Tag: Big Ten Basketball

10 for 20: Michigan basketball

Michigan basketball in the 2020s

The big question facing Michigan basketball in the 2020s is not whether the Wolverines will do well. A program which has made two of the past seven national championship games and has a highly popular head coach who himself played in two national title games at Michigan — Juwan Howard — should be able to succeed at a reasonable level. One should see some Sweet 16s and some high NCAA Tournament seeds for Michigan.

The better question is: Will Michigan be able to stay at the top for a long time, with minimal interruption? The best question: How will Howard try to do this?

I ask that last question because as great as John Beilein was and is, the former Michigan head coach was not a conventional college basketball coach. Beilein came to Michigan from West Virginia (and before that, Richmond and Canisius), where he used unorthodox defenses with less-than-overpowering athletes to overachieve.

Yes, Trey Burke was an elite, NBA-level player, but that is an exception, not the rule, to Beilein’s tenure at Michigan. He was still winning games because his defenses were in the right position and his teams limited cheap giveaways to the opposition. When Michigan went to the national title game a second time, in 2018, the Wolverines had only one good shooting game, the regional semifinal against Texas A&M. They shot the cover off the ball in that game, making 14 of 24 threes. It’s easy to win when everything is going well, but Michigan shot poorly on threes in the other four games it played in that NCAA Tournament before the national title game.

Michigan was 5 of 16 on threes against Montana, 8 of 30 against Houston, 4 of 22 against Florida State, and 7 of 28 against Loyola-Chicago in the Final Four. That’s 24 of 96, or 25 percent, but Michigan’s defense answered the bell every time.

Can Michigan maintain that identity under Juwan Howard? Can Michigan improve recruiting to the extent that it can get easy baskets and not endure horrid perimeter shooting performances? We are all interested in whether Michigan maintains a high standard, but how Michigan operates is the mystery which will determine what the Wolverines do in the 2020s.

10 for 20: Indiana basketball

Indiana basketball in the 2020s

One obvious reality connected to NCAA Tournament basketball underscores the big problem with Indiana basketball in the 21st century and in the 2010s, which are about to end: NCAA Tournament games are neutral-site games. Yes, the Indiana Hoosiers will often have large crowds at those neutral-site games, but the crowd still isn’t uniformly supporting the Hoosiers. A neutral-site vibe isn’t a home-court vibe, and since Indiana is rarely a high NCAA seed (the obvious exception being 2013, when it was a No. 1 seed), it often won’t play close to home. When Indiana was a top seed in that 2013 NCAA Tournament, the regional was in Washington, D.C., with games being played on Georgetown’s home floor. Indiana never looked comfortable and ultimately lost to Syracuse, which had a strong showing from its fan base.

This sets up the main challenge for Indiana entering the 2020s: No, not getting high seeds in the NCAA Tournament, though that is obviously a huge priority for the Hoosiers. It’s bigger than that.

In order for Indiana to actually get those high NCAA seeds and play very close to home in a Midwest Regional semifinal — creating the gateway to the Final Four and renewed basketball relevance — it must first do something else: Win regular-season games away from Assembly Hall in Bloomington. This keeps coming up with Indiana basketball, and Wisconsin fans were able to see it in the Big Ten opener a few weeks ago. Indiana had just torn apart Florida State (a nationally-ranked opponent) in Bloomington, but then the Hoosiers went to Madison, and they looked utterly lost in the Kohl Center.

You will know that Indiana basketball is “back” when it regularly wins Big Ten road games — not just in one season, but multiple seasons. When Indiana can be dependable and reliable no matter where a game is played, not only will IU get the higher NCAA seed it needs to play closer to home, but it will also have the toughness needed to win those neutral-site battles in March.

10 for 20: Illinois basketball

Illinois basketball in the 2020s

When discussing Illinois basketball in the 2020s, the focus for the Fighting Illini can go in several different directions, all of them valid ways of framing the future for the program. Some could say that Illinois has to get back to being a Sweet 16 program, which it was under Bill Self and Bruce Weber. Valid. Some would say that Illinois should be beating out other Big Ten programs for elite recruits in Chicago and other metro areas in the Midwest. Some would say the Illini simply can’t miss the NCAA Tournament six straight seasons, or that Illinois ought to be making NCAA tourneys in consecutive seasons. Believe it or not, the Illini have not made back-to-back NCAA trips since 2006 and 2007.

If you were to start in any of those places, you would be raising a fair question about the main goal for Illinois in the 2020s. To be sure, they are all part of the story of Illinois basketball and represent necessary discussion points for the program.

