1. Illinois is a perfect 8-0 this season, but if there’s something the Illini could do better, it’s shore up their defense. John Groce’s team has allowed 63.2 PPG this season, which ranks 10th in Big Ten and puts that priority at the top of his to-do list. To help that situation, he’s going somewhere former Illinois head coach Bruce Weber never dared to go: the zone defense. Groce said that the Illini played zone defense about 25 percent of the time against Georgia Tech last week and told Mark Tupper of the Herald-Review that fans can expect to see it more often this year.
2. Tom Izzo has had the luxury of at times going 11 deep with his Michigan State roster, but one player who has been slow on the uptake this season has been freshman Matt Costello. The big man was slowed this summer by an injury that has also potentially hampered his progress this year. So should the Spartans have redshirted him from the get-go? And would they consider doing it now? According to Josh Slagter of MLive.com, Costello wants to keep fighting for playing time.
3. Ohio State doesn’t really have a quality win yet under its belt and with 19 days until Kansas comes to Columbus for a rematch of last year’s Final Four game, Brandon Castel from thezone.net figures the Buckeyes have just that much time to get some issues sorted out. Much of that, he writes, has to do with LaQuinton Ross becoming another scoring option behind star Deshaun Thomas. The Jayhawks succeeded in slowing Thomas down last year and, if they can do that again, Ohio State could be in trouble. Enter Ross, who had a career-high 22 points against Northern Kentucky on Saturday. “My coaches have been really pushing me in practice and telling me to shoot the ball,” Ross said.
4. If Indiana is the best team in college basketball right now, does that mean that will be the case come season’s end? Not so, says Grantland‘s Charles Pierce. But the present — Indiana has been ranked No. 1 since the beginning of the year and remains so as of today — is not what head coach Tom Crean is focusing on. Right now, he’s more focused on the past and honoring Indiana’s illustrious history with this year’s group. Of course, his immediate past in Bloomington wasn’t so peachy until last year’s turnaround Sweet Sixteen season (rings included!). But if the Hoosiers keep up that level of performance, that will seem like the more and more distant past.
5. Purdue has four losses already this season and it’s easy for Matt Painter to see why. In the Boilermakers’ loss to Xavier at Mackey Arena on Saturday, they did not make a single shot from three-point range, leaving Xavier with the ability to easily defend the post without having to worry about Purdue hurting them from long range. The Boilermakers relied primarily on the backcourt last season, but the frontcourt is more seasoned this year and Painter wants his players to incorporate the post more into the offense.

jnowak (138 Posts)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 4th, 2012 at 7:01 am by jnowak and is filed under big ten, microsites, morning 5. Tagged: illinois, indiana, michigan state, ohio state, purdue. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.