1. The State: All hail our Clemson overlords (and Ken Pomeroy). First, the Tigers. Clemson is on a five-game ACC win streak, which includes wins over presumed contenders Louisville, Duke, and Miami. If the Tigers can find a way to win two of their next three (at Virginia, vs. Pittsburgh, and at Florida State), the schedule looks very favorable going forward. One caveat: Clemson has been incredibly lucky in close games, but don’t spend time hating. And why is Ken Pomeroy a wizard? His ratings had Clemson 55th in the country to start the season; after a rough patch pushed the Tigers over 100, they’re now back to 56.
2. Newport News Daily Press: On the other end of the spectrum, Virginia is reeling. The Cavaliers have lost three of their last four (and four of five true road games on the season). David Teel does a great job exhausting perspectives on Tony Bennett’s team. The most important thing to remember is that road wins are nearly impossible to come by in the ACC. This Virginia team whipped a very good West Virginia team on a neutral court. The difference between last year’s team and this one is how well teams are shooting against Virginia (maybe Darion Atkins was just that good?). This year, the Cavaliers are pedestrian when it comes to field goal percentage defense; last year they were top five in the country.
3. Troy Nunes is an Absolute Magician: Syracuse likely won’t make the NCAA Tournament this year for the second season in a row. This is the second “rebuilding cycle” in the last ten years. Michael Burke does a good job looking at the causes behind both dance droughts. Relatedly, this team’s poor performance has led to awful (relatively speaking) attendance this season. The poor attendance is unlikely to improve much with a mediocre slate of conference home games on the schedule this year (notably no North Carolina or Duke, but also no Miami or Virginia). Look for Pittsburgh and Notre Dame to still be big draws, though.
4. Orlando Sentinel: Don’t look now, but Florida State may be righting the ship. Malik Beasley has been tremendous the last two games (39 points on 22 shots). If Dwayne Bacon can improve his efficiency some, this team should be able to make a run at a bid to the Big Dance. The only home loss the Seminoles have is to a great North Carolina team (in a game that was close until the last couple of minutes), and the only “bad” loss is a neutral-site loss to Hofstra. There’s still work to be done, but things are looking up.
5. Duke Basketball Report: This year is just nuts. We’ve talked about Clemson, but Virginia Tech is also tied for second in the ACC in the loss column. Duke (admittedly without Amile Jefferson) and Miami have each lost its last two games. The only teams that are performing as expected bracket the conference: North Carolina is undefeated and Boston College looks like a dumpster fire. The Tar Heels will lose eventually (a mediocre defense makes that a certainty), but picking a Boston College win is harder to do. Home against Virginia Tech is the only one that looks remotely feasible. But alas, if there’s one thing ACC play should have taught us, it’s to keep predictions to ourselves.

1. Nebraska was operating at peak efficiency in its 78-67 win over Illinois in Champaign Saturday. The keys to victory – the Cornhuskers’ third in a row after they dropped its first three Big Ten games – were a productive offense combined with an outstanding effort on the glass. Leading the way in both these categories was Andrew White III. The junior went for 21 points (on just 12 shots) and 13 rebounds in boosting Nebraska to a 42-24 advantage on the backboards. He did so in his usual quiet and understated way, but White is certainly heading towards earning postseason Big Ten honors.
2. Michigan State went with a different starting lineup on Sunday, giving freshmen Matt McQuaid and Deyonta Davis their first starts of their young careers. Davis had a large impact when he was in the game Sunday, as the Spartans were a plus 21 when he was on the floor. The freshman is only averaging 17.6 MPG, and one writer thinks it’s time for the gifted post player to see more court time. It’s hard to complain about what Davis brings to the table, as he’s been the team’s best low post scorer and rim protector. It will be interesting to see whether Davis sees more time as Tom Izzo tinkers with his rotation.
