Heading into the season, there wasn’t much to expect from Providence. The Friars had just said their early goodbyes to all-Big East talents Kris Dunn and Ben Bentil, both of whom were drafted by the NBA. They were projected to finish ninth in the Big East, a prediction that was attributed to significant roster shakeup and a number of reserves stepping into bigger roles for the first time. Junior point guard Kyron Cartwright was one of those players next in line, facing the burden of not only becoming a first-time starter but also the pressure of being Dunn’s successor.

-friarbasketball.com

At first, he and the Friars lived up to their low expectations. Ed Cooley’s squad feasted on a weak non-conference schedule that featured nine teams outside of the RPI top 100, finishing 10-3 against those teams. This included a 2-2 showing against the four top-tier opponents, beating Vermont and Rhode Island but losing to Ohio State and Virginia. It also included an embarrassing road loss to Boston College just before Big East play began.

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1. Northwestern has gotten off to a decent 10-6 start overall with an extremely young lineup. Vic Law came from Chicago’s famed Catholic League as what Wildcat fans hoped would be the beginning of a beautiful relationship between Chris Collins and the Windy City’s best high school players. Fellow freshman Bryant McIntosh has shined, while Law has struggled to adapt to the physicality of Big Ten basketball.  It’s too early to write him off as a bust, but Law needs to produce more than the 2.7 PPG and 4.0 RPG he has contributed in his first three B1G games.
2. While things haven’t been great this season for Michigan, they have something to look forward to on January 24. Consensus top five wing Jaylen Brown will make an official campus visit on that Saturday when the team takes on Wisconsin at the Crisler Center. Brown would obviously be an enormous coup for the Wolverines. The team they have this season is mainly made up of underclassmen. Even if Caris LeVert were to leave early, having Brown to go along with most of the pieces that should return to Ann Arbor could make the 2015-16 Michigan unit one to be reckoned with in the league next season.
3. Hanner Mosquera-Perea suffered a knee injury on Monday in practice, leaving Indiana and their already undersized frontline even smaller. The junior from Columbia is averaging 7.5 PPG and 5 RPG this season in a little under 21 minutes of court time. He had been in Tom Crean’s doghouse for getting into early foul trouble in recent games, and now it looks as though Emmitt Holt and Collin Hartman will get most of his minutes inside for the Hoosiers. Hartman played 23 minutes with Holt logging 13 in their win over Penn State last night, but it’s worth monitoring the situation to see how Indiana survives after going from very little size to no size at all.
4. Frank Kaminsky will be back in the Wisconsin lineup Thursday night when they take on Nebraska in Madison. The senior who leads the team in four major categories (points, rebounds, steals, and blocks), missed the loss against Rutgers after suffering a concussion in the Purdue game last week. The Badgers will still be shorthanded as they will be missing Traveon Jackson due to injury, but with Nebraska playing better with their whole team now healthy, the return of Kaminsky is needed.
5. Illinois faces a critical test when they travel to Evanston to face their in-state rivals tonight. Despite losing Sunday night against Nebraska, their defensive effort was pretty solid. The problem they’re having without Rayvonte Rice is that they simply can’t shoot the ball. Loren Tate of the Champaign News-Gazette broke down just how pedestrian the shooting numbers have been as of late. Two specifics he mentioned were the fact that Nebraska played off of Jaylon Tate, daring him to shoot from deep. He also mentioned the fact that Nnanna Egwu simply can’t score in the post when he isn’t facing up. If Aaron Cosby and/or Ahmad Starks can break out of their collective year-round slumps, then things might change. Otherwise this team will be buried before Rice returns to the lineup.

Coming into Saturday’s game between Ohio State and Indiana, both teams were the top two in terms of points per game in the B1G. So in a season that arguably makes less sense as time goes forward, of course these two perimeter juggernauts combined to shoot 7-for-39 from deep. Matchups between two top point guards, and between two of the best freshmen perimeter players in the land did not really materialize. Instead Indiana was able to forget the fact that their shots weren’t falling, by simply being the tougher team. Despite their small size, they enjoyed a 48-39 advantage on the boards. Unheralded bench contributors  like Emmitt Holt and Collin Hartman seemingly made all of the hustle plays that in the end added up to a great win for the Hoosiers. While some of the head-to-head battles never really came into play, here’s a couple of areas that Indiana was able to win on their way to a 69-66 victory.

