What’s Trending is a column examining the week that was in college basketball social media. Griffin Wong (@griffwong90) is your weekly host.

Indiana Takes the Big Ten

With its win on Tuesday night at Iowa, Indiana secured the outright Big Ten Championship. After a troublesome 5-3 start to the season, head coach Tom Crean‘s future in Bloomington was questionable at best. A steady resurgence in the second half of the year led to a conference title. Crean deserves that water shower!

They were waiting for Tom Crean.

And they erupted when he entered the locker room

Congrats, again, @IndianaMBB! https://t.co/zidAv83j0E

— Big Ten Network (@BigTenNetwork) March 2, 2016

What a year for @IndianaMBB to win outright title even after losing James Blackmon. Tom Crean coach of the year lock.

— Tom Dienhart (@BTNTomDienhart) March 2, 2016

Things Bleak For BC

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College basketball places huge emphasis on individual games — showdowns between top-ranked teams, annual rivalry clashes, single-elimination tournaments — but it’s important to take a step back and look at the bigger picture from time to time. The Media Timeout considers how fans and journalists watch, follow, and talk about the sport.

Rejoice, for it is March. If you’re a college hoops-first sports fan like me, then welcome to our favorite part of the calendar. With football in the rear-view there are no distractions as the nation turns its collective attention toward March Madness. But after the confetti is all swept away and the last bars of “One Shining Moment” fade out, we’re left to confront an uncomfortable question: Is college basketball still relevant?

Questions about college basketball’s viability in an increasingly football-dominated American sports landscape seem to induce more hand-wringing each season. The growing popularity of the NCAA Tournament should reassure college hoops fans that the sport won’t lose its signature month of attention anytime soon, but the prominence of March also has the unintended consequence of making the regular season increasingly trivial. With the threat of an 18-week or 18-game NFL season still looming, is it unreasonable to consider a future in which college basketball becomes an afterthought until the final weeks before Selection Sunday?

Suffering the “Super Bowl Creep”

In February 2011, the day after the Packers won Super Bowl XLV, The Olympian columnist John McGrath issued a challenge to his readers: “Pop quiz: Identify a significant college basketball game played before the Super Bowl. I don’t mean just this year. I mean, over the past 45 years.” The question isn’t entirely rhetorical – he goes on to recount the Virginia-Georgetown matchup that pitted Ralph Sampson against Patrick Ewing in 1982 – but his point is that college basketball games of great consequence are few and far between before mid-February. Outside of Kentucky, I suspect basketball fans would agree that the most memorable – and meaningful – games tend to come later, only after college football and the NFL loosens its stranglehold on the American sports scene. But college hoops used to benefit from many more opportunities to leave an impression. McGrath cites huge games that came within a week of mid-January Super Bowls in 1968 and 1974, back in the days before a February Super Bowl became the norm.

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Another wild week of college basketball was accompanied by another helter-skelter poll in which each of our seven pollsters remain significantly divided on team placement within the RTC25. This week was notable in a Big East where #5 Xavier finally shook the monkey off its back to defeat #4 Villanova on Wednesday, only to follow that up with each team responding to the result in an equal and opposite way. Villanova recovered with a win at Marquette on Saturday while Xavier was dominated in a loss at Seton Hall on Sunday. Villanova still leads the Big East and is in good position to take home the regular season conference title. But with the parity in college basketball this season, the Big East Tournament in Madison Square Garden could be defined by inherent uncertainty. This week’s Quick N’ Dirty is after the jump.

Quick N’ Dirty Analysis.

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For the first time in recent memory, Gonzaga is in jeopardy of missing the NCAA Tournament. Throughout a season in which the Zags began in the top 10, they have experienced a variety of miscues (home losses) and misfortunes (Przemek Karnowski’s injury) that have resulted in a spot squarely on the bubble. Their ups and downs this year will lead the upcoming HBO documentary following Mark Few’s team around this month to look less like Ballers and more like Game of Thrones (For those without a friend’s HBO Go password, find some new friends.)

