Indiana headed to Maui with a 3-0 record and an offense averaging 92.0 PPG. The Hoosiers left with a 4-2 record that included a pair of losses to middling teams, and now have more questions to answer than they came to the islands with. Here are three issues that stood out the most from watching the Hoosiers play over the last three days.

Coach Tom Crean gave his critics some ammunition after the Hoosiers lost two games in Maui. (Getty)

1. Turnovers, Turnovers, Turnovers: This one goes beyond just the pure numbers. Granted, Indiana did average 17 miscues in their three games on the islands, but it seemed as though the majority of the mistakes were of the junior high variety. The Hoosiers couldn’t catch the ball, threw errant passes after leaving their feet, and generally produced unforced error after unforced error all week. Crean’s system enables Indiana to play with pace, but the Hoosiers were simply out-of-control and reckless with the ball on far too many possessions. They will need to find the happy medium of playing uptempo, yet staying under control to take better care of the ball. This is too gifted of an offensive team to waste scoring opportunities by giving the ball up so often. Read the rest of this entry »

1. Coming into this week’s Maui Invitational, Indiana was selected among the favorites to win the whole thing. But what was once a highly-anticipated event for the Hoosiers has turned into an early season meltdown as they finished 1-2 which for a sixth place finish. This has reignited dour discussions about the direction of the program and Tom Crean’s future. Indiana started the first round with a shocking four-point loss to Wake Forest, came back with a 10-point win over St. John’s, but ended the event on Wednesday with a three-point loss to UNLV. This is a devastating blow Indiana’s hope for a Final Four, as their resume has taken a hit with losses to two marginal opponents.
2. To add injury to insult, the Hoosiers have also had to deal with some offcourt issues as well. After Indiana’s loss to Wake Forest, Crean decided to change his lineup and bench Troy Williams. While this adjustment may have worked in its goal of motivating the players — they defeated St. John’s after the change — it did not sit well with Williams’ mother, who shared her displeasure on Facebook. She later apologized for the incident, but the whole situation was embarrassing for all involved and just added more publicity to what seems to be a deteriorating situation in Bloomington.
3. This has been a season full of early upsets, but a few Big Ten teams have already racked up two. Ohio State lost its second consecutive game of the season when they were defeated 82-74 by Louisiana Tech on Wednesday to move the Buckeyes to 2-2. This has been the worst start for Thad Matta in his entire 12 seasons at Columbus and follows what was a pretty middling season last year (at least compared to the usual lofty standard of Matta and Ohio State). All of the sudden, the trajectory for this program seems to be pointing downward after a long period of Big Ten success in the earlier half of this decade. The Buckeyes will have a chance to turn things around when they play Memphis on Friday.
4. On Wednesday, Maryland defeated Rhode Island, 86-63, to win the Cancun Challenge. The Terrapins may be 5-0 but they didn’t get there in dominating fashion; in fact, this was the first time since the opener that Maryland won with a comfortable lead. I’ve pointed out before how their defense has become an issue, but another major factor has been their pedestrian shooting from the three-point line — 30.1 percent before Wednesday’s game. The Terps may have turned the corner on their poor shooting against the Rams as they hit 10-of-17 attempts from long distance. Next they’ll see if they can keep up the good play versus Cleveland State on Saturday.
5. Finally, many believed this year’s Michigan team would bounce back from the disappointing and injury-plagued 2014-15 season, but things have not played out exactly as hoped. In addition to losing to Xavier on Friday, the Wolverines were easily handled by Connecticut in a 74-60 loss. While Caris Levert has been good as advertised, the rest of his teammates have yet to catch up. As of right now, this team looks closer to squad that lost to NJIT last year as opposed to the Michigan teams that won consecutive Big Ten titles a couple years ago.

