2023-24 Big Ten MBB Discussion Thread
- Thread starter HawkHoops80
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Iowa women win by fitty plus. LSU women lose. MSU loses to James Madison. This night owns!
The league will be fine. I think everyone fell into the trap that MSU making a 2nd weekend as a 7-seed meant that all of their returning players were going to take big jumps. When in reality the 7-seed, fringe-top30 team is probably closer to what they are again, especially without Hauser to help space the floor. Though there's a lot of growth potential due to the freshmen, but Izzo has to actually play Xavier Booker more than 5 minutes in order for that growth potential to happen. The guards are still good--I just think Carr and Booker are going to need to step up for MSU to be as good as their pre-season ranking indicated.
Rutgers is who I think most people expected them to be--they were picked behind Iowa in the preseason media poll for a reason. Princeton honestly looked like the better team all night and I don't think that loss is really a fluke. Everyone I know who was higher than the consensus on Rutgers was high on them due to the Derek Simpson breakout potential--in game 1 he had 2 points and 3 TOs and was a massive step down on the defensive side from Mulcahey IMO. This is a bridge year for them until they get that '24 recruiting class in.
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I think the league will be "not that great," but certainly not awful or anything (like the Pac-12 has been in some recent years, for example). It will be another extremely exciting conference season featuring a ton of great games between several pretty good teams that likely aren't going too deep in March, lol.
I think in this case "not that great" means the B1G won't turn out to have as much at the top end. sparty and pu are the early season acknowledged top 10 candidates. I'm not sold on either of them ending the year there. There will be good teams and significant number of tourney bids. May not be any great teams.
Indiana is going to struggle to score the ball this year if they keep this 3 big lineup. They have no offensive spacing at all.
Indiana has been incredible on the defensive end tonight and Ware is a menace as a rim protector. But yet, still only up 2 again FGCU with 4:30 to go in the half because they can't score and FGCU has thrown in some 3s.
Indiana has been incredible on the defensive end tonight and Ware is a menace as a rim protector. But yet, still only up 2 again FGCU with 4:30 to go in the half because they can't score and FGCU has thrown in some 3s.
Indiana 28 - Florida Gulf Coast 26 Halftime.
Indiana is shooting 40% from the field, 2/7 from 3 and 10/18 from the line.
Indiana is shooting 40% from the field, 2/7 from 3 and 10/18 from the line.
I couldn't help but notice that Oliver Nkamhoua (Michigan transfer from Tennessee) was sporting what appears to be a fairly recent tattoo: Loyalty.
Maryland falls again, this time to UAB. This is the team that many thought would be the 3rd best team in the conference (myself included, admittedly). As a team, Maryland is shooting just 22.6% from 3 on the year and 44.8% from the field this year.
They travel to Villanova on Friday for their next game, with real potential to fall to 1-3 to start the year.
They travel to Villanova on Friday for their next game, with real potential to fall to 1-3 to start the year.
Indiana up 1 at the half against Army.
Indiana is a BAD offensive basketball team.
Indiana is a BAD offensive basketball team.
Really interested in seeing Michigan tonight. I was pretty low on them during the offseason, but they beat 2 decent mid-major programs handily last week. Nkamhoua had some great numbers in both games, and they are getting a lot of productivity from Tshetter off the bench. I still think this team has some depth issues, but right now they are probably the biggest risers for me from the preseason. St John's in the Garden is a good early test to see if this team is legit.
They are way better than I gave them credit for. The vibes of this team are just way better too--everyone seems to actually like each other which I don't think was the case last season.
The biggest thing will be to keep everyone healthy, especially Dug and Namari. They have no backup guards at all.
Is Purdue playing under 1970s gym lighting? Like dark as hell in there.
That michigan PG is a lightning bolt. If he can play consistently at the level that he showed tonight he's going to tear up some opposing defenses this season.
So far in the early season:
1. pu is as expected
2. msu struggles with perimeter shooting. izzo might have them ready come tourney time, but they have to find some shooting from 3.
3. wisky sucks. Why? Because f@#k Wisconsin, that's why.
4. um appears better than I thought they might. pg is electric.
5. illanoy has some nice pieces. the perimeter shooting they added with the siu transfer was a good get for them.
6. terps have talent, looked disorganized in the chunks of their games I've seen.
1. pu is as expected
2. msu struggles with perimeter shooting. izzo might have them ready come tourney time, but they have to find some shooting from 3.
3. wisky sucks. Why? Because f@#k Wisconsin, that's why.
4. um appears better than I thought they might. pg is electric.
5. illanoy has some nice pieces. the perimeter shooting they added with the siu transfer was a good get for them.
6. terps have talent, looked disorganized in the chunks of their games I've seen.
Holtmann is still getting good recruiting classes. But I don't think he's a very good coach.
If they miss the tournament again this year, he's toast.
FWIW, I was playing around on BartTorvik this morning. When you remove all "pre-season bias" from the site here is where the Big Ten is ranked on his site:
2. Purdue
16. Michigan
40. Iowa
42. Nebraska
49. Minnesota
59. Penn St
116. Maryland
117 Illinois
118 Wisconsin
119 Rutgers
124 Ohio St
127 Michigan St
145 Northwestern
173 Indiana
In other words, the Big Ten has been as terrible as we've thought in the first 10 days of the season. And some of the better performing teams are the projected bottom dwellers.
2. Purdue
16. Michigan
40. Iowa
42. Nebraska
49. Minnesota
59. Penn St
116. Maryland
117 Illinois
118 Wisconsin
119 Rutgers
124 Ohio St
127 Michigan St
145 Northwestern
173 Indiana
In other words, the Big Ten has been as terrible as we've thought in the first 10 days of the season. And some of the better performing teams are the projected bottom dwellers.
Wow. That's ugly. However, it bodes well for Iowa. I know it's early but from the looks of things we're at least a top 5 team.
I don’t know how you could watch the Creighton game and be anything but optimistic about Iowa. Krikke is better than expected, Payton missed a considerable portion of the game, the freshmen played like they belonged and I thought PMac had a pretty good game as well. On a neutral court it would have been a toss up, we rarely lose the battle of the fouls that badly. In a year where the Big is down, I expect Purdue to run away with it but I think the Hawks will be in the hunt for a top 4 finish.
I'm curious how that works...? I mean, for Illinois:
W 80-52 vs. Eastern Illinois
W 64-53 vs. Oakland
L 71-64 vs. #4 Marquette
Not sure how 116 teams have "performed better" than being 2-1 and losing a close game (before free throws) to a top 5 team, lol.
It's like other analytic ranking sites. It measures efficiency while also weighing it for the opponent and home court. My assumption is that Illinois' game against Oakland is what is weighing down that ranking in particular. Illinois was favored by 22 points in that game on KenPom and in particular so winning by only 11 and having that be a relatively low scoring game is making Illinois' offensive efficiency numbers tank. Illinois is #238 in offense for this site when you remove the pre-season bias.
Probably worth noting that this is why all of these analytics sites bake in some preseason biases into their algorithm early in the season. Because 3 games is not a very good sample size to get a good picture as to how a team is going to perform. 1 (relatively) bad game is 33% of the data which heavily skews it. I mostly shared those rankings to simply make a point that I don't think many Big Ten teams are playing very well early on--not to make any sweeping predictions as to how teams will be going forward.
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