Tag: Big Ten Basketball

Next 4 Big Ten games will reveal much about Wisconsin

More on Wisconsin hoops

In the cover photo for this story, you can see Tyler Wahl of the Wisconsin Badgers, trying to find a way to get the ball to a better spot on the floor, despite two Nebraska defenders standing in the way. Trying to maneuver through multiple obstacles perfectly frames the Badgers’ challenge in the next two weeks.

It is easy to look at a whole season, or its larger parts. Wisconsin has seven weeks left until the Big Ten Tournament. It is natural to plot out what Wisconsin must do in these seven weeks to get ideal seeding position for the Big Ten and NCAA Tournaments. Yet, within the larger blocks of a season, one can find smaller segments which prove to be especially instructive and revealing.

Wisconsin, following its win over Nebraska on Tuesday, has arrived at one such segment.

This isn’t a seven-week block. This isn’t a 12- or 14-game chunk of the schedule. I am referring to Wisconsin’s next four games, running through Wednesday, Feb. 5. I won’t offer guarantees here, but I will make a set of predictions.

First, let’s lay out the slate. Wisconsin’s next four games involve three road trips, none to Nebraska or Northwestern, and one home game… against the big dog in the Big Ten, Michigan State. The road trips begin this weekend with Purdue on Friday and Iowa on Monday. Then comes the home date with the Spartans on Feb. 1, followed by a trip to the Barn, Williams Arena, for a clash with Minnesota on Feb. 5.

Wisconsin hosts the first-place team in the Big Ten and then has to make three complicated road trips which don’t figure to be easy. This is the kind of two-week meat-grinder which can sharpen a team, crush it, or reveal that it can take some punches but not withstand all of them. There is a high standard to be found, a low standard, and a middle ground.

My predictions: If Wisconsin goes 4-0, it will win the Big Ten. If Wisconsin goes 3-1, it will finish in the top three. A 2-2 split will mean somewhere from a third- to fifth-place finish. A 1-3 record means Wisconsin — clearly one of the top five teams in the Big Ten on the afternoon of Wednesday, Jan. 22 — will end the season outside the top five in the conference.

Four big games. Only one home game, coming against the alpha dog from East Lansing. Wisconsin will have over a full month of hoops after this four-game stretch, but it might not face a more important two weeks before the Big Ten and NCAA Tournaments.

Buckle up, Bucky.

Purdue and Michigan live on the other side of the Big Ten coin

Thoughts on Purdue and Michigan

Some things have not changed in the Big Ten this basketball season. Michigan State is at the top. Nebraska and Northwestern are struggling. Maryland and Minnesota are inconsistent. Yet, many aspects of this conference are different. Rutgers and Illinois are near the top of the league. Penn State could make the NCAA Tournament. Fresh faces are moving up the ladder in the conference.

If some teams are moving up, that generally means other teams have to move down. If the rise of Rutgers and Illinois forms half of this portrait of displacement and reshuffling in Big Ten basketball, the decline of two other teams forms the other half.

Enter Purdue and Michigan.

If it feels very weird to see Illinois and Rutgers near the top of the Big Ten standings in late January, it feels equally weird to see Purdue and Michigan buried in 10th and 11th place on the morning of Wednesday, January 22. Both teams are two games under .500 in the conference, though Purdue (3-5) has played two more league games than Michigan (2-4).

How dependable have Purdue and Michigan been in recent years? The Boilermakers were a top-four seed at the Big Ten Tournament in each of the past six years. Purdue double-byes at the Big Ten tourney weren’t as regular as Wisconsin double-byes, but almost. Michigan reached each of the last three Big Ten Tournament championship games, winning two. The program lost its way in 2015 and 2016, but has been a major national factor in five of the past seven college basketball seasons, with two national title game appearances, three Elite Eights, and five Sweet 16s.

These two programs are annually expected to be in the mix as Big Ten title contenders, but right now, they aren’t. Both will need to author a significant — and rapid — turnaround if they want to have the slightest chance to make things interesting in early March. Purdue, with five conference losses, has — one could argue — already played its way out of the conversation.

If you want to understand why Rutgers and Illinois have thrived this season, one must start with an examination of how Steve Pikiell and Brad Underwood have made huge forward strides in cultivating players while making necessary self-adjustments in how they go about their business. Yet, the improvements of unlikely Big Ten contenders can’t be mentioned without noting the fall of Purdue and Michigan. We will see if the second half of the season brings renewed clarity from the Boilermakers and Wolverines.

Will Rutgers and Illinois be top-4 seeds at the Big Ten Tournament?

