It’s been a little under a month since our previous seeding forecast and that means it’s time for an update. While a lot has happened over the last four weeks, the race for the Big Ten title and NCAA at-large bids have remained relatively even. There are still six Big Ten teams that appear comfortably within the field of 68 while a seventh remains firmly entrenched on the bubble. There’s also a three-way race for the #4 seed in the Big Ten Tournament and its accompanying double-bye. The table below shows each school’s updated likelihoods for finishing the regular season at each seed.

Here are three takeaways from the data.

1. Iowa is the strong favorite to capture a regular season title. There was a three-way tie for first place between Iowa, Indiana and Maryland heading into last weekend. In fact, the Terrapins — which owns the tiebreaker over the Hawkeyes — had at the time almost a 50 percent chance of finishing in first place. But after Maryland lost to Wisconsin and Indiana lost to Michigan State, Iowa once again finds itself alone at the top. Along with its one-game lead, Iowa has a comparative advantage with its remaining schedule. The toughest games for the Hawkeyes in the final three weeks will be versus Indiana and at Michigan; Maryland, on the other hand, still has games against Michigan, at Purdue and at Indiana; Indiana must face Purdue and Maryland as well as travel to Iowa. With this kind of advantage in place, Iowa has sole possession of the Big Ten Championship within grasp for the first time in 36 years.
Read the rest of this entry »

1. Indiana lost badly to Michigan State on Sunday afternoon, going to 6-6 on the season away from Assembly Hall. The Hoosiers are only one game off of the Big Ten lead, but in allowing Michigan State to put up 48 points in the second half and 1.28 points per possession for the game resuscitated old questions about the Hoosiers’ competence on the defensive end of the floor. The game also was notable for the disappearing act pulled by a scoreless Troy Williams. The junior had been the best player on the floor in the team’s earlier win over Iowa, but he needs to play up to his talent level if the Hoosiers want to make a deep run in March.
2. It wasn’t all sunshine and lollipops for Michigan State in the win over Indiana, though, as redshirt freshman Kenny Goins left the game in the first half with a knee injury. Tom Izzo fears that his post player will be out of action for the season. Goins had been playing well as a reserve big by taking minutes from Marvin Clark, but now it will be up to the sophomore to come in and produce in the same spots. Look for Gavin Schilling to also get more time, as depth is not a problem this year for Michigan State.
3. Minnesota lost a close game to Iowa on Sunday night to move to 0-13 in Big Ten play, but there were several bright spots that could be taken away from the game. More specifically, the Gophers held the highly-efficient Hawkeyes to 42.1 percent shooting from the field, and the play of sophomore Bakary Konate. Konate led the team with nine rebounds and has shown increasingly frequent flashes of development. This team is clearly building for the future right now, so being able to hang with one of the best teams in the country shows that, despite a lack of victories, things could get better as early as next season with a core that is gaining experience and returning in 2016-17.
4. Purdue has had a frightening propensity for blowing early leads this season, but its loss in the closing minutes to Michigan in Ann Arbor on Saturday may have set a new standard for late-game shoddy play. The Wolverines scored the final 11 points of the game after the Boilermakers had led by six with just a few minutes remaining. Purdue got a huge resume win earlier in the week in beating Michigan State, but the Boilermakers need to close strong with some damage in the Big Ten Tournament to move above the projected #4/#5 seed range they’ve been trapped in all the bracket projections.
5. Things weren’t pretty earlier this season at Wisconsin. Slowly but surely, however, Greg Gard has kept his team’s focus and the Badgers have played their way back into NCAA Tournament contention with an 8-4 conference record. This gives athletic director Barry Alvarez an interesting decision to make with respect to Bo Ryan’s permanent successor. The Badgers have gone 9-4 since Gard took over, and has led some to believe that he should be named the permanent head coach going forward. It’s hard to argue against this notion considering how the team has turned things around and could very well make the NCAA Tournament in what was once appeared to be a lost season.

