Seven Big Ten teams will be competing in tournaments during Feast Week. Some are expected to do well, while others are looking to pick up some quality wins and defy preseason expectations. Here’s a primer for those hoops-obsessed fans who want to schedule some Big Ten basketball watching around their annoying relatives. The fun gets started later today in Maui, New York and Kansas City.

Progressive Legends Classic: (Monday and Tuesday)

Caris LeVert needs to continue to fill up the stat sheet if Michigan wants to win the Legends Classic. (Getty)

• Teams: Michigan, Oregon, VCU, Villanova
• Favorite: Villanova
• TV: ESPN2, ESPN3, ESPNU
• Outlook: Michigan will face its first big-name opponents of the season when the Wolverines take on Oregon in the first game. Should they win, they’ll face off against the winner of the VCU-Villanova game after that. The perimeter trio of Derrick Walton Jr., Zak Irvin and Caris LeVert will have to continue to score at a high level, as the trio is producing a robust 67.5 percent of Michigan’s points thus far this season.
• Predicted Finish: First if they play Villanova; second if they play VCU.

CBE Hall of Fame Classic: (Monday and Tuesday)

• Teams: Maryland, Arizona State, Iowa State, Alabama
• Favorite: Iowa State
• TV: ESPNU, ESPN2

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We continue our preseason Big Ten rankings today with spots #9 through #5. The bottom tier of teams, #14 to #10, released earlier this week. These middle tier teams will be fighting to be on the right side of the bubble — and providing us with great drama — all season long.

9. Maryland

• What they do well: Defense. Mark Turgeon has had a top 40 squad in adjusted defensive efficiency the past couple seasons and it’ll likely be his area of focus once again.
• What they don’t do well: Retention. Seth Allen, Charles Mitchell, Nick Faust, Roddy Peters and Shaquille Cleare all transferred out of the program in the offseason — not exactly inconsequential players.

Dez Wells is one of the few familiar faces in College Park this year. (Charlie DeBoyace/The Diamondback)

• Get to know: Melo Trimble. The top 40 recruit will need to use his offensive skill set to help replace all the lost scoring from last season.
• Why they’ll finish 9th: The exodus of key players and unfamiliarity in the Big Ten will cause some very sharp growing pains for the Terrapins.
• Why they’ll finish higher: This team still has talent and is used to playing top-notch competition. If they can get all their new pieces to gel together, they can compete in a relatively down Big Ten.

8. Iowa

• What they do well: Offense. Last season, the Hawkeyes were fifth nationally in adjusted offensive efficiency and they bring a majority of that roster back this year.
• What they don’t do well: Mental toughness. Last season, Iowa wilted in close games against Villanova and Iowa State. Things really spiraled out of control at the end of the season when they lost seven of their last eight contests.

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When Nebraska moved from the Big 12 to the Big Ten in 2011, its first basketball schedule was no walk in the park, rating as the toughest among the 12 teams according to KenPom. The Big Ten goes through an extensive process to set a roughly equivalent league schedule for its teams, but it would not be hard to believe that the league might haze the newcomers with especially challenging schedules during their first seasons on board. Ongoing debates about which school or league has the best home court advantage is a huge part of college sports and it is likely that the schedule-makers designed a slate of games to see if Nebraska could handle the rigors of the Big Ten season (the answer to that question depends on how you view a 4-14 mark). Big Ten hoops fans will need to get used to playing Maryland in College Park in the same way that the Terps will have to become accustomed to trips to Iowa City, Minneapolis and Lincoln, but let’s take a gander into the Terrapins’ Big Ten schedule to see if the league will be giving them a fair welcome this year.

Mark Turgeon’s Terps could get off to a rocky start in the Big Ten. (Getty)

Mark Turgeon’s squad debuts conference play at Michigan State on December 30. Look no further than the first Big Ten game — the schedulers ask Maryland to venture into the Breslin Center, arguably the toughest building in the entire league! To round up the Terps’ first month of conference play, Maryland must play road games at Illinois, Purdue, Indiana and Ohio State, and Pomeroy projects Maryland to lose every one of those four January road games. The trips to East Lansing and Columbus will certainly be no picnics, as the Spartans and the Buckeyes have more than enough talent on hand to compete for the league title again. A game against a hungry Illinois squad, led by third-year coach John Groce trying to get his program back to the NCAAs, will not be an easy task either. Purdue and Indiana look to be young and inexperienced teams, but they have good talent and will be desperate for early Big Ten wins to build a case for the postseason.  If Maryland comes out of the first month of 2015 with more than one road victory among that group, Turgeon should feel pretty good about his team’s performance.

