1. If there are people who think only Indiana and Michigan — and perhaps Michigan State — have a shot at winning the Big Ten title, there are some in Wisconsin who may respectfully disagree. The Badgers have had a tumultuous season, struggling through parts of the non-conference and even Big Ten play, but still find themselves right in the thick of it. And though Mike Bruesewitz makes it a point not to look at the standings posted in the locker room, it’s still a vey real possibility for Bo Ryan’s group. “We feel like we still control our own destiny,” UW senior forward Jared Berggren told the Wisconsin State Journal. “I think with three losses, we’re still in position to contend for the title if we take care of business.”
2. ESPN released the season’s first edition of Bubble Watch and, as good as the conference has been this season, there are only three locks to make the NCAA Tournament at this point — Indiana, Michigan and Michigan State. It may not seem like a lot until you see that no other conference has more than two. Minnesota and Ohio State, as they should be, are listed as “should be in,” and Illinois and Wisconsin have “work left to do.” Iowa‘s not even in the mix anymore, and those Gonzaga, Butler and Ohio State games are clearly keeping the Illini afloat despite their recent struggles. We’ll break down the NCAA resumes of these Big Ten teams in the coming weeks but it’s never too early to start thinking about March.
3. In the end, Michigan vs. Ohio State came down to Aaron Craft vs. Trey Burke as the Buckeyes point guard drove nearly the length of the floor with time ticking off the clock to try and tie the game on Tuesday night. But he came up short, with Tim Hardaway Jr. blocking Craft’s last-second shot attempt away, and no foul was called. Should there have been one? Said ESPN analyst Dick Vitale, who was calling the game in Ann Arbor: “You’ve gotta call that. I think you have to blow the whistle there.” Feel free to take another look here and let us know what you think about the important no-call that allowed Michigan to escape at home and remain the probable front-runners in the conference.
4. And even though Ohio State didn’t get a foul out of that play — or a win out of that game — Columbus Dispatch columnist Bob Hunter says the Buckeyes made important progress as a team. They were able to find scoring from other options other than Deshaun Thomas throughout, led most of the game, and kept up with Michigan‘s frantic offense. Don’t pay attention to the scorer, or the additional game in the loss column in the standings, Hunter says. This team is clearly getting better. (And ESPN‘s Jason King agrees.) Do you agree?
5. In case we didn’t already know, Big Ten basketball is a quality product this year. The Big Ten Network is reporting that this past January marked the network’s highest-rated month ever in prime time. This is obviously thanks to the high-quality games we’ve been lucky enough to see — and we hope will continue through the end of the season — and the strong ratings for The Journey. Minnesota at Indiana on Jan. 12 was the highest-rated regular season basketball game in BTN history, and Ohio State-Illinois on Jan. 5, Minnesota at Wisconsin on Jan. 26, Michigan at Illinois on Jan. 27 and Indiana at Purdue on Jan. 30 helped the network achieve an average primetime men’s conference basketball rating of 0.87 in the network’s eight metered markets. BTN trailed only ESPN in its eight metered markets among all national sports networks in January.

jnowak (138 Posts)

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 7th, 2013 at 7:01 am by jnowak and is filed under big ten, microsites, morning 5. Tagged: illinois, indiana, michigan, michigan state, minnesota, ohio state, wisconsin. 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.