 15 teams, seven are in action later today, including a big out-of-conference matchup between the 13–0 17th-ranked Arkansas women and No. 16 Oregon.

The biggest surprise among all the unbeatens, men’s and women’s, has to be the Virginia women. The Cavaliers fired coach Tina Thompson after going 5–22 (2–16 in ACC play) last season. (The Hall of Famer failed to post a winning record in any of her four seasons in charge.) But Amaka Agugua-Hamilton has turned things around in a major way since taking over the program. She built a winning program at Missouri State (at least 23 wins in each of her three seasons there) and, with one more victory, she would equal Thompson’s best win total for a single season. Media members aren’t totally sold on UVA yet, though. The Cavaliers have yet to crack the AP Top 25, which is probably fair considering they haven’t beaten a ranked team yet this season. They’ll face 10–1 Duke on the road tomorrow, and, if their unbeaten run doesn’t end there, it almost surely will during a three-game gantlet in early January against three conference foes currently ranked in the top 10: Virginia Tech, NC State and North Carolina.

Similarly, the Mississippi State men are thriving under a first-year coach (Chris Jans, formerly of New Mexico State). And similarly, they’ve got a grueling conference schedule coming up that threatens to end their run. The No. 15 Bulldogs face Drake on a neutral court in Lincoln, Neb., this afternoon and then open conference play by hosting No. 9 Alabama on Dec. 28. If that doesn’t spoil the party, they travel to Knoxville on Jan. 3 to face No. 8 Tennessee. Molly Geary has tried to predict when each of the remaining men’s unbeatens might drop their first games and thinks Mississippi State will be the first to fall, thanks to Alabama’s high-powered offense.

On the men’s side, two undefeated teams have separated themselves from the pack: No. 1 Purdue and No. 2 UConn. They have better wins on their résumés than Mississippi State and the two undefeated mid-majors, Utah State and New Mexico. The Huskies have won all their games fairly handily, including an 82–67 win over Alabama on a neutral court. Purdue has played some tight ones, but its two most impressive wins were blowouts—against Duke and Gonzaga, both ranked in the top 10 at the time. Because the Big East isn’t as strong as the Big Ten, KenPom gives UConn a better chance (6.1%) of finishing the season unbeaten than Purdue (0.1%). KenPom also ranks the Huskies as the No. 1 team in the country, so that calculation isn’t based entirely on the strength of the teams’ remaining schedules.

Things are murkier on the women’s side, where three undefeated teams find themselves ranked in the top four. (The No. 2 team, Stanford, has lost to only No. 1 South Carolina.) With so many undefeated teams, it’s setting up to be a thrilling run toward March in women’s hoops. But if you had to pick a title favorite at this point, it’s tough to bet against Dawn Staley and South Carolina.

The best of Sports Illustrated

In today’s Daily Cover story, Jon Wertheim details the strange circumstances behind the murder of a member of tennis player Robin Haase’s team who was was found dead with at least two dozen stab wounds in 2016.
Jonathan Wilson looks back at Kylian Mbappé’s World Cup, which was stranger than his indomitable performance in the final would indicate.
Rohan Nadkarni is bummed that Anthony Davis is going to be sidelined again by another injury.
The Grizzlies are inching toward the top of Kyle Wood’s NBA power rankings.
Tom Verducci tries to make sense of the Dodgers’ frugal offseason.

The top five...

… things I’ve seen since yesterday morning:

5. Spurs rookie Jeremy Sochan shooting free throws with one hand.

4. Another great goal for Sabres star Tage Thompson.

3. The massive crowd in Buenos Aires for Argentina’s World Cup celebration.

2. Lionel Messi sleeping with the World Cup trophy. (His Instagram post from Sunday is now the most-liked post in the history of the platform.)

1. Avalanche defenseman Cale Makar’s sportsmanship.

SIQ

After the final game of the NFL season on this day in 1925, the Chicago Cardinals were declared champions with a record of 11-2-1. But which team was controversially disqualified from championship contention in the final weeks of the season and still believed by many to be the rightful titleholder?

Providence Steam Roller
Akron Pros
Detroit Panthers
Pottsville Maroons

Yesterday’s SIQ: When the Dawson City Nuggets began their journey to Ottawa 118 years ago this week to challenge for the Stanley Cup, which of the following modes of transportation did they not take?

Horse
Dog sled
Bicycle
Foot

Answer: horse. Going from Dawson City, deep in Canada’s Yukon Territory, clear across the country to Ottawa proved to be quite the undertaking. Most of the journey would be taken by train, but getting to the train was the hard part.

First the players had to get from Dawson City to Whitehorse, where they would catch their first train. To get there, some players left by dog sled, with others running alongside the sled. The rest of the players took bicycles. After several days, they reached Whitehorse, more than 300 miles from Dawson City.

There they caught a train to Skagway, Alaska, where they were supposed to catch a boat to Vancouver for the train to Ottawa. Delays during the trip to Skagway, though, meant they missed their boat and had to wait five days for the next one. When they finally got on a ship, poor conditions at Vancouver required the boat to dock instead in Seattle, leaving the group to take another train from Seattle to Vancouver to catch their ride east.

The players left in two groups on Dec. 18 and 19, 1904, and didn’t arrive in Ottawa until almost a month later, on Jan. 11. With the best-of-three Stanley Cup series set to begin on Jan. 13, the Nuggets asked the reigning champion Ottawa Silver Seven to delay the first game. Ottawa declined. The Nuggets, an all-star team composed of players from a four-team local league in Dawson City, were already overmatched against the team from the nation’s capital. The fatigue from the journey made matters even worse. Ottawa won the first game 9–2 and the second 23–2 to retain the Cup.

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