Kyle Wiltjer’s Team Has Not Had the Season It Expected. (Otto Greule Jr/Getty Images)

In eight games against the KenPom top 60, Gonzaga has gone 1-7 with four of those losses coming at The Kennel. Conversely, the Bulldogs are a perfect 20-0 in the rest of their games. In determining their status on the bubble, the Zags are in a difficult spot because of a combination of zero signature wins without any corresponding bad losses. Gonzaga’s national brand name makes it unique in how it can schedule, but most other mid-major programs don’t get the chance to notch resume-building wins nearly as often as their power conference peers. Michigan, one of the Zags’ primary competitors on the bubble, will play 13 games against the top 60 this season, including six opportunities at home (five games against Big Ten teams). A different mid-major on the bubble cannot use multiple opportunities late in the season to enhance its resume — it can only avoid bad losses.

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The unpredicatability of this college basketball season was in full effect last week as 15 of the RTC25 suffered defeats. For example, archrivals #8 North Carolina and #11 Duke both experienced the thrill of victory and agony of defeat in a matter of just four days. In last Wednesday evening’s showdown between the two teams, Duke stormed back from a significant second half deficit to grab an impressive road victory — all the more impressive when considering it came without the services of injured forward Amile Jefferson or guard Matt Jones, who left the game with an ankle injury. The Blue Devils, however, could not keep the winning ways going, falling at #16 Louisville on Saturday. On the other hand, North Carolina bounced back from its defeat in a major way, dominating #17 Miami (FL) from start to finish. Just another week in a wacky season. This week’s Quick N’ Dirty after the jump.

Quick N’ Dirty Analysis.

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1. We have been critical of how Johnny Jones has used Ben Simmons this season particularly in late-game situations, but the latest setback for Simmons was of his own doing as he did not start on Saturday due to “academic stuff”. Simmons sat out the first four and a half minutes before coming into the game and ended up with 21 points and 9 assists (along with a season-high 8 assists) in a ugly 81-65 to a Kevin Punter-less Tennessee team. Given the timing of this we suspect it is due to missing classes or a study hall and not something more significant.
2. It seems like we are on the verge of having quite a few legendary coaches, but just don’t mention it to them. Before Saturday’s game against Miami, CBS analyst Doug Gottlieb mentioned than some people believed that ongoing health issues and the never-ending NCAA investigation would lead Roy Williams to retire at the end of the season. Roy, who probably was in a good mood after his team turned in one of its most dominating performances this season, was less than pleased with the commentary and took a shot at Gottlieb. To be fair to Gottlieb, his comments were taken out of context and aren’t that unreasonable if you don’t try to take it further to mean that Williams is retiring.
3. Illinois has had enough issues with injuries recently that they don’t need any more issues (the only thing saving them from the cellar of the Big Ten is the fact that Minnesota and Rutgers can’t be relegated). The news that sophomore forward Leron Black was arrested early on Friday morning after allegedly threatening a bouncer at a campus bar with a knife only adds to what an awful season it has been. Black, who has not played since December 5 when he was averaging 3.9 points and 3.9 rebounds per game, was charged with a felony and has been suspended indefinitely. Since Black was already sitting out for the season the suspension doesn’t mean anything for the team, but we do wonder how long the Illinois administration will put up with a string of seasons without a NCAA Tournament appearance.
4. At this point Wake Forest‘s season is lost so the news that they had suspended Devin Thomas (the team’s leading scorer and rebounder) for two games and kicked Cornelius Hudson off the team for an undisclosed violation of athletic department policy. Fortunately for Wake Forest the first of those two games was against Boston College, which let them break their 11-game losing streak even without Thomas. We aren’t sure if the two players were involved in the same incident(s), but it is interesting that they are letting Thomas (a senior star) return while kicking out a less productive sophomore.
5. It has been a while since we did a Morning Five, but as our long-time readers know our favorite regular link is to Luke Winn’s Power Rankings. Now that the regular season is almost over Luke has a bigger data set to work with, which allows him to dive deeper into things than he could earlier in the season. As always with this column, there is (at least) one thing that jumps out at us and this week it is Purdue‘s splits with the two freshmen it uses in its rotation (you can probably already guess that the results are not what you would expect).

How do you determine which school has the best managers? Is it the school whose white uniforms are the whitest? The school with the most perfectly folded towels? The school where managers grab the most rebounds during practice? How about a 64-team basketball tournament with the final four teams meeting at the real Final Four in Houston? That last one is the dream of Michigan State managers Ian May and Andrew Novak, and Spartans’ assistant athletic director Kevin Pauga. But once that idea was on the table, even more questions emerged: How do you play? What if you can’t play every game? When’s the best time to play? How do you fit it into a bracket, still have fun and draw attention to the hard-working managers?