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1. The NCAA released a memo yesterday from its Board of Directors proposing a new structure that would theoretically be “more nimble, streamlined and responsive to needs – particularly the needs of student-athletes” as well as allowing conferences greater maneuverability in addressing the needs of the student-athletes within the specific conferences. Voting on the proposal will take place in August. While that sounds great in theory it is unclear how much power the student-athletes would have in such a system and how the NCAA’s constituency will react to it (especially the non-power conference schools).
2. The Marshall coaching search has been one of the more unique ones that we can remember. They spent over a month courting Los Angeles Lakers coach Mike D’Antoni to be their next coach. As ridiculous as it sounds on the surface (going from coaching in front of Jack Nicholson and all the Hollwood stars to being in Huntington) it was somewhat plausible since Mike played at Marshall and grew up a few hours away. Oh, and there is also the fact that he might not have much time left with LA. A day after news leaked that Mike was not taking the job, Marshall announced that it had landed D’antoni just that it was Mike’s brother, Dan D’Antoni. Outside of the of how strange it is to settle for the original candidates brother, Dan has not coached at the college level in 30 years and had been serving as an assistant to his brother. The only way this would make sense to us is if there was an understanding that Mike might take the job when he is fired in LA.
3. Two juniors–Spencer Dinwiddie and Khem Birch–made somewhat surprising decisions to leave school a year early. Dinwiddie is projected to be a mid-second round pick after his stock was hurt following a season-ending ACL tear in January. He averaged 14.7 points, 3.8 assists, and 3.1 rebounds per game last season before his injury and his all-court game could translate well to the NBA, but coming off an injury his stock will be relatively low. Birch is probably more like a late second round pick and probably more likely to go undrafted. Birch played sporadically at Pittsburgh before transferring to UNLV, but showed some of the skills that made him a highly coveted player coming into college as he averaged 11.5 points, 10.2 rebounds, and 3.8 blocks per game last season while picking up Mountain West Defensive Player of the Year honors.
4. Myles Turner, the #2 prospect in the class of 2014 and only uncommitted top prospect, will announce his decision on Wednesday at 4 PM on ESPNU. Turner has narrowed down his list to Duke, Kansas, Ohio State, Oklahoma State, Southern Methodist, Texas, and Texas A&M. Yeah, that’s not really narrow. There were some rumors that Turner was leaning towards Kansas and had been waiting on a decision from Joel Embiid, but it over two weeks since Embiid declared for the NBA Draft and Turner has not committed yet so we would not read too much into that.
5. We will end today with some new developments in two longstanding legal cases involving college basketball players. The more well-known case involves Dez Wells, who reached a settlement with Xavier after he was expelled from the school on what he calls a false rape allegation. We are not privy to all the details of what happened in the Wells case, but from what has been publicly released we would call the school’s handling of the case “questionable” at best. The other case, which probably still will have a few more turns to it involves former Oklahoma State basketball player Darrell Williams, who was accused of sexually assaulting two women at an off-campus party in 2010. An Oklahoma court has overturned the conviction based in part because two jurors visited the crime scene and discussed the visit during deliberations. While this is good news for Williams, the District Attorney is still deciding on whether or not to retry the case so he may not be out of the woods yet.