Finally! After two weekends of mediocre action, Big Ten fans are treated to a packed slate of games with the top six contenders playing against one another or facing teams nipping at their heels. These games will have tremendous implications on the regular season title race, Big Ten tournament seeding and NCAA Tournament at-large bids. So set up camp on that couch this weekend, because there’s plenty of ball to be watched. Here the top Big Ten games of the weekend.

Yogi Ferrell will try and keep his Hoosiers in the Big Ten title race with a win against the Spartans.

#18 Purdue at Michigan (Saturday 2:00 PM ET, ESPN2): This is essentially a playoff game to remain in the race for the regular season title — although the winner would still be a considerable long shot. Michigan only has two top 50 KenPom wins this season (Texas and Maryland). Their poor performance against elite competition has typecast the Wolverines as a good-not-great team. If Caris Levert returns to the lineup today, he may provide a spark Michigan needs to get a win over a ranked team and garner some momentum going into the final few weeks of the regular season. The Boilermakers, on the other hand, are not only trying to compete for a Big Ten title but also vying for a protected seed in the NCAA Tournament. This game will be decided by one metric: three-pointers made by Michigan. If the Wolverines don’t get hot from outside the Boilermakers’ front line will simply eat them up. If Purdue can bother the Michigan shooters enough, though, they’ll add another excellent road win on their resume.

Read the rest of this entry »

Since 2002, there have only been two seasons when Big Ten home teams won fewer than 60 percent of their conference games (there have in fact been three years when home teams won over 70 percent of their Big Ten games). But that winning percentage has reached a new low this year, as home teams have thus far won only 57.3 percent of the time. With five of the league’s 14 teams as close to guaranteed wins as you can find in a major conference, that number makes sense. Nevertheless, it really highlights the level of disparity and weakness of the Big Ten this season.

It’s Week 11 of the Layup Line.

Michigan State has been a different team with their star back. (AP)

REPORT CARD

A: Denzel Valentine

Long time no-see, Mr. Valentine. How fitting for you to earn yourself some report card love on the eve of Valentine’s Day weekend. For those who haven’t been paying attention, Valentine earned his third Player of the Week honor of the season on Monday after dominating Michigan with a near triple-double (21 points, nine rebounds, eight assists). He followed that up on Tuesday by single-handedly bringing his Spartans back from an 18-point deficit against Purdue on the road, only for Sparty to lose by one in overtime (27 points, eight rebounds, 10 assists). Since that horrific loss to Nebraska on January 20, Michigan State is 4-1 and Valentine is averaging 21.2 points, 8.8 rebounds, 7.8 assists and 4.2 threes per game in that span. The chances of him surpassing Iowa’s Jarrod Uthoff as the front-runner for the Big Ten Player of the Year are remote, but Michigan State couldn’t care less. All that matters is that it has its star back and as healthy as ever, ready for the stretch run.

A: Corey Sanders

There are some really good freshmen in the Big Ten this season: Thomas Bryant, Caleb Swanigan, Ethan Happ and Diamond Stone, to name a few. Excluding overall team success, a reasonable argument can be made that none are having a better season than Rutgers’ Corey Sanders. The lone bright spot on a truly awful team, Sanders earned his second Big Ten Freshman of the Week honor after averaging 33.5 points, 5.5 rebounds, 8.5 assists and 2.5 steals per game versus Illinois and Nebraska. He ranks eighth in the Big Ten in points (15.9 PPG), eighth in assists (4.2 APG), first in steals (1.7 SPG) and ninth in minutes (33.4 MPG); among freshmen, he ranks first in points and minutes and is second in assists. If Rutgers wasn’t in jeopardy of going 0-18 in conference play and provided Sanders with a couple of half-decent sidekicks to make them somewhat competent, Sanders would be a shoe-in for Freshman of the Year. Brutal.