I frame the 2020s relative to Illinois basketball through this prism, however: I am less focused on the results (which obviously need to improve to a considerable extent) than on the man tasked with generating them.

Much like Maryland, Illinois is a coach-specific story heading into the new decade. Mark Turgeon has the profile and career trajectory of a coach who can succeed at the highest level, having made his way through a strong coaching tree on a path which led from the mid-majors to the high majors to a basketball school near a big urban center. Underwood has followed that same path. He is part of the Bob Huggins coaching tree. He won at Stephen F. Austin. He carried that success to Oklahoma State. Now he is in Illinois, where the access to Chicagoland talent gives him a chance to become a star in the coaching profession.

The first two seasons for Underwood in Champaign were very rough, probably rougher than he privately expected. (The first season, not so much, but the second season was an extremely bumpy ride.) In Year 3, signs of an improvement exist, but a late collapse against Maryland reminded Illinois how far it still has to climb, and how much it must work to expunge bad habits and inclinations. Had Illinois won that game, it would have had an especially strong NCAA resume, given its win over Michigan. As things stand, Illinois is a total mystery this season. At least, though, Underwood can see some evidence of improvement.

Will Underwood be an elite coach? If that question can be answered in the affirmative in the 2020s, everything else will take care of itself for Illinois. Wisconsin fans hope Underwood won’t cross the threshold. The next two seasons will probably tell the tale in Champaign.

10 for 20: Iowa basketball

Iowa basketball in the 2020s

The Iowa Hawkeyes aren’t expected to be a giant in the college basketball world, but the program has shown under numerous coaches that it can reach a relatively lofty place in the sport — not the top tier, but in a very solid and respectable second tier below the heavyweights. No, Iowa shouldn’t be expected to be Michigan State or Ohio State, but it is hard to deny the sense that it should be a little more dependable than it has been under Fran McCaffery.

Iowa, to be very clear, is a hard-to-peg Big Ten program. It doesn’t have the access to big-city talent other league schools enjoy. It doesn’t have a towering reputation, but it does have an appreciably impressive basketball tradition developed by Ralph Miller, Lute Olson, and Tom Davis, three great college basketball coaches. If one is to ask about the big challenge facing Iowa basketball in the 2020s, you will probably get many different responses and many different standards. Some will say Iowa ought to be making more Sweet 16s — it has made none under McCaffery. Some will say Iowa needs to get higher NCAA seeds. The highest under Fran is No. 7. Those are good answers.

To me, however, the ultimate challenge facing Iowa basketball is this: Can it make the NCAA Tournament a high percentage of the time? That gets at the sense of underachievement in Iowa City more than anything else.

If you look at Iowa under Fran McCaffery, you will note that the Hawkeyes have missed the NCAAs five times in nine seasons. Sweet 16s are good, and more high seeds will likely translate to a Sweet 16, but before Iowa tackles those bigger goals, the Hawkeyes simply have to get to the Big Show more often. Wisconsin is a really good role model here. The Badgers wouldn’t always thrive under Bo Ryan in the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament, but they were always there. One of those years, they were bound to do better, and they did occasionally climb higher.

Wisconsin fans won’t mind if Iowa continues to stumble… but if Iowa wants to reach a specific level of quality in the coming decade, it needs to give itself more chances in March.

10 for 20: Maryland basketball

Maryland basketball in the 2020s

Reasonable people can disagree on this next point, and provide other equally valid answers to the question, but for me, no Big Ten program magnifies Wisconsin’s achievements in the 21st century more than the Maryland Terrapins.

Michigan State, Michigan, and Ohio State have generally been very successful this century, alongside Wisconsin. Those have been the four best programs in the conference this century. Purdue hasn’t made a Final Four, but the Boilermakers have been fairly consistent and made several Sweet 16s. Purdue isn’t failing to field a strong program; the Boilermakers simply haven’t reached their ultimate goal. There is a difference between those two realities. That is the five-team top tier of the Big Ten in the 21st century.

In the bottom tier of the Big Ten, we have Rutgers, Penn State, Nebraska, Northwestern, and Illinois, programs which have been dormant or close to it for large portions of the 2010s and the century at large. In the middle tier, we have Minnesota, Indiana, Iowa, and Maryland, programs which struggle with consistency. They occasionally poke their nose into the NCAA Tournament but don’t string together strong seasons for the most part.