1. The coaching carousel continues to turn with most of the movement off of it. The latest departure is Ben Braun, who was fired after six seasons at Rice. As it appears to be the trend these days Braun officially “stepped down”, but when you go 63-128 you don’t really step down as much as the school lets you save face especially when the biggest story of your tenure was about accusations of your athletic director making racially insensitive comments towards your players and an assistant coach that were reportedly ignored by you and your staff. Braun’s time at Rice might not have been that successful, but he does have 613 career wins (465 at the Division I level) and made it to two Sweet 16s so he will probably end up being an assistant in the not too distant future.
2. One job that apparently will not be opening up is Boston College as they have reportedly decided to stick with Steve Donahue. Given Donahue’s 54-76 record it would not have been shocking to see Boston College move in a different direction, but it is somewhat refreshing to see a school give a coach a little more time to work things out particularly at an ACC school. Having said that Boston College was one of the most disappointing teams in the country this year going 8-24 despite having a roster that most would consider competitive to at least be in the middle of the ACC standings. Donahue should expect to have most of his rotation back for next season so perhaps the school is giving him one more season to show some improvement before they decide to move on.
3. It seems like we are dealing with a lot of cases where schools attempt to dismiss a student-athlete only to have the student fight back. One of the most notable involves Dez Wells, who was dismissed from Xavier only to end up at Maryland and play right away thanks to a NCAA waiver. In addition to obtaining that waiver Wells also sued the school for his dismissal claiming that they ignored the evidence the prosecutor provided. Xavier tried to have the suit dismissed, but on Tuesday a federal judge refused Xavier’s motion to dismiss the case. The judge also denied Wells’ request to have his appeal overturned, but it appears that Wells will get his day in court against the school.
4. If you are looking for a potential cult figure to latch on to for the NCAA Tournament you could do a lot worse than Ethan Wragge. You probably know Wragge from his tendency to shoot and make ridiculously deep three-point attempts. You may have seen his performance against Villanova or if you are a regular reader of this column you have probably seen Luke Winn’s shot charts for Wragge. When you combine that with how great of a college player his mother was you have the potential for a frequently mentioned story in March particularly if Wragge (and some guy named McDermott) can lead the Bluejays deep in the NCAA Tournament.
5. We get hear plenty of stories during March. Usually they are inspirational, but sometimes they are just dumb. The one involving a deluded Kentucky fan who got a tattoo “2014 Nati9nal Champions UK” definitely falls into the latter camp. Doing this in the preseason would have been a little presumptuous, but the fan got the tattoo yesterday. The ridiculousness of doing that might be the primary focus of this story, but our favorite part has to be the tattoo artist, who asked that his now nationally (in)famous tattoo not be attributed to him and instead asked to not be named.

The ACC is chock full of great athletes and even greater coaches. In such a highly competitive environment, there is bound to be a plethora of close finishes. Even the elite coaches can’t physically will their teams to victory, but instead have to rely upon the players who have ice in their veins. Some coaches prefer a heady point guard who can wind the clock down, penetrate into the paint at the right moment, and then fire off a pinpoint pass to a shooter on the wing for the win. Other coaches prefer a more traditional route of isolation basketball, putting the ball in the hands of the best player, someone who can rise up over the defense or break down his defender one-on-one.

Michael Snaer breaks the hearts of many Duke fans in CIS

The list of memorable ACC finishes could fill an entire book, provoking court rushes and jubilant celebrations for one team and a traumatic letdowns for another. The most recent that comes to mind from Tobacco Road was Duke’s Austin Rivers buzzer-beater in Chapel Hill two years ago. That same season, and only a month prior to Rivers’ game winner, Duke was shocked at home by Michael Snaer‘s three at the horn to snap a 45-game Duke home winning streak. Flash forward to the present and both Snaer and Rivers are long gone from their respective campuses as new faces and even a few teams litter the ACC landscape. With that in mind, who are the players that ACC coaches most want with the ball in their hands and the game on the line this season? Here are 10 players who have their coaches’ trust in those game-ending situations. 

• Tyler Ennis, Syracuse: The freshman point guard from Canada has won Jim Boeheim as well as his teammates’ confidence and has solidified himself as the go-to presence for this year’s undefeated Syracuse team. Look no further than Ennis’ play in the final minutes of Syracuse’s home win over old rival Pittsburgh, as the Orange eked out a victory late, largely thanks to Ennis.

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With seven minutes left in the game and his team down four points, Dez Wells took over the game. He scored 18 of Maryland‘s final 28 points, but that doesn’t do the performance justice. Every possession Maryland looked to run down the clock before he barreled into the lane, drawing six fouls before all was said and done. But Wells’ performance said as much about Boston College as it did about him.