Read the rest of this entry »

1. Purdue announced on Thursday that athletic director Morgan Burke will retire when his contract expires on June 30, 2017. Burke, who has held the job in West Lafayette since 1993, is the longest-tenured athletic director in the Big Ten by 12 years. Michael Berghoff, former football player and current chairman of the Purdue Board of Trustees, will lead the search and gave no timetable for making a hire. The Lafayette (IN) Journal & Courier‘s Nathan Baird put together a list of possible candidates for the job.
2. In more Purdue news, starting point guard P.J. Thompson has sprained ligaments in his left ankle, causing him to miss practice and wear a walking boot. His status for Saturday’s game at Michigan is unclear, although X-rays came back negative. Thompson said he suffered the injury in the second half of the Boilermakers’ overtime win versus Michigan State on Tuesday. The Indianapolis native is on pace to shatter Purdue’s record for assist-to-turnover ratio: The sophomore has 71 assists against 11 turnovers this season.
3. The James Naismith Trophy released its midseason list for its men’s college basketball Player of the Year award. The list of 35 names includes five Big Ten players: Purdue center A.J. Hammons, Michigan State guard Denzel Valentine, Iowa forward Jarrod Uthoff, Maryland point guard Melo Trimble and Indiana point guard Yogi Ferrell. Trimble, a sophomore, is the only non-senior of the five Big Ten candidates.
4. Rutgers is in the middle of a 23-game Big Ten losing streak and head coach Eddie Jordan is displeased with the fan base’s impatience. Responding to a question about their disappointment, Jordan’s frustration showed as he defended Rutgers’ direction, saying, “They just have to be more educated in what the real deal is. If they understand what this conference is about, what type of players and teams we’re going up against with injuries and being a young team. If they don’t understand that, I don’t need to read what the reaction is.” Rutgers’ average home game attendance of 4,483 is easily the worst in the Big Ten.
5. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Wisconsin has won six straight games since a 1-4 start to Big Ten play. Forward Nigel Hayes is tied for fourth in the conference in scoring with 17.3 PPG and has scored at least 20 points in four of the six wins. But Hayes isn’t doing all the work. Junior forward/center Vitto Brown’s newfound consistency has given the Badgers a big lift too. He scored a career-high 18 points in Wednesday’s win over Nebraska and made all three of his three-point attempts. Brown is averaging 14.0 points and 3.5 rebounds per game in Wisconsin’s last four contests. He has made six three-pointers in that stretch after making only eight in the first 20 games of the season.

Michigan entered last week’s games against Indiana and Michigan State with confidence. The Wolverines were 7-2 in Big Ten play and winners of four straight. Six of those conference wins had come without All-Big Ten guard Caris LeVert. A week later, two blowout losses on its home floor leave Michigan with a lot of questions at a pivotal point in its season. Thought to be a sneaky Big Ten title contender and a near-lock for the NCAA tournament just a over a week ago, Michigan now sits in fourth place in the Big Ten standings. The Wolverines schedule doesn’t ease up, either; after a Wednesday road game at Minnesota, Michigan hosts Purdue before traveling to Ohio State and Maryland.

Michigan coach John Beilein and his team are searching for answers after blowout home losses to Indiana and Michigan State. (Lon Horwedel/AnnArbor.com)

John Beilein’s offense is designed around the three-pointer. During most of his tenure in Ann Arbor, Michigan has possessed the shooters to make a high percentage of three-point attempts. This year is no exception: the team shoots 40.3 percent on three-pointers and has four players who shoot at least 45 percent from long-range. But the Wolverines have made only 24 of 87 (28%) three-point attempts over their last three games. Duncan Robinson, who has made 48 percent of his three-point attempts on the season, has made just 29.7 percent (14-47) in his last six games. In the Michigan State loss, Muhammad-Ali Abdur-Rahkman had three wide-open looks from three-point range and missed them all. Michigan can beat Penn State and Minnesota without hitting a lot of its threes, but against Michigan State and the rest of the Big Ten’s best, they absolutely need those shots to fall.