Troy Williams notched a double-double as Indiana held off Ohio State Saturday in Bloomington. (Chris Howell/Herald Times)

• Troy Williams-Sam Thompson/Mark Loving: Williams was the best player on the floor, and it wasn’t just because he had 2-3 plays that could end up on Sportscenter’s top 10. The Hoosiers could have very well been lack-luster in the energy department with so many of their outside shots not falling. Instead, they kept up the intensity on the defensive end of the floor, and especially on the boards. Williams was the ringleader on both accounts, grabbing 12 rebounds on the day and not allowing Loving to really get going. Indiana switched in and out of zone all day, so he didn’t necessarily lock one specific person down. But the energy,hustle, rebounding, and timely passing (team-high three assists) swung the game.

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1. Michigan State seemed to get its mojo back in crushing Indiana on Monday night, holding the Hoosiers to just 20 percent shooting from long distance. Inside the Hall’s Ryan Corazza attributed Indiana’s loss to a poor first-half performance that amounted to a 19-point halftime deficit. The Spartans, six days removed from a heartbreaking double-overtime loss to Maryland, were able to stifle Tom Crean’s drive-and-dish offense by locking down the paint and effectively closing out on Indiana’s gunners. In fact, Yogi Ferrell and Emmitt Holt were the only Hoosiers to make a shot in the first half while the rest of the team went 0-of-19. This is the first time all season we’ve seen such a poor offensive performance from Indiana, but the loss certainly highlights the team’s dependence on long-distance shooting. As Big Ten Powerhouse’s Scott Manning put it, Indiana will live and die by the three this year.
2. Purdue stumbled – or rather, fell face-first – into the opening week of Big Ten play, entering last week having dropped three straight games to Notre Dame, Vanderbilt and Gardner-Webb. The Boilermakers turned things around by winning home games against Minnesota and Michigan to start conference play, but they now travel to face arguably the two hottest teams in the league on the road this week in Wisconsin and Maryland. Purdue’s success in Madison will hinge heavily on its ability to defend Frank Kaminsky, who is currently ranked first in KenPom’s Player of the Year rankings. The Wisconsin center is noticeably more mobile this year, providing Matt Painter with the dubious task of deciding to defend him with either shot-blocker extraordinare AJ Hammons or leaving him on Wisconsin’s four to better defend the paint. KenPom predicts the Badgers will win by 17 points on Wednesday.
3. Minnesota freshman Gaston Diedhiou could make his college basketball debut tonight in the Gophers’ home Big Ten opener versus Ohio State, writes Marcus Fuller of the Pioneer Press. Diedhou, a 6’9″, 230-pounder, could help solidify Minnesota’s depth at the forward positions. After Joey King, the Gophers have gotten little to no production from reserves Charles Buggs and Bakary Konate. Citing the Senegal native’s raw offensive game, head coach Richard Pitino said that he doubts Diedhiou will have an impact against the Buckeyes, but his athleticism and rebounding skill may force Pitino’s hand if the Gophers continue to struggle down low.
4. Michigan does not look much like the outstanding John Beilein teams of the past few years, as evidenced by their disappointing 8-6 record. The head coach is doing his best to keep the team’s struggles in perspective, though, stressing patience to fans and praising the improvement of freshman big man Ricky Doyle. That improvement hasn’t been universal among all Wolverines’ freshmen, as Aubrey Dawkins and Kameron Chatman have been very inconsistent. As it stands, Michigan fans will have to bear with Beilein’s group this year, as he’s been very open and honest about it being a relative rebuilding year with the squad – but don’t expect the slump to last much longer than one season.
5. Iowa is off to its best start in the Big Ten since the 2002-03 season, standing at 2-0 in conference play after topping Nebraska in Iowa City last night. In the win, Aaron White scored 23 points and became Iowa’s all-time leader in made free throws, a mark currently standing at 524. Scott Dochterman of the Cedar Rapids Gazette said White’s ability to get to the free throw line has made him an all-time Hawkeyes great, but the Strongsville, Ohio, native canned an uncharacteristic three-pointer to push Iowa’s lead to seven points in the waning minutes to seal last night’s victory. Fans and media alike had hoped White would develop a better perimeter game this season, but the senior is only shooting the ball from distance at a 22.7 percent clip. That statistic won’t matter, though, if gunners Peter Jok, Jarrod Uthoff and Josh Oglesby step their games up like they did on Monday night.