1. Michigan State celebrated jumping to No. 3 in the newest AP poll by thrashing Eastern Michigan on Monday night. The common motifs of offensive balance and sharing the ball were once again on display, as the Spartans put five players in double figures and assisted on 26 of their 31 made field goals. One of the five was transfer Eron Harris, who had been struggling so far this season. The junior made both of his three-point attempts, and his improved offensive play should bode well as Sparty heads to Anaheim this week to play in the Wooden Legacy.
2. After being named the Big Ten Player of the Week, Denzel Valentine was also named the national player of the week by NBC’s CollegeBasketballTalk. The Michigan State senior put on a clinic in recording a triple-double as the Spartans came back to beat Kansas in last Tuesday’s Champions Classic. Purdue also got some recognition from the site, as the Boilermakers were named the team of the week along with Miami (FL). Purdue is off to a very nice 5-0 start this season and clearly looks like a team that should easily finish in the top four of the Big Ten.
3. You may have thought that things couldn’t get much worse for Illinois this season. After a 1-3 start that included losses at home to North Florida and Chattanooga, the Illini needed a Jalen Coleman-Lands buzzer-beater to beat lowly Chicago State on Monday night. Illinois was down by a score of 58-45 at one point, and needed two costly turnovers from Chicago State in the last minute to get the win. With much of the Illinois athletic department in a state of flux after scandals in the football and women’s basketball programs, the men’s team getting off to such a slow start hasn’t done anything to help in Champaign.
4. The other B1G school from the Land of Lincoln has gotten off to a better start than its counterpart, but Northwestern lost its first game of the season on Monday night in the CBE Classic in Kansas City. At one point the Wildcats led formerly top-rated North Carolina by two points in the second half before ultimately losing, 80-69. Northwestern shot the ball well but it ended up losing the battle inside the paint. This game was probably the best non-conference chance for Chris Collins’ unit to dial up a resume-enhancer, so if the Wildcats want to break their infamous NCAA Tournament drought, they will have quite a bit of work to do during conference play.
5. The Big Ten at large hasn’t gotten off to the best of starts this season as league teams have lost too many games to teams that have no business beating them. Indiana was one of the exceptions to that trend in getting off to a nice 3-0 start, but that ended on Monday in the Maui Invitational when the Hoosiers lost to Wake Forest in the first round. Some familiar concerns were raised in the loss, as Indiana allowed Wake to score a whopping 52 points in the paint. Turnovers and a lack of execution late in the game were also key issues in the loss, raising some of the same questions in Bloomington that have been around for a couple of years now.

There are talented tournament fields everywhere this Feast Week. The Gulf Coast Showcase has a relatively strong mid-major field headlined by Murray State, Duquesne (which absolutely BLASTED Penn State on Friday) and Texas Southern. Four capable teams — Clemson, UMass (already a winner over Harvard), Creighton and Rutgers — will tussle in another four-team field in Vegas. Looking further ahead, Atlantis tips off on Wednesday before a handful of other events kick off on Thanksgiving Day and beyond. As we did with Puerto Rico and Charleston last week, here’s a look at the event favorite, a dark horse, and the teams who have the most on the line this week. We’ll also highlight a player and a storyline to watch.

Maui Invitational

Despite some early struggles, Bill Self and Kansas are still the clear favorite in Maui. (Getty)

• Favorite: Kansas. Even with no Cheick Diallo or Brannen Greene for the week and the second half collapse to Michigan State in Chicago notwithstanding, the Jayhawks are still the clear favorite in Maui as the only top 10 team in this tournament. Perry Ellis and Jamari Traylor are seniors. Frank Mason and Wayne Selden are juniors. This is an experienced team that might be going on its last ride together. As usual, there’s chatter about this being the year the Big 12 title streak is broken. Winning the Maui title would probably pump the brakes on that notion, at least for the time being.
• Darkhorse: UCLA. In terms of talent and potential, the Bruins are a clear sleeper. Aaron Holiday, Bryce Alford, Tony Parker — you could easily see a team with talented pieces like these upsetting a still-not-quite-right Kansas in the semifinal and then taking out Indiana or Vanderbilt the next night. Of course, they’re flaky enough that they could brick the last Maui quarter to UNLV, especially after that whole Monmouth thing.