Rutgers and Illinois are fresh faces

Remember October of 2019? The 2019-2020 college basketball season had not yet begun. Did we know how good the Wisconsin Badgers were going to be? No, especially with Micah Potter being prevented from playing by the stupid NCAA. Did we know how well the Badgers were going to play in their first 10 games? No. This team was a mystery. There were lots of mysteries going into the season.

Yet, if you could reliably count on a few things to happen in Big Ten basketball, where would you start? What prediction, more than anything else in Big Ten basketball, would most likely be true?

If you said, “Rutgers won’t make the NCAA Tournament,” you would have given a perfectly logical answer backed by 29 years of history. It has been 29 years, after all, since the Scarlet Knights last made the NCAA Tournament, in 1991.

Rutgers being mediocre (not necessarily bad, but certainly not good enough to reach the Big Dance in March) has been one of the most constant truths in college basketball for decades, right there with Michigan State and Tom Izzo being very good, at the other end of the spectrum of relevance in the sport.

Rutgers not being good enough, and Michigan State being a top team, were the two most reliable predictions one could make about Big Ten hoops this season. If you said that Northwestern would struggle, that’s fair and will be accepted. If you said Nebraska would struggle in a rebuild under Fred Hoiberg, that’s fair as well.

Rutgers being good has been one of the biggest surprises of the season — not necessarily because the Scarlet Knights weren’t developing their players (there WAS progress last season), but because Rutgers has evolved so rapidly and substantially under new coach Steve Pikiell. Rutgers isn’t a bubble team; Rutgers is, at the moment, a solid NCAA Tournament seed, good enough to wear home whites in round one as a higher-seeded team (No. 8 or better). The Scarlet Knights will have to lose four games in a row to become an uncertain NCAA team, riding the bubble near the cut line. Right now, they have margin for error. They are well inside the ropes.

Pick another Big Ten team entering this season. If you were asked to address Illinois — which lost 21 games last season — it would have been reasonable to say the Illini could not get any worse. They were likely to be better if only because the first two seasons for Brad Underwood were so bad. Yet, that kind of reality does not generally point to an NCAA Tournament.

Surprise! Illinois is also an NCAA Tournament team and would need to slide for the bubble to become an unnerving prospect.

Here is the shocking fact of all facts on Tuesday, January 21, before Big Ten games are played in the conference: If the season ended on Tuesday afternoon, Rutgers and Illinois would be top-four seeds at the 2020 Big Ten Tournament. That’s right: Rutgers and Illinois would get double-byes. You would not see them on the court on Big Ten Tournament Wednesday or Big Ten Tournament Thursday. They would debut on Friday and have great chances to make the tournament semifinals on Saturday and CBS national television.

“Where will Rutgers and Illinois be seeded in the Big Ten Tournament?” That question has probably been asked before, but if so, it has been asked because people want to make sure they don’t have to watch TV (or a game in person) when the Big Ten Tournament begins its five-day run on Wednesday. Right now, that same question is a question with NCAA Tournament implications. If Rutgers and Illinois both get a top-four seed, they won’t have to play nearly as many games before the NCAA Tournament begins. They will get tested by other top Big Ten teams if they can win one game and reach the semifinals. Getting that top-four seed means a lot, as Wisconsin fans know. The Badgers come to the NCAA Tournament relatively rested because they have rarely had to play more than two or three games in the Big Ten Tournament this century. Now, Illinois and Rutgers can derive the same benefit.

Will Rutgers and Illinois get a top-four seed in the Big Ten Tournament? It is surprising enough that we are even asking this question. It is more surprising how meaningful the question actually is.

We will see how meaningful the question is in a month. The rest of the Big Ten will try to restore order, but in a wacky year, who knows how it will all shake out?

Now the Big Ten race begins, as Michigan State goes on the road

More on the Big Ten basketball race

The Big Ten basketball season has played seven conference games. We are approaching the final week of January, so we have already covered an appreciable distance in the conference race. This is more than one week, more than a snapshot of the conference. Yet, in many ways, it seems that the conference race has not yet begun.

It is about to, though.

The Michigan State Spartans lead the Big Ten with a 6-1 mark through seven conference games, but as we told you a few weeks earlier, this is not an elite team. At the very least, the Spartans have to prove they are an alpha dog. It hasn’t happened yet… but now Tom Izzo’s team gets a chance to make its case.