Many sophomores in the Big Ten have a significantly greater role this season than they did as freshmen. That is to be expected, of course, as the second year is often when players make their biggest strides in development. Some highly-recruited guys, however, continue to disappoint, while others who may not have been so highly regarded have by now become viable contributors for their teams. This series of posts is meant to check in on a few of the different sophomores in the league to determine whether they’ve improved in their first year-plus and what it means for their teams going forward. Next up in the series is Indiana forward Troy Williams. 

Troy Williams has played well after returning from a two-game suspension at the beginning of the season. (Chris Howell/Herald Times)

• 2013-14: 7.3 PPG, 4.4 RPG, 0.8 SPG, 50.9% FG, 67.5 % FT, 21.5 MPG, 19.4% Usage, 100.1 Offensive Rating
• 2014-15:  12.1 PPG, 5.1 RPG, 1.3 SPG, 57.6 % FG, 72.4 % FT, 23.9 MPG, 23.3% Usage, 119.0 Offensive Rating

Williams really hasn’t been mentioned much since his suspension for the first two games of the season along with fellow sophomore Stanford Robinson. As a result, his improved play has gone mostly unnoticed due to the hype surrounding freshmen James Blackmon Jr. and Robert Johnson. His numbers are up across the board, though, and he’s been especially effective as this year’s team incorporates a good deal of their transition offense without the scourge of last season’s turnovers. Williams has also been really consistent, reaching double-figure scoring in all eight of his games and pulling down four rebounds or more in every game but one (the Hoosiers’ Jimmy V Classic loss to Louisville). He’s also cut the long jumpers out of his game in favor of more shots at the rim after making only 20.7 percent of his three-point attempts last season. This is the root cause of his significant jump in field goal percentage. He’s still flying around and making a lot of plays based on his athleticism, but this season he is doing so in a much more efficient manner.

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1. Indiana began the season with little knowledge of how its big men would fare this season. After losing Noah Vonleh to the NBA and Luke Fischer to Marquette, all the pressure was on junior Hanner-Mosquera Perea to step up as the Hoosiers’ lone presence in the paint. But according to Zach Osterman of the Indy Star, freshmen Emmitt Holt and sophomore Collin Hartman are slowly solidifying Tom Crean’s frontcourt.
2. The Big Ten Tournament will be held at Madison Square Garden in 2018 as the conference pushes its postseason event east in order to gobble up more television money. The 2015 and 2016 tournament will be held at locations within the league’s footprint, in Chicago and Indianapolis, respectively. The 2017 tournament, however, will be played in Washington D.C. An interesting facet of the 2018 plan is that the event won’t be played on its usual schedule. Because the Big East Tournament is scheduled for the traditional weekend of Selection Sunday, the Big Ten’s marquee event will be played during the weekend prior, which means teams will have nearly two full weeks off between the end of their season and the start of the NCAA Tournament.
3. Minnesota is getting great defensive play out of junior college transfer Carlos Morris so far this season, writes Amelia Rayno of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. He came up one steal short of the Minnesota single-game record with eight pilfers against Wake Forest and is averaging 11.6 points per game – but according to head coach Richard Pitino, he’s still got a lot to work on.
4. Nebraska fell to Creighton by 10 points on Sunday as Terran Petteway and Shavon Shields each turned in lackluster performances. Petteway had 21 points but was 8-of-20 from the field, while Shields only contributed seven points. The Bluejays’ game plan was to key on the two stars, forcing the likes of David Rivers and Benny Parker to beat them – and they didn’t.
5. Maryland has turned its free throw shooting into a strength after ranking 241st in the nation with 21.2 attempts per game last year. Melo Trimble has been the guiding force behind that change, as the freshman has drawn an average of 7.2 fouls per 40 minutes played. Trimble already leads the team in offensive efficiency (125.0), free throw percentage (88.6%) and three-point percentage (43.2%). With Dez Wells out of the lineup for a couple more weeks with a wrist injury, the Terrapins need Trimble to keep it up.