In this middle tier of the Big Ten in the 21st century, Maryland and Indiana are the two programs which should be a lot better than they actually have been. Neither program has gotten past the Sweet 16 since the two schools played for the 2002 national championship in Atlanta. Why do I say that Maryland’s failures magnify Wisconsin’s achievements more than Indiana’s shortcomings? Indiana had its great coach, the man who would have returned IU to the top… but Kelvin Sampson ran afoul of the NCAA. With Maryland, the Terrapins have a coach who, on paper, SHOULD be thriving in the Big Ten, but he hasn’t.

The big question facing Maryland in the 2020s is if Mark Turgeon can finally live up to his promise and potential as a college basketball coach. Turgeon, on paper, has all the characteristics of a great coach in the making. He thrived at a mid-major program, Wichita State. He thrived at a football-school program in the Power Five, Texas A&M. He is a Larry Brown protege, coming from one of college basketball’s best coaching trees. He made the leap to a basketball school with a proud tradition near a fertile recruiting center, the Beltway corridor in Washington, D.C. and Baltimore. Yet, Maryland has never truly taken off in eight seasons under Turgeon.

The Terps have been a top-four seed only once under Turgeon. They have made the Sweet 16 once. The standards established by Lefty Driesell and then Gary Williams have not been matched by Turgeon — not even close. Moreover, with Maryland losing a pair of games in recent weeks and needing a huge rally to survive Illinois at home, it seems the Terrapins are once again in line to fall short of massive preseason expectations.

When Maryland was a No. 5 seed in 2016, the Terrapins were ranked as high as No. 2 in the Associated Press poll. The No. 4 seed in 2015 was ranked as high as No. 8 in the polls. This 2019-2020 team was as high as No. 3. It just doesn’t seem to be happening for Turgeon, and so as the 2020s arrive, one has to wonder if Maryland will eventually put all the pieces together. I’m not referring to a Final Four berth — not primarily. I am referring to the ability of Maryland to regularly be a top-three seed in the NCAA Tournament and collect a large number of Sweet 16s. That is where the Terps should be. From that volume of Sweet 16s and high seeds should come a Final Four at some point, but first, Mark Turgeon needs to cultivate that level of consistency in College Park.

10 for 20: Northwestern basketball

Northwestern basketball in the 2020s

No one thought that when Northwestern basketball made its first-ever NCAA Tournament and then won its first NCAA tourney game in 2017, the Wildcats would become a colossus. No one thought that. This is still Northwestern. One season does not a transformation make. This was not going to become a powerhouse program which would snag high seeds in March most years. However, it was certainly reasonable to think that once Chris Collins finally ended an NCAA Tournament drought of nearly 80 years, this program — not too far from Chicago — would capture some of the big city’s high-school talent and significantly raise its floor. No, Northwestern was not in position to become an annual NCAA Tournament team (unlike, say, Wisconsin), but it was definitely in position to bring in quality players who could make the Wildcats regular contenders for NCAA berths.

Northwestern, after 2017, figured to be a program which would be in the mix for NCAA appearances and succeed once every two or three years. Unrelenting annual consistency might have been an overly optimistic expectation, but becoming a program which could reasonably expect to go Dancing every three or four years? That seemed reasonable.

Northwestern’s Big Ten Conference record (not including Big Ten Tournament games) since 2017? 10-30. The Wildcats won only six league games in 2018, four in 2019. They are 0-2 in the conference this season. They are going nowhere quickly. Earlier this season, Northwestern lost to Merrimack College, a brand-new Division I program, at home. The Wildcats are a mess.

The question for Northwestern basketball in the 2020s is not so much when the Wildcats will make their second NCAA Tournament. The question is bigger than that: Will Northwestern have a second act?

It is as though Northwestern spent all this energy and emotion getting to the NCAAs that one time… and then had nothing left for future seasons. The 2017-2018 season was one prolonged hangover. Every Big Ten team treated Northwestern very seriously, much more seriously than before, and the Wildcats were plainly not ready to take everyone’s best punch. It was a new experience for the program. Playing a season one year after making the Big Dance had literally never happened before. Yet, it remained odd that Northwestern had so little emotional fuel and didn’t come especially close to the NCAAs in 2018, with some roster holdovers from the 2017 team.

Right now, Northwestern looks like a program which is out of steam, under a coach who is out of ideas. This might not rate as “stunning,” given that Northwestern basketball lacks a sustained history of winning, but it’s also not what many people imagined at the end of the 2017 season. It was supposed to be better than this. We will see if Northwestern finds its second act in the 2020s, whether under Collins or someone else.

