Throughout the season, the Other 26 microsite will run down our weekly superlatives, including team, player, coach and whatever else strikes our fancy in that week’s edition.

O26 Team of the Week

George Washington. While many folks were drinking eggnog and caroling and having holiday fun, George Washington was in Hawaii stringing together three impressive, defensive-minded victories in a row to win the Diamond Head Classic. In doing so, not only did the Colonials establish themselves as the Atlantic 10’s second-best unit, they also picked up a resume-defining non-conference victory that should work wonders come Selection Sunday.

George Washington beat Wichita State and won the Diamond Head Classic. (Eugene Tanner / Associated Press)

Mike Lonergan’s club entered last Monday with essentially zero quality wins of note, having dropped all three opportunities against KenPom top-100 units – including a 13-point handling at Penn State the previous week – and running out of chances. Luckily, the trip to Hawaii offered a few finals shots before A-10 play, and the effects from that contest in Happy Valley (especially defensively) were apparently left on the mainland: GW opened the tournament by holding Ohio to 15 points in the second half and steamrolling the Bobcats, 77-49. Big man Kevin Larsen finished with 19 points and 15 rebounds and the Colonials allowed their MAC opponent a mere 0.77 points per possession – a dominant defensive effort that continued into their next two games. Against Colorado the next night, Lonergan’s group limited the Buffaloes to just 50 points on 36.5 percent shooting, their second-worst offensive output of the season. Then, on Christmas night, GW notched its biggest win (and probably the A-10’s biggest win) of the young season by storming back from eight down against Wichita State, grabbing the lead with under five minutes to play and holding off the Shockers for a 60-54 triumph. Lonergan’s decision to switch to a 1-3-1 zone in the second half enabled GW to limit Wichita State to its fewest points per possession since February 2, 2013, and helped spark the game-clinching, 20-6 run late in the contest. In fact, over the course of three games, the Colonials allowed just four (total!) double-figure scorers and never surrendered more than 0.90 points per trip – a stretch of defensive excellence that puts them firmly in the NCAA Tournament at-large discussion, likely from now until March.

Honorable Mentions: Loyola-Chicago (2-0: N-Texas Tech, N-Boise State); Stony Brook (2-0: vs. American, at Washington); UNLV (2-0: vs. Arizona, vs. Southern Utah); Iona (2-0: vs. Florida Gulf Coast, at Drexel)

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Before passing out the imaginary hardware for the Big Ten’s best performers in the non-conference season, let’s make it clear that these awards come solely from my brain. All of our Big Ten preseason awards and the predicted order of finish were voted on by the entire group of writers here at the Big Ten microsite. These non-conference honors, however, are all on me, so please direct any kudos and/or criticism this way (@berndon4). So with the non-conference portion of the Big Ten schedule thankfully done, here are the honors from the first half of the season.

Frank Kaminsky has stepped his game up to even greater levels this season after a standout season in 2013-14. (AP Photo/Alex Gallardo)

• Player of the Year: Frank Kaminsky, Wisconsin: Kaminsky has been so good that advanced metrics guru Ken Pomeroy has him listed as his current National Player of the Year. He leads the Badgers in points, rebounds, steals, and blocks, and he’s also third on the team in assists. Where he’s made a major leap this season has been in his ability to put the ball on the floor and beat his man off of the dribble. Instead of morphing into full Pittsnogle mode of just launching threes as a 7-footer and falling in love with his perimeter game, he’s scoring from all over the court. Defensively, he’s leading the conference in defensive rebounding, grabbing 25.1 percent of all caroms when the other team puts up a shot. He’s also averaging 2.2 blocks per game, and has been a legitimate rim-protector for the Badgers’ outstanding defense. (Others Considered: Rayvonte Rice, DJ Newbill, D’Angelo Russell)
• Freshman of the Year: D’Angelo Russell, Ohio State: You honestly couldn’t go wrong with any of the three Big Ten freshmen who have been spectacular thus far. Russell gets the nod over Maryland’s Melo Trimble and Indiana’s James Blackmon Jr., but just barely. The gifted guard from Louisville has led the Buckeyes in scoring nine times, but he’s also led them in assists five times to boot. His 17.7 PPG and 5.3 APG are great, but his 46.7 percent shooting from deep is even better. If his numbers stay anywhere close to where they are now and Ohio State finishes near the top of the league standings, he’ll edge out Trimble and Blackmon for the season award like he has done here. (Others Considered: Melo Trimble, James Blackmon Jr, Vince Edwards)

