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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With the college basketball season more than halfway over, who knew that the Big Ten would, statistically, be just the fifth highest rated conference in the country (behind even the Pac-12!)? There’s no doubting that it has been a down year for a conference that has arguably been the nation’s best league over the past five years. Seeing the two best teams in the non-conference season (Michigan State and Purdue) already with two league losses isn’t helping. Surpisingly, Iowa and Indiana stand together atop the standings at 4-0 each, but they are coached by Fran McCaffrey and Tom Crean. How long can this really go on? It’s week eight of the Layup Line.

REPORT CARD

A: John Groce, Malcolm Hill and Kendrick Nunn

They only played one game since last Friday, but the Illini sure made the most of what was a huge game Sunday night against Purdue. They were in control from the start thanks to the Batman-and-Robin duo of Malcolm Hill and Kendrick Nunn. Both juniors continue to have their way with nearly every opponent, but no performance has been as impressive as the one they delivered Sunday. The two combined for 52 points on 17-of-27 shooting and 13-of-17 from the line, while adding 13 rebounds and three blocks. Nunn now leads the Big Ten in scoring (18.8), while Hill ranks third (18.1).

Malcolm Hill Helped The Illini Cruise Past Purdue (USA Today Sports)

Best of all, the Illini fulfilled John Groce’s game plan to a T, attacking the nation’s second-best two-point defense (38.2%) all night. The Illini had no problem with Purdue’s major size advantage, shooting 17 of 31 inside the arc, scoring 1.20 points per possession and forcing Purdue into its worst defensive effort of the season. If only Groce had a remotely healthy roster that wasn’t so reliant on Hill and Nunn…

B: Big Ten Point Guards

Overall, it was a great week for a number of Big Ten point guards, starting with Yogi Ferrell. He continued his brilliant play on Sunday against Ohio State, scoring 16 points and adding six assists, five rebounds and three steals. He’s averaging 19.8 points in Big Ten play and has been tasked, as usual, with guarding the opposing team’s best perimeter player each game. So far, he has lived up to the challenge, slowing down Andrew White, Bronson Koenig and Marc Loving the past three games.

Iowa point guard Mike Gesell earned Player of the Week honors after posting his first career double-double (22 points, 10 assists) in a win over Nebraska. He ranks ninth nationally in assists per game (6.9).

Bryant McIntosh continued to lead a shorthanded Northwestern group, as he dished out 11 assists at Minnesota and picked apart Wisconsin at home to the tune of 28 points, five assists and four rebounds. He ranks seventh nationally in assists per game (7.1).

Melo Trimble struggled in Tuesday’s loss in Ann Arbor, but he did put up 21 points and five assists and hit the game winning three-pointer in Madison on Saturday.

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After a two week holiday hiatus, the Layup Line is back and better than ever. Conference play has finally begun, and the Big Ten is already off to an interesting start. Four teams are undefeated (Iowa, Indiana, Maryland, Ohio State), and four are still winless (Illinois, Nebraska, Minnesota, Rutgers). There has been lots of good, lots of bad and lots of ugly, so let’s dive right into the nitty gritty of the last two weeks.

REPORT CARD

A: Iowa Hawkeyes

Fran McCaffery’s Team is Firing On All Cylinders (USA Today Images)

Sure, Indiana and Ohio State are also 3-0 in Big Ten play but neither has wins as impressive as that of Iowa. How the Hawkeyes scored 50 points in the second half against the best defensive team in the nation is beyond explanation, but it happened. And if we forget about Denzel Valentine, Buddy Hield and Ben Simmons for a moment, Jarrod Uthoff has been the best player in the country. If March Madness started tomorrow, Uthoff would likely be a First Team All-American. Offensively, the Hawkeyes currently rank 11th in efficiency, eighth in turnover percentage, 39th in effective field goal percentage and 21st in three-point percentage. Defensively, they rank 36th in efficiency, 10th in opponents’ free throw rate, 32nd in opponents’ three-point percentage and fifth in block percentage. No disrespect to Mike Gesell and Peter Jok and their to-this-point stellar seasons, but this team would not be nearly as effective without Uthoff. It most certainly could not have beaten Purdue in the fashion it did without his 25-point, four-block effort.

Oh, and Iowa also beat Michigan State and Nebraska handily. It’s high time to buy stock in the most underrated team in the country.

B: Diamond Stone

If there is such a thing as freshman jitters, Diamond Stone had ‘em. The Maryland center is now a completely different player than the one we witnessed in the first month of the season — a huge development for a team with serious Final Four aspirations. As of last week, Maryland is one of six major conference teams scoring more than a point per possession on post-ups (1.02 PPP); last season it managed just 0.75 PPP in those situations. Mark Turgeron can thank Stone for that, a player who is coming off a sweep of the Big Ten’s weekly awards (Player and Freshman of the Week) and an epic 39-point, 12-rebound performance in a comeback win against Penn State. It’s Diamond’s world right now.