Teams and players go through shooting slumps, but Michigan’s offensive struggles don’t feel like just another slump. Part of Michigan’s ability to make threes derives from its ability to find clean looks beyond the arc. Beilein’s offense involves a lot of ball movement and demands time to create such shots. In its two losses last week, Michigan didn’t move the ball well at all, assisting on only 40 percent of made field goals – a clip well under its 57 percent season average. The decline in assists per field goal made and the larger shooting struggles may be partially a product of an offense where the ball-handler is the only player moving. The result of the stagnation, at least of late, has been more predictable, easier-to-guard three-point attempts. Without LeVert, Michigan simply doesn’t have enough players who will consistently win in iso situations to make up for the lack of ball movement. It also doesn’t have a big man capable of producing offense with their back to the basket. Post-ups have never been a big component of Beilein’s offense, but they are a good weapon for offenses struggling to space the floor and find open shots. The lack of execution has created long scoring droughts, too: Indiana, for instance, ended the first half on a nine-minute, 25-0 run against the Wolverines.

Defensively, Michigan hasn’t been good either. Indiana and Michigan State averaged 1.16 and 1.29 points per possession in scoring 80 and 89 points against the Wolverines, respectively. The 70 and 73 points the Wolverines have scored in the two losses are also misleading, as Michigan struggled to score until each game’s final, meaningless minutes. Still, even after last week, Michigan is very much in the thick of the NCAA tournament discussion. Better yet for Wolverine fans, it’s clear that this team has the talent to start winning again, especially with LeVert’s impending return. But if the stagnant offense persists, Michigan could find itself spending another March at home.

It’s Super Bowl weekend and that means college basketball is pushed aside for nonstop professional football talk, party planning, and most importantly, the Puppy Bowl. Given the busy weekend, there’s a dearth of quality matchups around the conference this weekend. However, there are a couple of games worth carving out time for while you’re planning the big party. One is an intrastate rivalry that has grown in relevance now that both teams are consistent contenders for the Big Ten title. The other contest is the only Big Ten game this weekend that pits two ranked teams against each other. Here are your Big Ten games to watch.

The Michigan-Michigan State rivalry has been must watch TV since John Beilein arrived in Ann Arbor. (AP Photo/Tony Ding)

• #10 Michigan State at Michigan (Saturday 2:00 PM ET, CBS). After getting run off the court at home by Indiana on Tuesday, this game is close to a must-win for the Wolverines in terms of Big Ten title contention. Michigan is not the most talented team in the conference – this was evident last Tuesday when the Hoosiers did whatever they wanted against the Wolverines’ defense – but their soft schedule in the final half of the conference play gave them a relatively easy trail to the title. This path is narrowing thanks to the debacle on Tuesday. On the other side of things, Michigan State is on a three-game winning streak that started with a momentum-launching victory over Maryland two weeks ago. Michigan presents the Spartans with their first test against formidable competition since that win over the Terrapins, and will serve as a barometer as to whether Michigan State has returned to its elite non-conference form, or if they are just riding an emotional win to two wins over bottom-tier opponents.

Read the rest of this entry »

How times have changed. As recently as 2014, the Big Ten was the best basketball conference in the nation for four years running, and it wasn’t particularly close. This season? It’s hard to rank it any higher than fourth due to too many terrible teams wasting away and not enough really good ones to can hang our hats on. Of the 32 Division I conferences, the Big Ten as a whole ranks 28th or worse in four statistical categories (tempo, turnover percentage, free throw rate and steal percentage) and 21st or worse in two other big ones (three point percentage and offensive rebounding percentage). Fortunately, there are still about six to seven teams that are likely tourney-bound, but the bottom half of the conference is simply unwatchable. I’d rather pick my eye lashes off, one lash at a time, than waste two hours of life watching any of those horror shows. Here’s to hoping the top half of the conference provides as much entertainment down the stretch that the bottom half will not.

A.J. Hammons Had a Very Good Week. (Brian Spurlock/USA Today)

REPORT CARD

A: A.J. Hammons

Decent week for Purdue’s senior center, who snatched up his fourth career Big Ten Player of the Week honor and third plaudit this season. Hammons had the best game of his career against Nebraska, putting up 32 points on 14-of-17 shooting with 11 rebounds, five assists and four blocks. The inconsistent manchild is in the midst of some of the best basketball of his career right now, evidenced by his per game averages of 15.5 points, 7.6 rebounds and 2.1 blocks on 59.0 percent shooting in conference play. With the Robert Carter/Diamond Stone and Matt Costello/Deyonta Davis frontcourt duos on the docket for Purdue in the next four days, it’ll be interesting to see which version of Hammons shows up to play.