The 6-1 record is solid, to be sure, but it isn’t outstanding… because it sits on a big, fat, cushy bed of home games. Michigan State has played five of its first seven Big Ten games at home, and one of its two road trips was to Northwestern. One can make the argument that Michigan State has lost the only especially challenging game on its Big Ten slate to this point, a road trip to Mackey Arena and West Lafayette to take on Purdue. MSU lost by 29 points, validating every inclination to think that the Spartans are much closer to a 5-seed-caliber NCAA Tournament team than a No. 2 seed.

What kind of team is Michigan State? We don’t know, if we’re being honest. Extended play on the road will reveal what the Spartans are made of… and here we go: Michigan State will play three of its next four games and five of its next seven on the road. The Spartans host Penn State and Northwestern in that span of seven games. None of their road trips go to Nebraska, so they are not facing any especially easy road opponents this time.

One of Michigan State’s five road trips in this upcoming seven-game stretch is in Madison on Saturday, Feb. 1. In a week and a half, we might have a better idea of where MSU stands in the larger workings of Big Ten basketball. If the answer isn’t good for the Spartans, that Feb. 1 game could be for a share of first place for the Badgers.

The Big Ten race has seven games under its belt, and yet, one could say we’re only now starting the true chase for a regular-season championship.

It’s now clear Ohio State basketball was punching over its weight earlier in the year

After a promising start to the season, the Ohio State basketball team has hit a serious skid. It’s simply not the team we thought early on.

The Ohio State basketball team got out of the gates extremely fast in 2019. It had huge wins early on over Cincinnati and Villanova at home, on the road at North Carolina, and on a neutral court against Kentucky. On the surface, those wins look good on any college basketball resume.

Now that 2020 has hit though, things look much different.

Cincinnati looks like just an average team, Kentucky has had its struggles, and North Carolina is in a downward spiral it hasn’t seen since what seems like the advent of the industrial revolution. So while those are still some very, good wins, they aren’t what they seemed to be early on.

On top of that, the Buckeyes have hit a skid that is now no longer just a blip on the radar, but a troublesome trend. Early on, its young talent was playing much more cohesive, sharing the basketball, and showing a toughness well beyond its years.

But now, the rough and tumble Big Ten seems to have reset things a bit. Okay, a lot.

No longer is this Ohio State team playing through chaos, working well together, or taking care of the basketball. What has resulted is a season that has gone from so promising, to one with more questions than answers. To make matters worse, head coach Chris Holtmann seems to be at a loss as to how to get this group to play like what we’ve been accustomed to seeing under his tenure.

What is clearly his most talented team to date, now has to be his most perplexing.

There are even signs of some behind-the-scenes grappling going on. Though the details are sketchy, guards Luther Muhammad and Duane Washington were suspended for a game for “a failure to meet program standards and expectations.” Drama in the midst of a serious swoon is never a good thing.

The two are now back, but where there’s scarlet and gray smoke …

The Buckeyes must face the reality of where things stand. At 2-5 now in the league, a shot at a regular-season Big Ten Championship is most likely down the tubes. There’s still a chance at a deep run in the Big Ten Tournament and an NCAA Tourney appearance to potentially look forward to, but somehow Holtmann will have to keep this team motivated in the face of reset expectations.

And about those NCAA prospects? What was once a projected No. 2 seed is in a free-fall with every passing loss. Ohio State has lost six of its last nine. That resembles nothing close to an NCAA Tournament team. It barely resembles an NIT team.

The good news is that there’s still time to get this thing turned back around. The schedule eases a wee-bit over the next few games, and Holtmann has shown that his teams generally figure things out as March comes closer.

But it won’t be easy. There’s no doubt this team has lost some confidence and swagger, and it’ll be tough to wrestle that back in the deepest league in the country where there’s simply not a stretch of games to build momentum without going out and taking it.

This Ohio State team might still be pretty good, and once it gets to March might even find more of what was going right early in the campaign. But the painful truth is that the 2019-2020 Buckeyes just aren’t what we thought they were in early December.

It’s time to reset expectations — and not in a good way.

 

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Ohio State vs. Penn State 2020 basketball game preview and prediction

Ohio State travels to Penn State to try and get its first conference road win of the year. We’ve got your preview and prediction.

Records

Ohio State 12-5 (2-4), Penn State  12-5 (2-4)

Broadcast, TV, Game Time

Date: Saturday, January 18
Game Time: 12:00 PM
Venue: Bryce Jordan Center, State College, PA
Network: ESPNU

For some reason, these games against Penn State have been wildly entertaining over the last couple of years, aside from the one earlier this year in the Schott. In that one, Ohio State administered a public flogging of the Nittany Lions, winning by 32 points in what was likely the peak of dominance for the Buckeyes.