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After two days worth of games, the annual ACC/Big Ten Challenge is deadlocked at four games apiece with six games left tonight. Michigan, Purdue, and Northwestern picked up wins for the Big Ten last night, while North Carolina, Virginia, and Miami notched wins for the ACC. To prepare for the final night of play, the ACC and Big Ten microsites are once again here to defend the leagues they cover. Brendan Brody (Big Ten) and Matt Patton (ACC) make the case for each team in their respective leagues for all six contests that will take place tonight on the ESPN family of networks.

Penn State at Boston College (7:15 PM, ESPNU)

• Matt: The Eagles are coming off a disastrous trip to California which they ended getting pummeled by Santa Clara. How the team responds is the x-factor. On paper this looks like a fairly even matchup, which should give the advantage to the home team. Additionally, Jim Christian’s team has the pieces to be a better offensive team than they’ve shown thus far.Expect Christian to throw a few different defensive looks at Brandon Taylor to try to keep him uncomfortable, but the Eagles will win or lose this on the offensive end. Boston College has to make shots, and will need a strong performance out of freshman Jerome Robinson and transfer Eli Carter.
• Brendan: When they’ve won, Penn State has only given up 56.7 ppg. When they’ve lost, it’s because they’ve given up an obscene amount of three-pointers. Boston College has some shooters, but their two leaders in three-point attempts (Carter, and AJ Turner) are both shooting below 30 percent from deep. Look for the Nittany Lions to make sure they guard on the perimeter, and look for them to squeak out a close win in a low scoring game.

Wisconsin at Syracuse (7:15 PM, ESPN2)

Jim Boeheim Will Stay in New York For Another Game Tonight (US Presswire)

• Brendan: Syracuse has been one of the biggest surprises nationally after starting the season 6-0. Wisconsin has struggled to a 4-3 mark, but have showed some flashes of getting things together despite playing a tough schedule. The key aspect that they can exploit in this game is in getting extra possessions on the glass. They rebound 41.0 percent of their misses, while the Orange struggle to close out possessions by snagging a defensive rebound (308th nationally in defensive rebounding rate). Look for the Badgers to take advantage of these extra possessions to get the road win here.
• Matt: Raise your hand if through six games you thought Trevor Cooney would be the least efficient Orange player. Syracuse has totally reinvented itself, and it hasn’t needed Dajuan Coleman to do so. Michael Gbinije has been outstanding running the offense (with Cooney’s help). If the Orange can keep their starting five on the floor most of the game, they’ll be in good shape. Neither team will be interested in running the floor, so that’s an achievable goal. Tyler Roberson and Tyler Lydon can’t let Wisconsin’s ball movement hurt the Orange inside, though the Badgers have not had a banner year offensively to date.

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Minutes after Indiana defeated Northwestern to advance to the quarterfinals of the Big Ten tournament, Tom Crean was asked if he thought his team was now in the NCAA Tournament. “Well, I don’t know,” Crean said. “You know, I really don’t know. And no one knows. That’s the beauty of it all.”

It was an insight tinged with a bit of both insanity and brilliance. If you have watched Crean coach basketball for the last month, you do not believe he could possibly find any “beauty” in the uncertainty of his team’s current predicament. The cheeks have been too red; the forehead vein too prominent; and most importantly, the Indiana wins too infrequent. And yet, thinking as a college basketball fan, it made too much sense. The beauty is there. We are just two days from Selection Sunday, and in reality, so much has yet to be decided. It’s an uncertainty that catalyzes Championship Week drama every single year; in many ways, it defines the lead-in to the NCAA Tournament. And here was Crean, who in 2015 has been as negatively affected as anyone by the pre-Tournament unpredictability, telling us about the beauty of it all.

Tom Crean, Yogi Ferrell And The Hoosiers Will Take On Maryland Friday Night In A Game That Could Define Their Season (USATSI)

In the minds of many, Thursday’s victory over Northwestern put Indiana into the field of 68. That belief is founded partially in the strength of the Hoosiers’ profile, which undoubtedly improved by dispatching a Wildcats team that had entered the night winners of five of their last seven. But it’s also a result of bubble carnage elsewhere: Texas A&M, Illinois, Texas, Ole Miss, Miami, Old Dominion and Stanford all suffered crippling losses on Thursday. All in all, it was a day that could not have gone much better for the Hoosiers. That doesn’t mean that they are safely there yet, or that they couldn’t REALLY use a quarterfinal victory over Maryland tonight. But for a team that hadn’t won a game of any kind since February 22, Thursday was a good day.

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