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The wait is over. The wait is finally over. For a month and a half now, college basketball has kept us intermittently engrossed. There have been glimpses of the beauty, sniffs of the joy. But beginning today, we get to dive in. We get the full dosage. We get to bask in all the glory. The beginning of conference play is important, not just because attention ratchets up and the momentous games come in droves, but because these first few weeks are full of realizations. This is when we start to get a true feel for individual teams. This is when preseason “underrated” statements are validated and gaudy records against weak competition are exposed. It’s too early to make sweeping judgments about conferences as wholes, but at last, the balance of power within those leagues will start to reveal itself. We’ll learn a lot these next few weeks. Or at the very least, we’ll think we have. And right now, that’s good enough.

Three for the Money

We’re actually going to bypass this section for now because there aren’t many single games that stand out this week. There are no clashes between conference heavyweights. In fact, there are only a couple of contests between two ranked teams. Instead, this week is about collections of games. It’s about the Big Ten tip-off event on Tuesday. It’s about the quintet of Big East games on Wednesday. It’s about the first full west coast Friday night in the Pac-12. And it’s about a jam-packed Saturday all across the nation.

A Juicy Big Ten Triple-header

Maryland Begins Its Opening Big Ten Season Today (USA Today Images)

The two worst teams in the league, Northwestern and Rutgers, actually get things started today at Noon, but we can pretend that game isn’t happening. The real curtain-raiser is the afternoon tripleheader on ESPN2. First, Iowa travels to Columbus to take on Ohio State in a rematch of last year’s upset of the then-No. 3 Buckeyes. Without Roy Devyn Marble in the lineup, though, the Hawkeyes aren’t the same team they were a year ago, more closely resembling the team that closed last season on a 1-7 slide. They lack consistent scoring punch in the backcourt, and that could mean trouble against an Ohio State team of which perimeter defense is a legitimate strength. KenPom only gives the Hawkeyes a 19 percent chance to enter Value City Arena and get a win.

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As you well know, the Big Ten starts off conference play with four games today. While some of the luster has been lost due to several teams’ non-conference struggles, that doesn’t mean that things won’t be entertaining with so many teams relatively close to each other in talent level. Can disappointing teams like Michigan and Purdue turn things around? Will Wisconsin dominate as much as everyone seems to think? Can Penn State keep winning? Some of these questions and more will be answered over the next two and a half months. With that in mind, here’s a look at five key dates during conference play that will be appointment viewing if you’re a true B1G fan.

Dez Wells and Maryland vs. Michigan State in College Park highlights a slew of good games on January 17 .(Charlie DeBoyace/The Diamondback)

January 17 (five games)

• Rutgers-Minnesota 12:00 EST (BTN)
• Purdue-Penn State 1:0o (ESPNU)
• Ohio State-Iowa 2:00 (ESPN)
• Michigan State-Maryland 4:00 (CBS)
• Northwestern-Michigan 8:15 (BTN)

You may be able to skip the opener at Minnesota, but the meat of this five-game Saturday slate is right in the middle. Iowa and Ohio State split their games last season, which each team winning on the other’s home floor. Both teams once again have legitimate NCAA hopes, but this one will be important for setting the tone early in conference play. After today’s season opener in East Lansing, Maryland and Michigan State will run it back just 17 days later. The Terps are known for bringing a raucous atmosphere to the Xfinity Center — how will Michigan State handle the chaos in playing there for the first time as a league opponent? Read the rest of this entry »

On days like last Saturday, they tell you to throw out the records. Rivalry games like Kentucky-Louisville are supposed to occur in a vacuum, a place where bragging rights supersede any other consideration. At leas that’s how the thinking goes. It’s a quaint notion, indeed, but this latest installment of the Bluegrass State rivalry turned out to be all about the records. To be more specific, Kentucky’s record. With all due respect to Louisville’s previously unblemished loss tally – and even more respect to a stacked ACC – the Cardinals were never going to chase a perfect season, even if they had found a way to take down the Wildcats. But for Kentucky, with its stiffest test now in the rear-view and the zero in its loss column unchanged, dreams of an undefeated season have begun to transition out of fantasy and into reality. It was all anyone wanted to talk about after the game: Is 40-0 really possible?

The Young Wildcats Have Had Plenty Of Fun So Far; Are They Capable Of Crafting College Basketball’s First Perfect Season Since 1976?