10 for 20: Nebraska basketball

Nebrasketball in the 2020s

For decades, Nebraska had an advantage over Northwestern in the realm of college basketball. Sure, Nebraska was not a Big Ten member until the start of this decade, but even as a Big Eight and then Big 12 program, Nebraska — in a head-to-head comparison with Northwestern — was objectively better and more successful than the Wildcats. Nebraska had made the NCAA Tournament. Northwestern had not.

Then came 2017. Northwestern not only made its first NCAA Tournament; the Wildcats then won their first NCAA Tournament game over Vanderbilt before losing to Gonzaga in the round of 32. Suddenly, in the battle of the two “NUs,” (that’s a real debate, by the way, over which “NU” is the REAL NU when Northwestern and Nebraska fans are in the same room…) Northwestern had overtaken Nebraska. The Cornhuskers are now the ONLY Power Five conference program without an NCAA Tournament victory. It defies all description. It doesn’t seem remotely possible. Yet, it is true, and that is the big challenge facing Nebrasketball in the coming decade of Big Ten hoops.

Remember this about Nebraska on the hardwood: The Cornhuskers were once a No. 3 seed in the NCAA Tournament. They were not only supposed to win their 3-versus-14 first-round game; they had a real shot to make the Sweet 16 and do some damage in their bracket. However, coach Danny Nee’s team was ambushed by one of the masters of the NCAA Tournament upset in that era of college basketball history, Xavier’s Pete Gillen. Nebraska was a 6 seed in 1994, but No. 11 seed Pennsylvania knocked off the Huskers in Long Island, New York. Not once since the creation of the NCAA Tournament in 1939 has Nebrasketball been able to get over this particular roadblock.

This season, Nebraska is in complete rebuilding mode. The Huskers did just beat Purdue, but their collection of really bad early-season losses makes them highly unlikely to reach the Big Dance this coming March. Nevertheless, optimism runs high in Lincoln. Fred Hoiberg had an unpleasant tenure as the coach of the Chicago Bulls. He is back in his natural ecosystem, college basketball, coaching Nebraska after previously guiding Iowa State to the Sweet 16. It does seem like only a matter of time before Nebraska, under Hoiberg, wins that elusive first NCAA Tournament game. Yet, given how snake-bitten Nebraska has been, one should always allow for the possibility that a banana peel could emerge in the middle of the road, and that Nebraska might slip on it.

10 for 20: Penn State basketball

Penn State basketball in the 2020s

Penn State basketball is searching for its first NCAA Tournament berth under coach Patrick Chambers. The former Boston University head coach is in his ninth season in State College. Penn State administrators have been very patient with him. A 10-2 start with a win over Maryland has Penn State firmly in the NCAA Tournament hunt with a legitimate chance to give Chambers prolonged job security in the Big Ten. In the short term, that is obviously PSU’s foremost goal and challenge. Yet, the decade of the 2020s presents a bigger question surrounding the Nittany Lions on the hardwood: “Can they develop real momentum?”

Penn State isn’t Rutgers or Nebraska. Penn State has actually made a Sweet 16 this century. Rutgers and Nebraska are programs where momentum is less important than making a one-time breakthrough. Rutgers wants to make an NCAA Tournament. Nebraska wants to win its first NCAA Tournament game. Those programs will worry about other, bigger things after reaching those milestones. Penn State doesn’t have a 29-year NCAA drought (Rutgers) or the unique burden of never having won an NCAA tourney game (Nebraska). The Nittany Lions, as they pursue the Big Dance this season, need to figure out how to have a period of modest — but continuous — success. They don’t know what that looks like, at least not in modern times.

Penn State has made four NCAA Tournaments since the expansion of the tournament field to 64 teams in 1985. Those four bids have all been spaced out by at least five years: 1991, 1996, 2001, and 2011. Penn State would love to have just one period of five years in which it makes two NCAA Tournaments, or a nine-year period in which it makes three NCAA tourneys. Just that — just that modest pattern of continued success — would represent a BIG improvement for Penn State basketball.

It makes one appreciate the phenomenal consistency of Wisconsin basketball this century, and it also reminds one of the landscape in the early 1990s, when Wisconsin was the Big Ten program in search of a transformation. That transformation clearly arrived in Madison. The people of University Park, Pa., are looking for the same in the coming decade.

