Big Ten Basketball 2020-21 Discussion (Part 1)

College Basketball
8971

2 Iowa defenders fall down, giving PSU a wide open 3. And it was an airball.

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8972

what the heck was that

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8973

NOW they hit one. Just enough to save that Kenpom ranking.

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8974

Plus aren’t almost all of Illinois’ remaining games on the road?

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8975

Pretty much. Their remaining schedule is @ MSU, vs Nebraska, @ Wisconsin, @ us, @ OSU.

Imagine the gauntlet that would be in a normal year where MSU is good and fans are in the stands.

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8976

Yeah, just looked at their schedule and I couldn’t believe that five of their last six are on the road. Then I looked a little closer and realized they had a stretch with six of eight at home, including four straight (I assume due to postponed road games). So they got in all their home games early.

8977

Yeah, I just don’t see how ILL runs that without getting at least one loss. Wisconsin could be toast, but after having a week off and looking at that as their “get right” spot as you mentioned is going to be tough. Plus to follow up with us and OSU is quite daunting.

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8978

I feel like one of those Grinnell weirdos could make this Northwestern roster run a fun and wild brand of basketball. The program has no history or identity whatsoever so who cares if the defense dips into the 300s? Embrace some sort of gimmick. Blandly stinking is no recipe for anything.

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8979

Boo Buie: Makes an absurdly terrible, over the back (I cannot describe it any other way), off balance shot

Bardo: "Wow, that was pretty!

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8980

The Audacious One vs. Elbows McGee

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8981

This is a very helpful graphic, well done.

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8982

Iowa has held their opponents to under 1 ppp in 4 of the last 5 games. The fifth game being Rutgers scoring 66 in 65 poss. Iowa’s defense is up to 72 on kenpom where it was on the 100 border a week or two ago.

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8983

Their next 2 games are Michigan and OSU. I would take more from those 2 games than the IU/MSU/Rutgers/broken Wisconsin/PSU gauntlet.

If they want to make noise in March these next 2 games are where they have to show up defensively.

8984

Imagine Chris Collins is the coach of your team and your program isn’t ready to fire him quite yet

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8985

Impressive for Iowa, but lets also remember that none of those teams are in the top 30 of offensive efficiency on KP. The best was PSU today at 33, and the avg ranking of those teams on offense is outside the top 50.

If you look at their season long numbers, they’ve actually kept a lot of teams this season at or under 1 PPP (12 if you include NW in the second meeting who was at 1.01 PPP and UNC who was at 1.01). Their two problems are that

  1. Consistently keeping teams at or barely under 1 PPP is a mediocre number.

  2. The three top 10 level offenses they’ve played (Gonzaga, Illinois and OSU) put up 1.16, 1.14 and 1.27 PPP. Not to mentioned giving up 1.2 to MSU, 1.19 to Indiana and 1.32 to Minnesota, all teams ranked 40th or worst in offensive efficiency.

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8986

Are you trying to give me nightmares or something?

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8987

Trice played like a veteran today.

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8988

If I have them, why shouldn’t you? :man_shrugging:

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8989

My Illinois fan cousin texted me today and mentioned he isn’t feeling great about Illinois chances. He brought up their upcoming schedule and boy is it brutal. Didn’t realize how many tough games they have left.

Side note: MSU’s next two games are against Illinois and OSU. Which means either MSU gets their tourney hopes crushed, or they pull off a big upset or two to help raise our Big Ten title odds… sounds like a win-win however it plays out.

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8990

Mark Turgeon getting that home B2B set up with Nebraska is going to go down as an all-time move.

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