3. The seniors for Iowa get most of the headlines, but lost in the hype surrounding its 5-0 start in Big Ten play have been the contributions the Hawkeyes are getting from their younger players coming off the bench. Dom Uhl, Nicholas Baer, and Ahmad Wagner have all been supplying very positive minutes in their time on the court. Wagner was especially valuable in Sunday’s win against Michigan. He has the flexibility to guard on both the perimeter and interior, which he did well in playing different spots defensively in his 11 minutes of action against the Wolverines. If Iowa continues to play well, its bench will be a big part of the reason why.
4. Caris LeVert missed another game for Michigan on Sunday, but the senior guard is now walking pain-free, according to coach John Beilein. The next step for LeVert is to receive a few more medical tests to make sure he is ready to go. Michigan is being extra careful with the situation because of Levert’s injury history and his likely future in the NBA. If he can get back and play at the level he was at pre-injury, Michigan has a chance to make a run toward a top-four finish in the league.
5. Purdue senior Raphael Davis is known for what he brings on the defensive end of the floor, but the reigning Defensive Player of the Year in the Big Ten has struggled quite a bit on offense in Purdue’s three losses. An earlier injury is partly to blame, but Purdue is noticeably better when he is scoring the ball. In those three losses this year, Davis has only scored a total ofsix total points. He’ll never need to be the focal point or go-to-scorer, but Davis and the rest of the Purdue perimeter attack needs to be more consistent to balance the effective Boilermaker interior offense.

1. After two straight losses in which Iowa State gave up more than 90 points, the Cyclones picked up a 76-63 road win over Kansas State on Saturday. The lower point total was the product of both the Wildcats’ slower pace of play and a change in Steve Prohm‘s philosophy. After a slow start to conference play, Prohm explained that the Cyclones need to manage games in a way that limits the time they spend on defense. His theory is that Iowa State is so good on offense that the Cyclones would be better off spending a bit more of the game with the ball in their hands. The key, though, will still be for Iowa State to slow down opposing offenses. The Cyclones currently rank 114th in adjusted defensive efficiency–a stat which accounts for the quality of opponent and pace of play–and will be put to the test when Oklahoma comes to Ames tonight.
2. Speaking of the Sooners, their 70-68 victory over West Virginia reopened the Big 12 race as four teams now sit at 4-1 in the conference. More importantly, though, the win may be a boon for the confidence of sophomore Khadeem Lattin. After missing the front end of a one-and-one that would have given Oklahoma a victory in Allen Fieldhouse two weeks ago, Lattin scored the game-winning bucket against the Mountaineers on a tip-in. “It was like a redemption,” Lattin told the media.
3. Meanwhile at Allen Fieldhouse, Kansas bounced back from their loss in Morgantown on Tuesday with a 70-63 win over TCU. The Jayhawks’ two freshman big men, Carlton Bragg and Cheick Diallo, both got extended looks against the Horned Frogs. Bragg scored 10 points and grabbed four rebounds in 16 minutes, but it was Diallo’s performance that turned heads. After being featured only sparingly so far this year, Diallo played a season-high 21 minutes against TCU. His nine points, nine rebounds, and five blocks gave fans a taste of what Diallo can offer Kansas going forward. The improvement of the Jayhawks’ two freshman will be a critical component come March and it’s the reason Kansas is viewed as the title contender with the most upside going forward.
4. Baylor‘s Lester Medford continues to come up big in key moments for the Bears. The senior point guard delivered a huge second half in Baylor’s win over Vanderbilt earlier this season, and on Saturday, he knocked down the game-winning three-pointer against Texas Tech. While most of the focus has been on Kansas, Oklahoma, and West Virginia, the Bears victory quietly pushed them into a four-way tie for first in the Big 12.
5. Our final note comes from the recruiting world. Last week, four-star center Udoka Azubuike declared his intention to announce his college choice at the Hoop Hall Classic this weekend. Azubuike, who is choosing between Florida State, Kansas, and North Carolina, appeared to be leaning towards the ‘Noles, but by Sunday rumors were swirling that Florida State was out of the picture altogether. As Kansas and North Carolina picked up predictions in 247Sports’ Crystal Ball, Azubuike’s guardian announced that the high school senior would be pushing back his decision. Just the latest in a long line of strange recruiting stories, it looks like this recruiting battle will continue for a while longer.