Steve Donahue’s team is struggling defensively, but better than its record. (Boston College Athletics)

Boston College’s season has been bad. If you factor in the high expectations for the Eagles, who brought essentially everyone back from last year’s squad, it has been downright abysmal. Steve Donahue‘s team is 3-7, with one of those wins coming at home in overtime against a bad Sacred Heart team. Offensively, the team is very good. Defensively, it’s a train wreck. As Wells took over the game in Chestnut Hill, Boston College’s defensive lapses piled up. Every possession became a struggle. After the game Donahue cited his team’s youth, noting that players started focusing on their man instead of rotating to help — which is paramount against a score-first player like Wells.

But this game was a microcosm of Boston College under Steve Donahue. Statistically, he’s never had a good defensive team, at Cornell or at Boston College. His teams have never cracked the top half of Division I. But he’s never had a team as bad as this one either. Right now the Eagles are ranked 300 out of 351 teams in defensive efficiency according to Ken Pomeroy, the lowest of a major conference team by more than 25 spots. Watching Maryland for all but one stretch confirmed the metrics. This team did a poor job on rotations, often losing a man in the corner, or failing to step into Wells’ driving lane once he got past the initial defender.

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What to Make of Michigan Heading to Duke in the Headliner of the ACC/Big Ten Challenge

Nobody ever said life after Trey Burke was going to be easy. Despite entering the season with both a top 10 ranking and preseason All-American (again) to lead the way, John Beilein had to know that this group of Wolverines would be a work in progress. Gone was not only the transcendent Burke, but also backcourt mate Tim Hardaway, Jr., a highly accomplished player in his own right. Also of concern: The fact that this year’s preseason All-American, Mitch McGary, entered the season on the mend. The bruising sophomore is recovering from a back injury, and even with a (relatively) healthy back a season ago, he had averaged only 7.5 points and 6.3 rebounds per game as he got acclimated to college basketball. Was he really ready to deliver All-American type production? Every team entered this season with question marks, but Michigan faced as many as any of their preseason top-10 cohabitants.

Michigan And Mitch McGary Will Attempt To Reassert Themselves At Cameron Indoor On Tuesday Night

The Wolverines are now seven games into the season, and the top-10 ranking is gone. The same cannot be said for those pesky preseason questions. Michigan is 5-2 on the year, with an overtime victory over Florida State ranking as its lone victory of consequence (seriously, the average Pomeroy rating for the other four Wolverine conquests is 297). The back injury ultimately caused McGary to miss just two games, but his production since returning has hardly been like that of an All-American: 8.2 PPG, 7.8 RPG, 1.0 BPG in 25 minutes per game. I’m not in the habit of judging a guy off of five post-injury games, but the jury remains out on whether McGary can live up to those expansive preseason expectations.

Nor has a verdict been offered on the Michigan point guard situation. Nobody expected Derrick Walton to become Trey Burke, but the freshman has averaged nearly as many turnovers (2.4 per game) as assists (3.3 per game), while also ceding crunch time minutes to backup Spike Albrecht. In the two Michigan losses (to Iowa State and Charlotte), Walton has averaged just 19 minutes a game. Clearly John Beilein is not ready to fully hand over the reins to the talented youngster, but like McGary, there’s still plenty of time for Walton to grow into his expected role.