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1. Last night we were treated to an excellent slate of non-conference matchups involving three Big Ten teams. First, Nebraska traveled to Philadelphia and played Villanova tough for the first 10 minutes of the game before ultimately getting blown out. Next, Maryland rekindled an old city rivalry when it hosted Georgetown. The Terps edged the Hoyas behind Melo Trimble’s 24-point effort and transfer Rasheed Sulaimon’s late three to seal the game. Finally, Michigan State came back to win against Kansas after being behind the Jayhawks for almost the entirety. Denzel Valentine was phenomenal, becoming one of just a handful of players to record a triple-double in a Spartans uniform. It was an excellent all-around night of basketball for Big Ten fans.
2. For Bo Ryan, the challenge of rebuilding at Wisconsin since the departure of five instrumental players from his back-to-back Final Four teams is becoming real. First, there was a humbling loss to Western Illinois — a team that is projected to finish dead last in the Summit League — at the Kohl Center. Then, on Tuesday night, the Badgers learned that Andy Van Vliet — a 6’10” forward from Belgium — has been ruled ineligible for the entire season. This leaves Ryan short another player at a time when he’s still trying to figure out his rotation and the ultimate identity of his team.
3. On Monday, Indiana finished its two-game set of Maui Invitational opening round games when it walloped Austin Peay, 102-76. As expected, the Hoosiers’ offense has been humming along early, as evidenced by their 69.8 percent effective field goal percentage on the season. More promising, however, is that Indiana’s defense looks markedly improved as Tom Crean’s group has kept its opponents at under one point per possession so far this season. The true test for his team will be next week’s venture to the Maui Invitational where, along with Kansas, Indiana is the favorite to leave the island with some hardware.
4. In their first two games of the season, Purdue has showcased why it was selected as a preseason Top 25 team and considered a legitimate contender for a Big Ten title. Winning those contests by a combined 69 points, what’s even more impressive is that they’ve done so without the services of their best player, A.J. Hammons, who has been watching from the bench. Matt Painter has been ambiguous about the specific reason for his senior center’s absence, instead stating that “he’s got to take care of some business internally” before he can again see the court. Whenever he does return to the lineup, though, his presence will certainly add to a squad already performing at a high level — no doubt sending chills throughout the rest of the Big Ten.
5. One of the reasons the Boilermakers have been able to make do without Hammons in the lineup is because of the exceptional play of star freshman Caleb Swanigan. In his first two games as a collegian, the big-bodied forward averaged 12.5 points, 12.0 rebounds, and 2.0 assists per game while also shooting over 40 percent from the three-point line. For those efforts, Swanigan was awarded the Big Ten Freshman of the Week award on Monday. Look for the precocious Boilermaker to keep up this pace even when Hammons returns as he has already shown a developed ability to play away from the basket.

Some played in all the postseason All-Star games as high school seniors while others were a little bit further under the radar, but several Big Ten freshmen shined on the floor during their introductions to college basketball. Here are a few of the league’s “diaper dandies” who made head turns during the first weekend of action.

Deyonta Davis blocked five shots in his first game for Michigan State against Florida Atlantic. (Mlive.com)

• Deyonta Davis and Matt McQuaid, Michigan State: Davis gets lost in the Big Ten shuffle somewhat because of the holy trinity of bigs (Diamond Stone, Caleb Swanigan, and Thomas Bryant) that enter the league this season. All he did in his first game was throw up a 13-point, 11-rebound, five-block showing in which he proved that he too could become a monster down the line. If Davis adds 10 to 15 pounds of muscle during this season or next summer, he will turn into an abject terror. McQuaid, the other Spartans’ freshman to shine over the weekend, is known for his shooting ability but looks like he could become a secondary ball handler off of the bench. He dished out three assists while displaying a poise and court sense that few newcomers readily possess.

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There are several different methods available to decide which conference is the best in college basketball. One way is to treat every game equally, and we rely on computers for that, utilizing such tools as the outdated RPI or the tempo-based models like the Pomeroy ratings. A popular conventional wisdom-based practice is to judge leagues based on their relative strength at the top — for example, the number of ranked teams in the weekly polls or high seeds in the NCAA Tournament. But regardless of how we choose to judge the different conferences, the performance of a league against the best of the rest goes a long way toward establishing the perceived pecking order.

Tom Crean’s ranked Indiana team will face three ACC schools in non-conference play. (Jonathan Ferrey/Getty Images)

Today we review the 2o best scheduled non-conference games involving ACC squads in the upcoming season. We chose that number of games because that’s how many times an ACC school will face a team ranked in the Top 25 of one of the two national preseason polls. This includes one game with an indeterminate opponent — Syracuse’s second game of the Battle 4 Atlantis will be against a ranked team regardless of whether the Orange win or lose their first contest in the Bahamas. In addition to those 20 guaranteed meetings with ranked opponents, seven ACC schools could see another ranked team in an early season tournament depending on how their brackets play out.

• Miami – Puerto Rico Tip-Off (Utah, Butler)
• Duke – 2K Classic (Wisconsin)
• N.C. State – Legends Classic (LSU)
• Wake Forest – Maui Invitational (Vanderbilt, Kansas)
• Georgia Tech – Preseason NIT (Villanova)
• Boston College – Wooden Legacy (Arizona)
• Notre Dame – AdvoCare Invitational (Wichita State)

It’s worth mentioning that computer-based non-conference strength of schedule ratings will be determined by how good opponents turn out to be over the course of the entire season. There will always be wins that look good in November and December that don’t seem so great after reality sets in later in the season. Likewise, losing to an unranked team early in the year may not appear so bad in March when that same opponent turned out to be a legitimate team. Read the rest of this entry »

We continue our Big Ten microsite predictions and superlatives with the second half of our preseason standings. We presented our preseason standings with teams #14 – #8 on the microsite yesterday; today, we unveil the top half. These are the teams that we as a group believe will finish near or atop the league when all the dust settles and will result in the likely conference representatives in the NCAA Tournament.  Enjoy!