Since then though, both teams seem to be on parallel paths. Both have had a little good, but more bad so far in the Big Ten season. Both teams are sitting at a surprising 2-4 in the league and looking to move closer to .500 and a shot at beginning a run back to the upper half of the league.

Ohio State has both suspended guards Luther Muhammad and Duane Washington back, and it’ll need both to be active and effective to find a way to win a Big Ten game on the road for the first time this year.

Next … The Ohio State Game Plan

Pages: Page 1, Page 2, Page 3

Don’t worry Ohio State basketball fans, the sky is not falling just yet

Many are frustrated with what we’ve seen from the Ohio State basketball team as of late. But just wait, the season will turn around.

The Ohio State basketball team has hit a January skid. Call it the Fiesta Bowl curse, the physical brand in the Big Ten, or growing pains. No matter the case, the Buckeyes have lost four in a row on the court and have yet to win a game in the calendar year of 2020.

Apparently hindsight is not 2020.

OSU raced out to an 11-1 record, but now sit at 11-5 overall, and a surprising and disappointing 1-4 in the Big Ten. Despite a national ranking of eleventh before the loss at Indiana, it sits in a last-place tie with Northwestern in the Big Ten standings.

Can you hear the splashes of all the bandwagon fans jumping off the ship?

I’m here to tell you to take a deep breath. Things are not as bad as they appear. Yes, it’s a hard, hard truth that this team has some things to work out. The team is actually a tad younger than even last year, and you have to expect some of the new players to struggle with consistency. It’s really not a surprise. Turnovers and bad shooting have plagued the team as of late and there’s no way to swim around that.

But there are reasons.

The schedule as of late has not been kind. The Buckeyes have only lost one game at home in totality (a root canal at the hands of Wisconsin), but three on the road in conference. I don’t have to tell you how hard it is to win on the road in this league — especially this year, one in which the Big Ten is so deep. One only needs to look at Michigan State going down in a heap Sunday by almost thirty points at Purdue for evidence. Or you could point to the fact that Big Ten home teams are winning at an astounding rate this season, more so than anyone can remember.

I’ve seen people actually calling for Chris Holtmann’s job now after a four-game losing streak. Those people simply don’t know basketball, the Big Ten, or human nature at all.

Everything will be fine.

This team still has the pieces to make a run in March. It’s in a bit of a hole now that will make it difficult to win the Big Ten, but the schedule will begin to get a little easier starting Tuesday with a home game against Nebraska. There’s a tough game at Penn State after, but what follows is at home vs. Minnesota, At Northwestern, and home against Indiana. Look for the Buckeyes to claw back close to .500 after the next few games.

It’ll still be a long road to get back up in the upper division of the Big Ten, but this year even finishing with a losing record in-conference can get you into the NCAA Tournament.

This team will get better, and all of those fans and critics calling for knee-jerk changes in a still very young Big Ten campaign will grow silent.

 

 

Eleven Big Ten teams projected in NCAA field

Joe Lunardi has a whopping eleven Big Ten teams in the NCAA projected field if the season were to end today.

There’s still a large part of the season to go, but the Big Ten might be on the verge of a pretty remarkable feat if things stay the course. It’s been a very unpredictable conference season so far, and that speaks to the balance of the league. Look no further than Ohio State for proof. The Buckeyes are ranked No. 11, but are just 1-4 in the league and sit in second to last place.

Michigan State has been the best so far in-conference, but it got the doors blown off of it by 29 points at Purdue Sunday. It’s anyone’s guess how many losses the league champion will have.

But there’s good news in all of this. The conference is projected to have eleven teams in the NCAA field if the season were to end today according to Joe Lunardi’s Bracketology on ESPN. That’s more than any other conference by a wide margin. In fact, the Big East is second with just six teams projected in.

And rather than name all eleven, it’s easier to name the three that wouldn’t be in if the season were to end today. Those three teams are Nebraska, Northwestern, and Minnesota. And that’s with the understanding that the Gophers are just barely out of the field right now.

Now, will arguably the deepest conference in the country get this many teams in when it all really matters? I think it would be a shock to see eleven, but with the way things are going, never say never. Either way, it looks like there’s going to be a severe Big Ten flavor to  March in 2020.

Michigan State face-plant at Purdue sends message to Badgers

More on the Big Ten race

We said this earlier in January: There is no elite team in the Big Ten. We noted that Michigan State, though unbeaten in conference play, had played almost all of its conference games at home. Michigan State’s one road game in the league entering Sunday at Purdue was a game at Northwestern, one of the two terrible teams in the conference alongside Nebraska.