It is hard to look at the Kentucky schedule and find a single remaining game that it is likely to lose. This much is true. Using KenPom as our basis, the Wildcats are predicted to have at least an 89 percent chance of winning in 15 of their 18 SEC games. The three exceptions are visits to South Carolina on January 24 (84% win share), Florida on February 7 (77% win share), and Georgia on March 3 (84% win share). Florida’s best win this season is over Yale; the Gamecocks have beaten only one team in KenPom’s top 125 (Oklahoma State); and Georgia has two top-70 wins (Seton Hall and Colorado). Do we really expect any of these teams to prove capable of toppling one of the most dominant college basketball teams of the 21st century? I don’t think so.

Getting through the SEC unscathed – conference tournament included — is definitely possible for the ‘Cats. But is it likely? As difficult as it is to look down the schedule and find an SEC foe capable of beating them, winning 21 straight games against major conference teams is not as easy a task as many are suggesting. Even KenPom gives Kentucky just a 24.3 percent chance of ripping off the next 18 in a row. Avoiding a road trip to Arkansas on the schedule this year helps the cause, but won’t there be a night – most likely away from Rupp Arena — where the shots just aren’t falling for Coach Cal’s young bunch? They are shooting just 32.1 percent from three-point range and 66.2 percent from the line; imagining a 40-minute offensive drought is not too difficult, particularly in a foreign environment. Of course, you could use those same percentages to make a different but equally compelling point. Kentucky has been utterly dominant to this point, despite those inefficiencies — why even worry about them?

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Each week the Pac-12 microsite will run down our weekly superlatives, which typically will include a Team, Player and Newcomer of the Week, along with our weekly Power Rankings.

Team of the Week: Stanford

Behind Chasson Randle and Anthony Brown, Stanford Earned Themselves A Big-Time Non-Conference Win. (Getty)

In a week with so much inexplicable carnage – Arizona, Washington, California, UCLA and Colorado all would like to have do-overs – the Cardinal are the conference’s saviors, earning the league’s best non-conference win of the season with a true road win at Texas in overtime last Tuesday. Coming on the heels of a tight loss at BYU, and with that ugly DePaul loss still lingering in the air, this game proved that this Cardinal team is capable of doing the kinds of things that last year’s Sweet Sixteen team did. Led by seniors Anthony Brown and Chasson Randle, Stanford battled the Longhorns and their crowd, fought back time and again from (at times self-inflicted) bad breaks and gave themselves and the conference an early Christmas present that should pay dividends the rest of the year.

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It’s easy to sit here and write that players like Wisconsin’s Frank Kaminsky and Ohio State’s D’Angelo Russell will be key factors in how the Big Ten race shapes up once conference play begins this week. It’s a little harder to dig deeper and find several of the league’s non-superstars who will also have significant roles in the final determinations. Is it the freshman who starts to understand the speed of the game and plays much better with a few games under his belt? Or is it the underachieving senior who plays with an increased urgency now that his career is coming to a close? Here’s a look at several non-household Big Ten players who will be key cogs for their teams over the next couple of months.

Bronson Koenig has played well after struggling early for Wisconsin. (Reuters)

• Bronson Koenig: The sophomore guard struggled in his first five games, only averaging 2.8 PPG on 33 percent shooting from the floor. Since then, he’s increased his output to 6.3 PPG on 40 percent shooting over seven games. The Badgers have not yet really replaced the three-point production of Ben Brust despite their 12-1 record, so Koenig will need to be a more consistent offensive option when he gets called upon.
• Aaron Cosby: Illinois has done a good job in being less reliant on Rayvonte Rice this season. His usage rate has only dropped only a bit (from 26.6 to 25.8 percent), but his minutes are reduced as well (27.8 MPG). The Illini’s offense is therefore more balanced, and it will be even better if Aaron Cosby can regain his shooting touch. In Illini wins, Cosby has made 36.5 percent of his shots from distance. In three losses, he’s made only 20.0 percent. He’s done a good job contributing in other ways — like when he grabbed seven rebounds in a win against Missouri — but Cosby is in Champaign to make jump shots. If he can get things rolling and shoot like he did when he was at Seton Hall for his first two seasons (nearly 40 percent from three), Illinois will be hard to stop.