1. It was less than a five days ago that everything seemed calm at Indiana. Then early on Saturday morning, sophomore Devin Davis was run over by freshman Emmitt Holt, who was charged with driving under the influence. Davis, who was rushed to the hospital in critical condition and now appears to be on his way to recovering, was cited in the police report as being primarily responsible for the accident. Not much after news broke of Davis’ recovery, Tom Crean announced that sophomores Troy Williams and Stanford Robinson had been suspended for four games each in what has been reported as being the result of multiple failed drug tests. These incidents combined with a couple of earlier arrests for alcohol use led some individuals including former Hoosier guard and coach Dan Dakich to question Crean’s job security. We agree that Crean’s job shouldn’t be that secure after all these off-the-court issues, but doubt that this would be the primary reason for his dismissal as schools have shown on many occasions that they care more about the bottom line than the optics of their school.
2. With yesterday being election day across the country, there were plenty of political pundits voicing their opinion to anybody who would listen (and many who wouldn’t). What we did not expect was for Mike Krzyzewski to voice an opinion–that President Obama was mismanaging the ISIS crisis–that would make national headlines. To be fair to Krzyzewski, the comments were made last month in front of an audience of military officers, defense contractors, and others in reference to the President’s pledge to not use ground troops in the fight. This is not the first time that Krzyzewski has been critical of President Obama as he has chided Obama for spending time on a NCAA Tournament bracket (that doesn’t pick Duke to win) instead of focusing on fixing the economy. While those comments were more in jest we would be interested to see the interaction Krzyzewski and Obama have if the Blue Devils win the NCAA title this year and are invited to the White House.
3. It turns out that North Carolina might have more than just the NCAA to worry about in the wake of its recent academic scandal. While some UNC fans have been worried about the NCAA handing down its version of the death penalty, they (at least the ones who care about the institution more than just the sports programs) should probably care more about an upcoming review by Southern Association of Colleges and Schools’ Commission on Colleges. The group that does not deal specifically with sports had already issued a report about the academic scandal in 2012 suggesting that the school offer courses to make up for the fraudulent one many students took. Now with the findings of the Wainstein report public they are taking another look given the findings of the unprecedented scope. The sanctions can range from a warning (essentially a slap on the wrist) to removal of accreditation (a real death penalty that means a school can no longer receive accreditation). We are not sure how often the group has decided to remove accreditation, but it would typically lead to a school having to shut down. Now we doubt that the group would do something that would make such an institution as significant as UNC essentially die, but as the group noted the scope of the scandal is unprecedented.
4. With the season about to get started we will start hearing more from people like Ken Pomeroy since they will have new data to analyze, On Monday, we mentioned how useless preseason polls were. It turns out that we were only partially right. Looking back at the AP preseason poll since 1990, Pomeroy found out that the order of teams ranked above 15 matters to a degree, but below that the order is essentially meaningless in terms of its predictive value. The analysis compares a team’s preseason ranking to its NCAA Tournament seed, which is probably more reflective of the quality of their season overall than just how far they advance in the NCAA Tournament. So while we still question the degree of interest in preseason polls it turns out that they do have some value.
5. The hits just keep coming for Hawaii. Fortunately for the school’s athletic director and everybody associated with it they are still located in Hawaii. Less than a week after the school fired head coach Gib Arnold and assistant coach Brandyn Akana, star forward Isaac Fotu announced that he was leaving the school to play professionally after the school had ruled that he was ineligible to play pending the results of a NCAA investigation. Given how slowly the NCAA typically works on these matters we do not necessarily fault Fotu, a first team All-Big West player who averaged 14.9 points and 6.1 rebounds per game, for leaving rather than wait for the NCAA to hand down its judgement and look forward to playing for an interim coach if he was even cleared to play. We are not privy to the details of what Fotu is being investigated for (reportedly impermissible benefits), but Fotu has stated that he has hired an attorney to clear his name, which at this point is somewhat inconsequential since he will be off somewhere getting paid to play basketball.

A little less than seven years ago, Indiana basketball was in free fall after head coach Kelvin Sampson admitted to numerous NCAA violations stemming from extra phone calls to recruits. We would learn soon afterward that not only was the coaching staff behaving inappropriately, but that there was rampant drug use among the players and some of them had altogether stopped attending classes. The last few days in Bloomington have felt eerily similar. First, news broke over the weekend about a car accident involving two Indiana basketball players, sophomore Devin Davis and freshman Emmitt Holt. According to details from the crash report, Holt hit Davis with his car after dropping him off when Davis unexpectedly entered the roadway. Both players are under the age of 21 and had been drinking, but only Holt was cited for illegal consumption of alcohol after registering a blood alcohol content of 0.021. Meanwhile, Davis is still in the hospital with a fractured skull. On Monday afternoon, ESPN’s Jeff Goodman reported that two more Hoosiers — sophomores Troy Williams and Stanford Robinson — have been suspended by the school for failed drug tests. For Tom Crean’s program, these most recent events total four off-the-court incidents involving almost half of his roster since February.