Imagine showing up to a pickup game and Juan Dixon is on the opposing team. That was the athletic predicament that some are now facing. (AP)

May formed a Twitter account in January 2015, @B1GManagerHoops, to track Big Ten managers’ basketball games last season, and enlisted Novak to help run it a short time later. The conference had informal manager games dating back at least to Pauga’s time as a manager – which started in 2000 – but the Twitter account and corresponding blog catalogued results and kept conference standings for the manager teams of the 14 schools for the first time. An online group message on the GroupMe app allowed the Big Ten managers to schedule games much more easily than they ever had before. “I made the Twitter account because I heard that teams were keeping their own records and there was a phone notepad, a little scratched-together thing of records that I got a hold of, and then from there I just started keeping track and I would gather up the scores just from people tweeting at me just in the Big Ten,” May said. “And then we had the same ambitions for this year, which was doing the Big Ten, and then all of a sudden we started getting scores from around the country.” Read the rest of this entry »

We are quickly approaching March and that means the regular season is almost over. Usually by this point in the season there are a few teams running away with the crowns in the power conferences, but it hasn’t quite gone that way this year. Analysts have described the level of parity this year in college basketball as unprecedented, but we decided to look into it ourselves. Exactly how close are the conference races this season as opposed to in previous years? Here’s a look at the last six years of the power conference races three weeks from the end of the regular season.

A quick glance at each league reveals that the ACC, Big Ten, Pac-12 and especially the SEC are having some of the most contested conference races in recent memory. Interestingly, for every conference other than the Big East, the current first place team (e.g., Kansas at 10-3 in the Big 12) has as many or more losses than any first place team the past five years has had on this date. That also means that second and third place teams across the board have a better chance of winning their leagues than they usually would.

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What’s Trending is a column examining the week that was in college basketball social media. Griffin Wong (@griffwong90) is your weekly host.

If College Basketball’s Tripping Epidemic Wasn’t Enough…

Then we have this item for you, as Maryland’s Diamond Stone took it up a notch. At the end of the first half, with Maryland down big to Wisconsin at home, the freshman phenom briefly lost his temper, tackling Wisconsin’s Vitto Brown after the whistle. To make matters worse, Stone pushed Brown’s head back into the ground as he was getting up. Take a look:

Maryland suspends freshman big man Diamond Stone for his actions vs. Wisconsin on Saturday. https://t.co/QaOhboglQF https://t.co/DpHrjTPevc

— Big Ten Network (@BigTenNetwork) February 15, 2016

Stone was given a flagrant 1 for his actions, and subsequently suspended for a game by coach Mark Turgeon. Though Stone was apologetic after the game, it’s a shame to see any player lose his temper like that. Oh, and Wisconsin snapped Maryland’s 27-game home winning streak.

#Badgers Brown took phone call from Stone. Said apology was sincere. Said just a young player who lost poise.

— Jeff Potrykus (@jaypo1961) February 15, 2016

Meanwhile, Maryland’s down at home by 15 to Wisconsin (?????) and Diamond Stone tried to kill a guy. Keep being weird, college hoops.

— Matt Norlander (@MattNorlander) February 14, 2016

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A prevailing storyline of the last several college basketball seasons has been what #1 Kansas has accomplished under head coach Bill Self. The Jayhawks are in the midst of a run where they have won (or shared) 11 consecutive Big 12 regular season titles, and his group took an enormous step toward its 12th in a row on Saturday with a 76-72 victory at #3 Oklahoma. This season’s team has been characterized as a well-balanced unit and that was on full display as sophomore guard Devonte’ Graham led the way with 26 points while harassing National Player of the Year front-runner Buddy Hield. The victory did not effectively hand Kansas the conference title, as it is still tied with #11 West Virginia atop the league standings, but it did prove (once again) that the Jayhawks are capable of grabbing monstrous conference road wins with trips to #25 Texas and Baylor ahead. This week’s Quick N’ Dirty after the jump.

Quick N’ Dirty Analysis.

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