It’s Jarrod Uthoff’s turn to lead the Hawkeyes to another NCAA Tournament.

• 7. Iowa: With Aaron White now graduated, all eyes turn to senior Jarrod Uthoff to take the baton and lead the Hawkeyes to a third consecutive NCAA Tournament— something this program hasn’t accomplished since the early 1990s. With players like Adam Woodbury, Peter Jok and an experienced backcourt to work with, Uthoff will have a supporting cast with enough talent to get it done.
• 6. Michigan: The Wolverines are a talent-laden team with a number of players similar to Caris LeVert who fit perfectly into John Beilein’s prolific three-point offense. Both he and Derrick Walton were sidelined with injuries for the majority of last season, which gave the rest of the young roster experience to draw from this year. Now fully healthy, Michigan is set up for a comeback campaign pushing toward the top of the Big Ten.

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There’s not many programs out there that will be more interesting to follow this season than Indiana. For starters, Hoosiers’ head coach Tom Crean is on the hot seat. Given his team’s lofty preseason ranking (#15 in AP preseason poll) and icy relationship with a sizable portion of the Indiana fan base, the 49-year old head coach could find himself in the unemployment line in April if he fails to lead his team to an NCAA Tournament run this year. Luckily for him, Indiana is a team more than capable of doing such a thing, thanks to a high-powered offense (116.7 adjusted efficiency, ninth in the nation) that will be led by one of the best point guards in the country (Yogi Ferrell). Now entering his senior season, the two-time all-Big Ten performer looks to lead the Hoosiers back to how he found the program when he was freshman — capable of winning the Big Ten and becoming legitimate national title contenders.

Yogi Ferrell will need to lead the Hoosiers to play better defensively if he is to make a serious run in the NCAA Tournament in his final year. (Darron Cummings, AP)

Ferrell (16.3 PPG last season) is lucky to have talented players like James Blackmon, Jr. (15.7 PPG) and Troy Williams (13.0 PPG) on his wings. The trio fuels a frenetic uptempo offense (77.4 PPG) that can score in bunches against any team, but even with the addition of five-star center Thomas Bryant to man the post, the Hoosiers won’t go anywhere next March if they don’t improve their atrocious defense. There’s no nice way to put it: Last year’s defense — ranked 214th nationally, per KenPom — was an unmitigated disaster. It was an inexcusable display of ineptitude in almost every defensive area from a power conference team, as only four other NCAA Tournament teams had a worse defensive rating last season (all were #13 seeds or higher). The table below illustrates Indiana’s woeful play on the defensive end of the court. Read the rest of this entry »

College basketball fans can breathe a little easier today. Certain milestones come along during October and November that make the season seem that much closer. Midnight Madness, conference media days and the release of your go-to preseason magazine all show incremental progress toward that first tip-off. On Monday afternoon, the second of the two major college basketball preseason polls was finally released, meaning that we really aren’t very far away now — just 11 days, in fact. A total of six Big Ten teams were on the AP voters’ initial ballots — Maryland, Michigan State, Indiana, Wisconsin, Purdue and Michigan — so here are a few quick takeaways from today’s release.

Denzel Valentine is a big reason why Michigan State is one of six teams ranked in the preseason AP top 25(Getty).

• Best Conference Debate: Many pundits feel that the ACC and Big Ten will be battling all season for the crown as best conference this season. Score round one for the B1G, as the league put two more teams inside the Top 25 (six) than the ACC (four). The Big 12 also has four teams listed in the AP poll, while the SEC and the Pac-12 each have three. Give credit to the ACC, however, for listing three teams (UNC, Duke, Virginia) among the top six. The ACC also has four more teams listed within the next 10 of the “Others Receiving Votes” category, while the Big Ten only has one (Iowa). We’ll have to wait for the ACC/Big Ten Challenge in early December and the rest of the non-conference portion of the schedule to see how this particular competition between leagues plays out.
• Purdue and Michigan Get Extra Love:  Maryland (#3), Michigan State (#13), Indiana (#15), and Wisconsin (#17) all start in the exact same spot in both polls, whereas Purdue and Michigan both ended up with a slightly better position in the AP poll. The Boilermakers were tied for 24th in the Coaches’ Poll but will tip off at 23rd in the AP. Michigan just barely finished outside the Coaches’ Top 25 by two points, but they cracked the AP by taking the place of West Virginia in these rankings.
• Plenty of Chances Against the Top 25: There will be at least 16 games where Big Ten teams will have a chance to knock off a Top 25 team, as of the current rankings within this poll. Many of these games were already highlighted in our previous posts. In addition to these match-ups, there are also 10 possible games in tournaments, where if the bracket plays out a certain way, more resume-enhancers will be available for the league.