If it wasn’t apparent before, it’s pretty clear after this weekend: Tom Crean is fighting for his job. (Getty)

With the spate of recent off-the-court incidents combined with questionable on-court finishes the last couple of seasons, Crean’s future in Bloomington is in serious question. The blowback from these events reached a tipping point in the media yesterday. First, Indianapolis Star’s sports columnist Gregg Doyel stated that the Indiana administration should explore releasing its head coach if another incident occurs. Dan Dakich, the interim head coach at Indiana before Crean, expressed even more indignant frustration across his Indianapolis-based radio program’s airwaves. Dakich was upset by the lack of institutional control apparent, stating, “These guys decide it’s more important to go out drinking than prepare for a scrimmage and compete for a job. Indiana basketball stands for nothing. Absolutely nothing.” And this was all before the Williams/Robinson news broke out. (Doyel has since said that Crean can’t survive). Finally, as if his day wasn’t stress-filled enough, the Indiana head coach had to fend off the anger on his weekly Monday night radio show. When a caller said he blamed the head coach for all the recent transgressions, he responded, “You’re more than welcome to put it on me.” Read the rest of this entry »

1. It was a scary weekend at Indiana after sophomore Devin Davis was run over by a car driven by freshman Emmitt Holt early on Saturday morning. The details of what exactly transpired are unclear, but it appears that Holt dropped off Davis and soon afterwards Davis walked onto the road where Holt ran him over. Holt, who is 18, was charged with illegal consumption of and operating a vehicle with a blood alcohol content above 0.02  (the Indiana legal limit is 0.08, but 0.02 for those under 21 even though it is technically illegal for anybody under the age of 21 to have alcohol–yes, we know underage kids drink). After initial concerns about how serious Davis’ injuries were it appears that he is doing better as he is able to talk and use all of his extremities. It is way too early to speculate about when or even if Davis can return to the court, but we wish him the best of luck in his recovery. As for Holt, we are not sure what the future holds for him in Bloomington, but we doubt we will be seeing him playing a game for the Hooisers any time in the near future.
2. Arizona may have picked up a big piece in its quest for a national championship late last week when the NCAA announced that Dusan Ristic had been cleared to play this year. Ristic had played in the Adriatic League and Eurocup, which led to questions about his amateur eligibility, but never signed a contract. The Wildcats who were already loaded now add a 7′ center who was the MVP of the Nike International Junior Tournament in 2013 after averaging 17.7 points and 9.5 rebounds per game. Even if he doesn’t replace Kaleb Tarczewski in the starting lineup he will add depth to a frontline that will be one of the best in the country.
3. On the surface, the announcement that Conner Frankamp is transferring from Kansas might seem like a minor issue (and it probably is), but as Brian Goodman points out it does raise some issues with the Jayhawks’ backcourt depth early in the season. Frankamp, who was actually the #34 recruit in his class according to Rivals, left due to concerns about playing time. After averaging just 2.5 points and 0.6 assists per game as a freshman last season at a program that loads up on talent like Kansas does, we can understand his concern. As for Kansas, although there are certainly some questions regarding that backcourt we know better than to question Bill Self.
4. On Friday, Syracuse completed its initial hearing with the NCAA Committee on Infractions regarding allegations of violations of internal drug policy and academic issues. While the school offered very little in the way of clarity about the allegations or what was discussed/revealed at the hearing, the school did point out that no current student-athletes are part of the investigation. The school is expected to hear from the NCAA in 30 to 60 days, which is probably the next time we will hear anything about this story. Now if only that other big investigation in the ACC could move to this stage.
5. We are not sure what the big deal about preseason polls is other than to serve as bulletin board material and fodder for message boards (yes, we will have one out pretty soon too), but the AP released its preseason poll on Friday and as expected it did not contain any surprises. Kentucky, Arizona, and Wisconsin topped the poll taking all 65 available first-place votes. While these are interesting at some level they serve even less purpose than the useless college football ones that at least used to affect the BCS system. The one purpose they do serve is that they offer writers an easy reference for a column when a team is a surprise or disappointment.