B: O.G. Anunoby

Say “hello” to my lil’ friend – Tom Crean’s next unheralded star-in-the-making – the “Original Gangsta,” O.G. Anunoby. The 6’8” forward from Jefferson City, MO has seen his minutes increase from 7.7 to 15.4 minutes per game since James Blackmon’s injury (also the start of conference play), and he has taken advantage in a huge way. Anunoby is one of, if not the, most skilled defenders on Indiana’s roster, having pickpocketed Big Ten foes multiple times in five of 10 conference games and using his incredible length to slow down star players (see Zak Irvin’s 1-for-8 performance). He is crashing the glass with authority and continuously finds ways to shift the game’s momentum in Indiana’s favor when it needs it most. O.G. has solidified his spot as the fan favorite in Bloomington and for good reason (chill out, Tim Priller fans). Pay attention, Big Ten fans. This kid is for real. Read the rest of this entry »

1. With Minnesota’s Thursday night loss at Northwestern and Rutgers’ Wednesday night triple-overtime loss vs. Illinois, the Big Ten has two teams that are each 0-10 in conference play, making up two of eight Division I teams that have yet to win a conference game this season. The other six are Boston College, St. John’s, Delaware, Western Illinois, Chicago State and Penn. Minnesota and Rutgers play each other twice this season, with the first matchup in Minneapolis on February 23.
2. Wisconsin’s Nigel Hayes has been invaluable during his team’s five-game winning streak and he was rewarded with a little personal glory on Wednesday. The junior forward earned a spot among the 10 finalists for the Julius Erving Award, which is given to the best small forward in college basketball. Hayes is averaging 17.0 points, 6.0 rebounds and 3.5 assists per game this season. Michigan State’s Denzel Valentine is the other Big Ten small forward among the finalists — the senior is averaging 18.5 points, 7.8 rebounds and 6.6 assists per game. The winner of this award will be announced on April 8.
3. Illinois’ terrible luck with injuries continues. Center Michael Finke sat out Wednesday’s win against Rutgers with a hip contusion, joining Mike Thorne, Jr. and his persistent knee problems on the bench. Finke did not practice on Monday or Tuesday and is considered day-to-day for now. With Finke’s recent absence, that means that only four Illinois players have played in every game this season. His status for Sunday’s game at Iowa is uncertain.
4. Both Michigan State and Michigan are dealing with some injury issues before their intrastate rivalry resumes in Ann Arbor on Saturday afternoon. For the Spartans, point guard Tum Tum Nairn is likely to miss his sixth straight game, while at Michigan, head coach John Beilein finally gave a clear update on guard Caris LeVert, saying there is a chance he could play this weekend. Both teams would certainly like to be at full strength heading into the home stretch.
5. Jarrod Uthoff’s impressive senior year at Iowa has put him in the conversation for Big Ten and National Player of the Year and, as a result, gracing the cover of Sports Illustrated. Brian Hamilton’s cover story on Uthoff details the Cedar Rapids, Iowa, native’s simple, metronomic personality and consistency on a surprising and surging team.

Welcome to the first-ever Big Ten microsite podcast! Big Ten microsite writers Alex Moscoso (@AlexPMoscoso) and Patrick Engel (@PatrickEngel_) are here to give you a quickish overview of the league at the turn. In this episode, we analyze the two first-place teams in detail, select a few others that are poised to challenge for a regular season title, discuss whether any of the teams currently outside the bubble can get back on to it, consider a few Big Ten POY candidates, and finally talk about the few coaches on the hot seat. Let us know if you enjoyed the podcast and, if so, what topics we should cover next time, at @rushtheB1G. The complete rundown is below.

• 1:06 – 8:35 — Indiana and Iowa
• 8:36-17:39 — Maryland and Michigan’s regular season title hopes
• 17:40-25:59 — Ohio State and Nebraska’s chances at an at-large bid
• 26:00-31:41 — Jarrod Uthoff and A.J. Hammons as possible Big Ten POYs
• 31:42-47:00 — Coaches on the hot seat