10 for 20: Rutgers basketball

Rutgers basketball in the 2020s

This has been a rough 2019-2020 college basketball season for Wisconsin fans. Part of this rough season has been marked by the absence of Micah Potter — for rubbish reasons not grounded in fairness; thanks, NCAA! — but part of this uneven journey for the Badgers was the product of the Rutgers Scarlet Knights. They’re not bad this season! That’s progress.

Before a team can become good, it needs to take the first step of ceasing to be lousy. Rutgers seems to be there. The Scarlet Knights aren’t a finished product. They will have to prove themselves in the cauldron of Big Ten basketball’s cutthroat competition. However, they aren’t a bad team anymore. They socked Seton Hall in non-conference play, and they once again flummoxed Wisconsin in New Jersey. It has been tough for the Badgers to win away from home in Piscataway. Rutgers has been able to protect its home court against UW.

It is one of those annoying realities for Wisconsin fans: Rutgers rarely amounts to anything over the course of the season, but the Scarlet Knights perk up and foil the Badgers when playing UW at home. It would feel better for Wisconsin fans if Rutgers could actually become a good program. Losses wouldn’t sting as much in that case.

This leads us to the obvious challenge facing Rutgers in the 2020s: Make an NCAA Tournament. It has been 29 years since the Scarlet Knights last did so, in 1991 under current TV commentator Bob Wenzel. Rutgers lived a very different existence then, as a member of the Atlantic 10 Conference. The move to the Big Ten has been bad for Rutgers in football, but basketball hasn’t been any better, at least not until now. However, RU coach Steve Pikiell shows signs of lifting the program’s floor. Now, the question becomes, “Can Pikiell raise the Scarlet Knights’ ceiling?”

Pikiell, from this outsider’s perspective, seems to be going about his building plan the right way. Rutgers relies on defense and rebounding to win. That’s how Rutgers beat Wisconsin. Pikiell understands that since recruiting high-end talent will be hard as long as Rutgers doesn’t have an NCAA Tournament bid to proudly tout on the trail, his current teams need to win with effort and hustle. Effort will travel. Effort can hide a lot of limitations. Effort enables a team to win with defense when the offense is struggling. If Rutgers can lean on its defense enough to make an NCAA Tournament in the next few years, the Scarlet Knights can make that national and regional splash. They would then be in position to improve their recruiting and land high-end scorers which could catapult the program to the next level.

Jon Rothstein (you know him; everyone does) is fond of saying, “Steve Pikiell. Pounding Nails.” Rutgers will try to hammer home an NCAA berth in the 2020s and see if that opens the floodgates to a new era of prosperity in New Jersey.

10 for 20: Purdue basketball

Purdue basketball in the 2020s

One of the bigger stories in college basketball and the Big Ten in the 21st century, not just the 2010s, is the lack of high-end basketball success in the state of Indiana. The Indiana Hoosiers were a fixture in the NCAA Tournament — often its later rounds — through the early 1990s under Bob Knight. Imagine sitting on your couch in 1993 and having someone tell you that Indiana would make one Final Four in the next 26 years. You would have told that person s/he was absolutely crazy and needed to see a shrink.

Alongside Indiana’s lack of significant basketball success is another improbable story of frustration: Purdue, a program in a basketball-mad state with a rich heritage and tradition (a guy named John Wooden played there in the early 1930s), has been very consistently good but very rarely great. The Boilermakers have somehow managed to go 39 years without a Final Four and do not appear to have the kind of team which is ready to snap that streak before it reaches 40 years this upcoming April.

This past March in Louisville, Virginia’s Kihei Clark (the pass) and Mamadi Diakite (the shot) denied Purdue its first Final Four since 1980. Virginia swiped that Final Four ticket from Matt Painter’s grasp. The Cavaliers’ late play — in one of the best regional finals ever seen, right up there with 1992 Duke-Kentucky — denied Purdue’s Carsen Edwards a deserved victory lap as the hero of heroes in the history of Purdue basketball. Edwards delivered one of the all-time-great performances in NCAA Tournament history, but it didn’t lead to a Final Four.

As one considers the challenge facing Purdue in the 2020s, the surface answer is obvious: Get to the damn Final Four. The more precise detail, though, is this: Have a Plan B. What I mean by that: Purdue’s best team over the past 39 years was the 1994 team with Glenn “Big Dog” Robinson, a college basketball legend. The 2019 team relied so much on Edwards for its production and overall success. Purdue needs a “Plan B” player, a second guy who can team with a superstar to give the Boilermakers the extra measure of dynamism they need to succeed at the highest level. We will see what the 2020s bring for a program which is yearning to snap a decades-long Final Four drought.