Michigan State, in other words, had not yet been challenged on the road in Big Ten play, due to its home-game-heavy schedule to start the conference season.

Guess what happened when the Spartans and Tom Izzo had to play a decent — but not even especially good — opponent on Sunday in West Lafayette? Michigan State was DEMOLISHED by Purdue, not merely beaten. The Boilermakers were 9-7 entering the game, but like the 9-7 Tennessee Titans, they looked like world-beaters against the first-place team in their conference. (Sports are funny that way.)

The Michigan State-Purdue result confirms our thesis at Badgers Wire: There is indeed no elite team in the Big Ten. Michigan State is not a Goliath looking down on everyone else. The Spartans are not a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament. They look a lot more like a 3 or 4 seed than a 1 or a 2 seed.

Guess what, then, Wisconsin fans? The Badgers can win the Big Ten. No, I wouldn’t BET on that, but I would certainly say that UW can make a run at the conference championship.

Yes, the loss to Illinois could really hurt the Badgers in two months, when we look at the final Big Ten standings, but Illinois is currently holding a second-place position in the Big Ten. Do you think the Illini will hold that position? If Illinois can be second now, Wisconsin can be second at a later point in time… and if Wisconsin can be second, it can make its way to first place.

Remember: The Badgers have won two Big Ten road games, and not against Nebraska or Northwestern. Wisconsin has beaten the kinds of teams Michigan State has not yet shown it can beat in the Big Ten away from East Lansing. If Wisconsin keeps winning some rock fights on the road in the conference, and Michigan State gains the same “Jekyll and Hyde” identity so many other Big Ten teams have in road games compared to home games, the Badgers will be in the thick of the hunt at the very end, in early March.

The Big Ten is wide open. Wisconsin can be part of the party. Don’t let anyone tell you this league is unwinnable for the Badgers.

Wisconsin cuts against the Big Ten – in a good way

Wisconsin beats Penn State

In a thoroughly weird college basketball season — a season so odd that Ohio State is 1-4 in the Big Ten without having played Michigan or Michigan State — Wisconsin has been part of the weirdness. Yet, the Badgers have contributed to this bizarre season in ways which aren’t entirely bad.

The 5-5 start was bad, but in January, the Badgers have been a mostly pleasant surprise in the Big Ten. How surprising? Get this: Imagine being told on Christmas Day that Wisconsin — the same team which couldn’t tie its shoelaces away from the Kohl Center in November and early December — would enter its January 14 (Tuesday) game against Maryland as the Big Ten team with the most total road wins (3). Imagine being told that this Wisconsin team which was a total mess away from Madison in the first month of the season would enter January 14 as the Big Ten leader in conference road wins (2).

Wisconsin can’t let home games against other Big Ten bubble teams such as Illinois slip away. UW badly needs that win on Tuesday against Maryland. However, we can focus more on that game when it arrives in a few days. For now, simply appreciate the enormity of the turnaround Wisconsin has made on the road. Ohio State is struggling, and to be brutally honest about it, Penn State is struggling as well. Yet, Wisconsin was hardly a clear favorite heading into Columbus on Jan. 3. It was hardly a clear favorite heading into State College on Saturday, Jan. 11. Yet, it won both games, and it did so despite scoring an average of just under 60 points per game — 61 against Ohio State, 58 on Saturday versus Penn State.

There are still two months left in the season — two months for the Badgers to develop on offense and find a more blended, consistent attack. Two months isn’t an eternity, but two months do give UW some time and space in which to grow. Maybe by early March, this offense will purr with efficiency and precision. However, in the short run — certainly in the next few weeks — Wisconsin will need to remain the team it became against Ohio State and Penn State: a defensive terror which causes opponents to hesitate and punishes skilled players if they don’t work hard without the ball.

That was the defining aspect of this win over Penn State: The Nittany Lions were asking for the ball on passes from teammates instead of actually working to get open. Penn State expected it could create shots with one-on-one play instead of using harmonious, five-as-one offense to create good scoring chances with ball movement and player movement. The ball stuck for Penn State, and Wisconsin showed no mercy, holding PSU under 50 points.

We have said it for the past several weeks: Wisconsin has to play and win street fights, because its offense is not a very developed one. That developmental process might require the whole season. The Badgers certainly aren’t close to where they need to be on offense. The defense has to carry them.

What’s good: Wisconsin can play like this on the road. Now, let’s see if the Badgers can defend like that at home.

Did we say this was a weird season?