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1. Rodney Purvis can’t play this year, but he’s still helping the Huskies get off to a hot start. The former highly-touted recruit who transferred to UConn after a year at NC State has been the star member of the scout team, helping one of the nation’s top backcourts prepare for the likes of Dez Wells and Yogi Ferrell. The full year of practice will be crucial for Purvis, who likely will have to step into the sizeable shoes of Shabazz Napier next season. Of course, it may also be playing a pretty big role in Napier’s blazing start, which will have him in consideration for a number of postseason awards if he can maintain it. Based on the early returns, luring Purvis to Storrs looks to be a pretty major win-win for both he and head coach Kevin Ollie.
2. Sean Kilpatrick was angry when coach Mick Cronin redshirted him due to a crowded backcourt and a mechanical flaw in his jump shot four years ago. Both he and Cronin have to be pretty pleased with how it worked out, though, as Kilpatrick now ranks #13 on the school’s all-time scoring list as a fifth-year senior. If he keeps up his current pace – he’s averaging nearly 20 PPG through five games – he could end up second on the list to some guy named Oscar Robertson. And while Cronin might have had some inkling that the little-recruited guard would help more down the road than right away, he almost certainly couldn’t have understood just how much. Kilpatrick is posting a ridiculously high 155.2 offensive rating through five games, vital for a mediocre offensive squad like the Bearcats. If he can approach that number during a key three-game swing next month – at New Mexico, then neutral court games with Xavier and Pitt – both he and his team will earn some rightful attention.
3. Kevin Ware‘s eventful year (life?) continued with a plea deal involving a $268 fine, bringing the latest kerfuffle over a speeding ticket and missed court date to a merciful end. This follows Rick Pitino’s rather pointed press conference on the topic last week after he was apparently blindsided by the news. That all followed on the heels of, shall we say, some colorful tweets from Ware’s Twitter account to Anthony Davis, quickly deleted and attributed to hacking. That followed denials from Ware and Pitino of summer “reports” that Ware had been secretly dismissed from the team. All of that, of course, follows the gruesome injury in last season’s NCAA Tournament which catapulted the quiet reserve to national prominence. That followed an indefinite suspension last spring that lasted one game. Even that followed a recruitment which included a commitment to Tennessee, later withdrawn when Bruce Pearl was fired in the face of an NCAA probe, then a commitment to UCF, later withdrawn in the face of an NCAA probe, then a commitment to Louisville, delayed by a semester due to the NCAA probes. Seems like quite a bit of drama for a junior with a career high of 11 points, no? Whew.
4. When Louisville went way off the board for the fifth member of its signing class last week, no one knew much of anything about Matz Stockman. He wasn’t ranked by any of the major recruiting watchers, nor had his name been tied to the Cardinals publicly before his papers came through the fax machine. Not even Rick Pitino had seen him play. Now that his team has played a few games on American soil, word has started to trickle out. Jerry Meyer of 247Sports says the seven-foot Norwegian will be a three-star recruit, one who has a good scoring touch near the basket but “will likely need a couple years of development before he is ready to compete at a Louisville type level.” A year ago, Louisville’s thin backcourt ended up with a walk-on as its only reserve in the Final Four, so the recruiting class featured three guards. It’s no coincidence that this year’s Cardinal frontcourt, which got exposed by North Carolina on Sunday, has led to Pitino bringing in three recruits 6’9” and taller.
5. Another night, another couple of blown opportunities for AAC teams to earn a much-needed yet impossible to find quality win. First, Oklahoma State continued its roll through the conference with a 93-67 win at USF. Then Houston gave Stanford a tough test before falling in Brooklyn. And now the AAC nears the end of November with UConn’s two wins over a mediocre Maryland, and a young, inconsistent Indiana, and that’s about it. This is nice for the Huskies, but less great for the other teams that hoped for a few chances for quality wins in conference play to make up for weak non-conference slates. Now those opportunities might not be there, making it tougher to build an NCAA Tournament-worthy resume.

When it was announced in late October that sophomore point guard Seth Allen would be out until early January with a broken bone in his foot, we all wondered how Maryland would respond. We got at least a partial answer in Friday night’s 78-77 loss to Connecticut in Brooklyn’s Barclays Center. Despite facing maybe the best backcourt in the country in the Huskies’ Shabazz Napier and Ryan Boatwright, the Terrapin guards held their own. Looking at this game gives us an excellent picture of how Maryland plans to adjust to playing without Allen and raises questions concerning who should lose minutes when he comes back.

Roddy Peters Helped Spark 2nd Half Rally (Photo: rantsports.com)

When Allen went down, head coach Mark Turgeon had three choices to start at point guard. Freshman Roddy Peters is easily the most natural at the position but Turgeon opted not to throw him into the fire right away. That left two natural wings, juniors Nick Faust and Dez Wells, to pick up the slack. In a telling move, Turgeon decided to give the ball to Wells. Perhaps part of the reason is that Wells is expected to be the team leader, and Turgeon thought having him as the starting point guard would settle the team down. But just as likely, Turgeon realized that no matter which wing he moved, decision-making would be at a premium. Even though he is regarded as a better ball-handler than Wells, Faust has had issues with shot selection and understanding time and score.

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