1. There will be a full slate of Big 12 action on Saturday, but the biggest game of the weekend will come between West Virginia and Oklahoma in Norman. After defeating #1 Kansas earlier this week, the Mountaineers will now have a chance to pick up a victory against the #2 team in the country and create some separation atop the Big 12 in the process. Road wins are tough to come by, but West Virginia’s high-pressure defense will put the Sooners to the test, especially if the Mountaineers can create transition opportunities from turnovers and avoid their very good half-court defense. Oklahoma has been decent in protecting the ball this season, though, and the Sooners have home court advantage. KenPom likes the Sooners to win by five.
2. In the Cyclones’ four Big 12 games this season, Iowa State’s Monte Morris has played 98.2 percent of the team’s available minutes. As a result, the Ames Tribune’s Travis Hines asked Morris how he’s holding up. The junior point guard told the reporter that he’s “perfectly fine,” and as the article notes, his statistics reflect that. Morris ranks fifth nationally in assist-to-turnover ratio after leading the country the last two seasons; his assist rate is also up and he’s converting a higher percentage of his two-point looks. The real question is how he will hold up later this season. At that thought, even he admits, “I know it’s going to take a toll on my body probably later in the season, but as of right now I’m fine.”
3. Morris and 10 other Big 12 players received recognition from CBS Sports‘ Sam Vecenie in his Top 100 (and 1) college hoops players so far this season. Oklahoma’s Buddy Hield snagged the top spot in large part because of his 50/50/90 shooting percentages, one that Vecenie notes is “basically something I can only imagine Stephen Curry doing.” That’s some pretty good company for the Sooners’ senior and clear NPOY candidate.
4. Baseball historian and statistician Bill James received his undergraduate degree from Kansas in the 1970s and is an avid basketball fan. On Thursday, he wrote about his experience attending the Jayhawks’ instant classic against Oklahoma the week before. The piece is largely focused on the atmosphere inside of Allen Fieldhouse (outside of a paragraph-long rant on Perry Ellis) and the experience the atmosphere produced. James writes, “There are just moments in life when everything is what it can be, when the energies of nearly violent opposing forces align by accident with the balance and precision of a symphony. We were there to see one of them.”
5. To that point, home court advantage might be more valuable in college basketball than it is in any other sport. Whether it’s the raucous environments’ effect on opposing players or officials, there are few sports where teams regularly rack up 30-game winning streaks on their home floors. For that reason, Ken Pomeroy has decided to update his scheduling page to reflect the importance of home court advantage in college basketball. In the process, he produced a critique of the much-maligned RPI. The RPI doesn’t include home court advantage in its calculations when determining the quality of a win, so Monmouth, for example, will not get credit for a top 50 win for its victory over UCLA when, in reality, that road win is the equivalent of one. Although Pomeroy doesn’t discuss it directly, perhaps factoring home court advantage into the RPI would be one way to encourage more true road games during non-conference play as those losses would no longer look as bad on a a team’s resume.

1. In a close call, Oklahoma escaped intrastate rival Oklahoma State with a 74-72 win in Stillwater Wednesday night. The Cowboys actually had a chance to win the game, but Jeffrey Carroll‘s buzzer-beating three off the glass was just a bit long. Buddy Hield did his thing in the first half, scoring 20 points on 8-of-10 shooting, but his second half was a completely different story. The Pokes pressured him into just six points and six turnovers after intermission, and he finished with a career-worst ten, which allowed Oklahoma State to climb back in it after being down by as much as 16 points. Another big story for Oklahoma State was the play of Jawun Evans. The 2015 McDonald’s All-American shattered the school’s single-game freshman scoring record with 42 points, showing that he may be a guy around whom the Cowboys can build.