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About six weeks ago during our preseason Big Ten conference podcast, I made a bold prediction that Nebraska would finish second to Wisconsin in the conference race. Predicting conference standings eight weeks before league play begins is tough as it is, but few predictions could appear to be more off than that one. The Huskers are now 8-4 heading into Big Ten play, with a semi-quality win over Cincinnati, a couple of bad losses to Hawaii and Incarnate Word, and not much else to show for it. Teams have dug themselves out of these kinds of starts to still make the NCAA Tournament, but the overall weakness of the Big Ten this year puts Nebraska in a precarious spot because there aren’t many more high-quality wins to be had. A 12-6 Big Ten record along with wins over the presumptive top teams such as Wisconsin, Ohio State and Michigan State could give Tim Miles a legitimate case for his team’s inclusion (currently #87 nationally), but a schedule that includes only two home games against that group will hurt his chances.

Tim Miles’ Huskers don’t have enough opportunities in the Big Ten season to dig themselves out of a poor non-conference season. (Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

The losses to Incarnate Ward and Hawaii — both currently rated by KenPom in the mid-to-low 100s — won’t be forgiven. The Rhode Island loss (#51) isn’t too bad on paper but the Rams may struggle to rise from that number in the competitive Atlantic 10. The only other reasonable loss is to #76 Creighton, and that is mitigated by the fact that it occurred at home. The Cornhuskers’ first four Big Ten games include #44 Indiana, #41 Iowa, #155 Rutgers and #42 Illinois – all beatable teams. But just one slip-up against those four and you might as well stick a fork in this group as a potential NCAA Tournament team. The four opponents after that are #4 Wisconsin, #27 Minnesota, #22 Michigan State and #80 Michigan. Two of that group (Michigan is on thin ice) are likely to get NCAA bids and Nebraska probably needs to secure three wins during that stretch to build its own case for inclusion. The second half of the Big Ten schedule includes Wisconsin again as well as #11 Ohio State in Columbus and #24 Maryland twice. But if Nebraska hasn’t come through its first half with a solid 5-3 or better record, it may not much matter how the Cornhuskers perform the rest of the season.

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Never a dull week… Never a dull week, I tell you. The holiday season was supposed to be the last down time for college basketball, but this past weekend – the last without wave after wave of important conference games – was anything but silent. From a clash at the summit in Kentucky to another stunner from Texas Southern – yes, really – it was another fine weekend on the hardwood.

Weekend Headliner: Kentucky 58, Louisville 50.

If it was going to happen, it was going to happen here; at least, so it seemed. Only one game stood between Kentucky and a feeble SEC slate. Only one major challenge remained. Only Louisville. And thus, there’s no place to start but here when rehashing the final 2014 weekend of college hoops. Because it – a Kentucky loss – didn’t happen.

It Was Another Defensive Masterpiece From the Wildcats (USA Today Images)

John Calipari’s team further cemented itself atop the collegiate basketball landscape with an ugly but effective victory over its bitter rival. The most striking thing about Saturday’s game was the difficulty Louisville had finding shots and scoring on the offensive end. If a top-five team with an All-American forward and an electric home crowd looked overwhelmed, how must other teams feel? The Wildcats’ smothering defense held the Cardinals to an ice cold 26 percent shooting and 0.85 points per possession. Most importantly though, Kentucky was able to do exactly what makes its defense so special: It forced Louisville to take an inordinate number of contested mid-range jumpers. A whopping 34 of the Cardinals’ 58 field goal attempts (58.6 percent) came from between five and 20 feet from the basket, an area from which they’ve shot 29 percent on the season. This was a significant departure from Louisville’s standard shooting distribution, and its a big reason why they had such trouble with Kentucky on Saturday afternoon.

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Much like week two of the season, last week was defined by a number of intriguing upsets. This trend began on Monday night when #14 Kansas was blown out by 25 points at Temple. It continued on Tuesday, as both #5 Arizona and #10 Texas fell to unranked opponents – the Wildcats losing at UNLV and the Longhorns losing at home to Stanford. Christmas Day spelled trouble for #15 Wichita State, as it was upset by George Washington in the championship game of the Diamond Head Classic. Finally, Sunday saw previously unbeaten #22 Washington fall at home to America East darling Stony Brook. With conference play fully set to begin this week in most conferences, we bid farewell to the stunning non-conference upsets that have been a major part of the college basketball season thus far. Upset enthusiasts should not worry too much, though, as we all know by now there is no such thing as an easy win in conference play. Strap in and get ready because it is going to be a fun two-month ride from here to March.

This week’s Quick N’ Dirty after the jump….

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