2. Cheick Diallo‘s struggles to find consistent playing time for Kansas has SB Nation‘s Ricky O’Donnell wondering if Bill Self‘s focus on individual wins over long-term player development is hampering the team’s ceiling in more ways than one. The highly-touted freshman played just four minutes in Tuesday’s loss to West Virginia and hasn’t played more than six minutes in a game since December 29. As we’ve mentioned in this space, improved play from Landen Lucas and Hunter Mickelson, along with Diallo’s NCAA-mandated suspension, have made it a challenge for Self to find opportunities for his big man from Mali. It’s also important to bear in mind that with more chances, Diallo may yet develop into the rim protector the Jayhawks need to make a deep run in March, but it’s no certainty. With Kansas’ next two games coming against two of the conference’s least competitive teams in TCU and Oklahoma State, though, one would think Diallo will get the audition he needs.
3. Iowa State is in a spot no one thought it would be in at any point this season: last place in the Big 12 with a 1-3 record. While the Cyclones certainly miss the punch injured guard Naz Mitrou-Long provided from the perimeter, their porous defense has been the bigger issue. Travis Hines of The Ames Tribune took a closer look at why Steve Prohm’s team is sporting such dismal defensive numbers, and one of his key takeaways is that opposing offenses are exposing Iowa State’s shaky pick-and-roll defense. Hines also notes that consistency has also been a challenge, as the Cyclones have played long stretches of solid defense against some of the conference’s more potent offensive teams in Oklahoma and Baylor, only to unravel later on. Iowa State doesn’t need to become a defensive force to maximize its potential, but it does need to allow significantly fewer than its current 1.14 points per possession in conference play.
4. Baylor made easy work of TCU, using another backbreaking run to cruise past the Horned Frogs, 82-54. A 13-0 spurt late in the first half gave the Bears all they needed to feel comfortable, and things just snowballed from there. Baylor sophomore Terry Maston led all scorers with a career-high 17 points off the bench, while Lester Medford continued his solid play at the point, dishing out 11 assists against just three turnovers.
5. The NCAA on Wednesday afternoon made a few moves to widen the window of opportunity for NBA Draft hopefuls, which should in turn allow those players to make more informed decisions about their futures. The primary move was to extend the early entry deadline by 10 days, but another important change is that players can again test the draft waters multiple times and return to school (provided they don’t sign with an agent). Coaches have historically resisted these changes because of the uncertainty they bring to rosters entering the spring recruiting period, but the best coaches will continue to find ways to haul in the best talent available regardless of their situations.

1. Northwestern kept its NCAA Tournament hopes alive last night when the Wildcats edged Wisconsin at home, 70-65, its best win of the season so far. They were led by Bryant McIntosh, who scored 28 points, dished out five assists and is emerging as one of the best guards in the league. The sophomore is averaging 15.4 PPG (10th in B1G) and 7.2 APG (first) this year. As for Northwestern’s at-large prospects, the Wildcats have yet to register a win against another likely NCAA Tournament team, so there’s still work ahead. A win at College Park next Tuesday would be a great place to start.
2. Michigan delivered Maryland its first conference loss of the season when the Wolverines squeaked out a 70-67 victory at home with star Caris Levert still sidelined by a leg injury. Zak Irvin stepped up in Levert’s absence by scoring 22 points on 8-of-14 shooting. This game could represent a season turning point for the Wolverines, a team that had previously been blown out by elite competition. Michigan’s guards were able to stymie the Terrapins’ perimeter offense, as Melo Trimble and Rasheed Sulaimon combined to score only 10 points. If John Beilein can get his guys to play that level of defense for the rest of the season, the 3-1 team will become contenders for a Big Ten championship.
3. On Monday, the Big Ten awarded Iowa‘s Mike Gesell its Player of the Week honors. The senior point guard registered the first double-double of his career in scoring 22 points and dishing 10 assists in a last week’s win over Nebraska. Gesell is playing the best basketball of his life right now — he is averaging 2.5 PPG and 3.0 APG more than last season while also improving his true shooting percentage by 11 percent. There’s no question that Jarrod Uthoff is Iowa’s most important player, but Gesell has emerged as the team’s Robin.
4. Indiana‘s Thomas Bryant was awarded Freshman of the Week for the second time this season after dominating Ohio State’s frontcourt on Sunday — scoring 18 points and grabbing 13 rebounds in the blowout win. Perhaps the biggest improvement the young center has made during the season is with his defense. During Indiana’s loss to Wake Forest at the Maui Invitational, Bryant was consistently exposed on the pick-and-roll by the Demon Deacons’ Devin Thomas. In Big Ten play, the young Hoosier has gotten better off those screens with the proof being his 93.1 defensive rating during conference games. Indiana’s defense, once thought to be a major liability hindering the team’s success, is now being anchored by one of its youngest players.
5. One of the most perplexing results of the season to this point is Purdue’s disappointing Sunday loss to Illinois. The Boilermakers were not able to take advantage of the Illini’s thin frontcourt and their top-ranked defense allowed Illinois to shoot 52.9 percent from the three-point line. Juan Crespo from SBNation identifies part of the problem, which is that they don’t have a lineup of five players whom Matt Painter can completely trust. Painter may still need to work on different lineups to prevent some of the offensive stalls that still arise too frequently for the Boilermakers. He’ll have a chance to straighten things out on Thursday night against Penn State.

1. Raleigh News & Observer: Kennedy Meeks is back for North Carolina. He’s not 100 percent yet, but it’s a good sign that he’s back and in stark contrast with those of Amile Jefferson (Duke) and Terry Henderson (NC State). The Tar Heels need the junior big man in the lineup to meet their National Championship aspirations. It also looks increasingly clear that North Carolina is the team to beat in the ACC this season. Miami doesn’t appear far behind, but the road to a conference title will go through Chapel Hill.
2. Slap the Sign: This is a decent Notre Dame primer, as the Irish are still searching for a leader after the departures of Jerian Grant and Pat Connaughton. Demetrius Jackson is very talented but his best games have come in losses rather than wins. The most damning statistic working against the Irish may be that of “good wins.” — their only one so far came against Iowa. All of its other top-50 opponents have resulted in losses. That’s something Mike Brey will have to change to avoid a disappointing conference finish.
3. Boston College Heights: Dennis Clifford is starting to look like his old self at Boston College. He’s still not consistent (he turns the ball over too much to be efficient), but he’s moving better and will likely be the reason the Eagles beat a team they shouldn’t. Boston College is horrid this season (the only two worse major conference teams worse are St. John’s and Rutgers), but its defense will give it a fighting chance a few times during conference play.
4. Duke Basketball Report: Amile Jefferson’s injury has made Duke worse in the short run because the team has no depth. Mike Krzyzewski has been using a six-man rotation (sometimes seven by playing Chase Jeter for a few minutes) since Jefferson went down. But Duke isn’t known for playing large rotations to begin with, and it’s unlikely that either Luke Kennard or Marshall Plumlee would have seen this sort of time without the starting center’s absence. It’s still hard to tell if this Duke’s team is fool’s gold thanks to nearly all of its recent opponents being helplessly outclassed, but all of that will change at the end of the month when the team travels to Coral Gables.
5. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Why is Pittsburgh getting no love from the national media? The Panthers’ only loss came against a very good Purdue team that’s frankly a nightmare matchup (size plus shooting). Sure, Pitt’s non-conference schedule was nothing to write home about, but it’s odd that Jamie Dixon’s group isn’t getting a little more publicity. Even if they go into the Yum! Center and beat Louisville later this week, many people may blame the inconsistent Cardinals.

EXTRA: GIF power rankings??? Don’t mind if I do. If you only look at one, look at NC State. It’s perfection.

1. The big news over the weekend was UNLV‘s decision to fire Dave Rice resigning at UNLV. On one hand the news isn’t exactly showing as Rice had brought in good recruiting classes, but failed to produce the type of success you would hope to have at what should really be the premier program in the Mountain West. On the other hand, the decision to fire a coach (everybody knows this was forced) in early January without a major scandal is quite unusual. In the end, Rice’s 98-54 record simply was not good enough or more specifically his 38-28 record after starting his time with a 51-19 record. The big question is who will take over after Todd Simon‘s stint as interim coach. One name that we have seen floated out there is former NBA coach Mike Brown, which would certainly fit the criteria of being a (fairly) big name with experience coaching superstars that might appeal to recruits. He also might be as good as UNLV can get because despite what some in the fan base might think it probably isn’t any better than a top 30 or 40 coaching position.
2. Last week couldn’t end soon enough for Arizona as they not only lost both of their games (UCLA and USC), but they also lost Allonzo Trier for 4-6 weeks after he broke a bone in his right hand in Saturday’s quadruple-overtime loss to USC. Trier, who led the team in scoring at 14.8 points per game, is the third significant player for the Wildcats to miss time this year as Kaleb Tarczewski recently returned from injury and Ray Smith is out for the season after tear in his ACL in October. Despite this latest injury, Arizona still has the potential to win the Pac-12, but their road just got much tougher. The bigger question will be whether Trier will be healthy and back to form when March rolls around.
3. Much of the talk about the economics of college sports has focused in on the pay of coaches, but as The Washington Post points out the salaries of “Power 5” conference commissioners (or more specifically the increase in salaries) might be even more noteworthy. While the average pay of $2.58 million might not seem like that much compared to the money that some coaches make, the increase in their pay over the past 14 years by 258% is more notable as well as many of the nice perks they get with the job. We can understand the rationale that they have more on their plate now with conference realignment and their own cable networks, but it is still a pretty cush job. The one thing that we would love to see included in an analysis like this is what CEOs of organizations with similar revenue figures make.
4. The announcement that Larry Krystkowiak was putting a temporary halt to the Utah–BYU series because of concern that it was becoming too intense has been widely criticized as an overreaction to incidents that happened in two of the past three meetings. To be fair, both of the incidents were the result of actions by BYU players (Nick Emery this past year and Erik Mika two years earlier), but we are not sure that the potential risks of further incidents happening is high enough to put a hold on one of the best rivalries in college basketball. For now, Utah has canceled the 2016 game and there has been no public talk about restarting the rivalry after that. We are not sure why the schools couldn’t at least do something like what Cincinnati and Xavier did after their famous “Zip ‘Em Up” game where they played on a neutral court for two years. We’ll admit that even that seems a little ridiculous, but it’s better than suspending the rivalry.
5. One of the major criticisms of the college coaching ranks is how underrepresented minorities are in comparison to what you see on the court/field. As a result, a group of minority coaches (National Association for Coaching Equity and Development) is pushing for an “Eddie Robinson Rule,” which would be similar to the NFL’s “Rooney Rule, that would require all universities to interview a minority candidate for any coaching or leadership opening. While this seems good in theory as we have seen in the NFL this can often be simply paid lip service and it’s unclear how much impact it would have without adequate enforcement.

1. It wasn’t pretty, but Kansas bested Texas Tech 69-59 in Lubbock Saturday night to move to 3-0 in conference play. The key stretch for the Jayhawks came late in the second half. Up by just two points, the Jayhawks used three-pointers by Wayne Selden and Frank Mason to power an 11-4 run from which the Red Raiders couldn’t recover. Tubby Smith’s team was also done in by a rare poor night at the stripe: The Red Raiders, who shoot 72.2 percent at the line, hit just 9-of-19 free throws. It would have been nice for Texas Tech to post a big win to show just how improved they are from a couple seasons ago, but they’ll have plenty of other chances.
2. West Virginia made easy work of Oklahoma State with a 77-60 win in Morgantown, setting up a matchup of 3-0 teams when the Jayhawks visit WVU Coliseum tomorrow night. Mountaineer senior Jonathan Holton had one of the best games of his career, scoring 15 points to go with nine rebounds, three assists, two steals and zero turnovers. The Cowboys weren’t expected to be very competitive in Morgantown, but with home games against Oklahoma and Kansas and road games at Texas and Kansas State coming up, things in Stillwater are likely to get worse before they get better.
3. One of the key takeaways from last week’s classic between Oklahoma and Kansas was the importance of the league’s contenders winning their home games. Apparently, Iowa State missed the message, because they were dropped by Baylor at home on Saturday afternoon. Bears forward Johnathan Motley came up huge with a career-high 27 points and 13 rebounds against the Cyclones’ porous interior defense, but he wasn’t the only one who had a big day. Taurean Prince had a double-double (18 points and ten rebounds) and Lester Medford had a surgically efficient 16 point, 11 assist night, all without a single turnover. Iowa State is by no means done in the Big 12 race, but three of their next four games come on the road, with the only home game in that stretch coming against Oklahoma. The Cyclones definitely have their work cut out for them.
4. Oklahoma bounced back from its tough loss at Kansas with a comfortable home win over Kansas State. Buddy Hield had another outstanding game, notching his third 30-plus point game in his last four outings and his sixth such performance this season. Oh, and he also had eight rebounds, five assists, two blocks and a pair of steals. His games are quickly becoming must-watch programming, and your next shot to see him do his thing comes Wednesday night when the Sooners take on intra-state rivals Oklahoma State on ESPNU.
5. Jeff Haley of Burnt Orange Nation took a deep analytical dive into Texas’ rocky start under Shaka Smart, which may have hit a low point over the weekend with a loss at TCU. One particularly interesting point has to do with Smart’s deployment of the trademark press that connected him to every big coaching vacancy over the last few years. While the Longhorns don’t press very often, its lack of efficiency on the other end significantly reduces its margin for error when it tries to force turnovers in the backcourt. The logic there is that good teams will be able to beat the press and get easy looks, which in turn only makes the offense’s job more of a challenge than it already is. The piece is definitely worth your while.

1. Purdue dropped to 14-3 (2-2) on the year after losing to Illinois, 84-70, on Sunday night, and a familiar formula has emerged in each its three losses this season. Turnovers and shoddy offensive play have doomed this team, as AJ Hammons and Isaac Haas combined for only 16 points on 6-of-13 shooting. The defense that has been a constant positive all season failed miserably, as Illinois became the first team to shoot over 50 percent from the field against the Boilermakers in 37 games. Is there trouble in West Lafayette?
2. The return of Michigan State‘s Denzel Valentine from a four-game injury hiatus did not bring a triple-double or a spectacular stat line. Rather, the senior looked a bit rusty early before scoring 10 second-half points as the Spartans blasted Penn State, 92-65, Sunday afternoon. One key takeaway from this game was that Tom Izzo’s squad might have become even better in its All-American’s absence. Eron Harris and Bryn Forbes have emerged as serious offensive threats, while post play has also improved significantly. If Valentine gets back to the productivity he displayed in the first 12 games of the season, Sparty is definitely on the short list of national championship contenders.
3. If Indiana didn’t completely offset the stench of its early season play in the Hoosiers’ blowout win over Ohio State on Sunday afternoon, they have certainly come close. Tom Crean’s squad stayed undefeated in league play behind big efforts from big men Thomas Bryant and Troy Williams. Williams was especially productive in scoring a team-high 23 points, but what was more important was that he didn’t commit any momentum-killing turnovers. Indiana held the Buckeyes to a paltry 0.86 points per possession, and if the Hoosiers’ defense continues to improve, Indiana will be a dangerous team going forward.
4. Crean also added a fourth commitment to his 2016 class on Saturday when Devonte Green pledged to his program. The younger brother of former North Carolina standout Danny Green, the Long Island native is a 6’3″ combo guard whom 247sports rates as the sixth best player from New York. Green is the third guard slated to join the Hoosiers next season, joining other commitments Curtis Jones and Grant Gelon in the backcourt.
5. Nebraska rolled to its biggest road win in 96 years on Saturday, beating Rutgers by 34 points while shooting 56.9 percent from the floor and logging 52 points in the paint. Rutgers is missing some key interior pieces, of course, but the Cornhuskers played arguably one of their best games of the season in getting contributions from everyone. Andrew White III continues to prove that he is one of the best and most efficient scorers in the league, scoring over 20 points (28) for the fifth time this season.