Big Ten Basketball 2020-21 Discussion (Part 2)

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The UCLA loss stings because we were one shot away from the Final Four, but we can be confident that we’ll get another chance in the future. Recruits certainly think so. If you’re a 16-17 year old, Michigan’s been good at basketball most of your life and now has a coach with an NBA pedigree.

Illinois doesn’t have that. They were bad for most of the 2010s and Underwood is not a very proven commodity. This was supposed to be for them what 2013 was for Michigan, the big postseason breakthrough. It looks like they blew their chance.

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This is a good point that I had not considered. These recruits only know Michigan as being a successful basketball program. Interesting to think about.

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I’ll even go further. The UCLA loss is painful more because of what might have been with a win than in that it was as some sort of failure like Illinois. As a #1 seed, losing a tight one in the regional final is about par for the course. You can’t really expect to make the Final Four (less than half of #1 seeds make the FF) so it was about an average run. And that came on top of a very successful season including a conference title.

Illinois didn’t get the regular season conference title nor the deep tourney run. The only success in their season is the whining about the games we missed and then their conference tournament title.

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Yikes.

May 24, 2021

Bohannon Involved in Physical Altercation in Iowa City

IOWA CITY, Iowa – University of Iowa senior basketball player Jordan Bohannon was physical assaulted early Sunday morning in Iowa City. Bohannon is recovering after receiving medical attention to treat a serious head injury.

“Thankfully Jordan is recovering well after being attacked by an individual he did not see coming at him,” said Iowa head basketball coach Fran McCaffery. “We were made aware of the incident immediately. We are grateful that friends who were with Jordan at the time kept the incident from escalating. His health is our number one concern.”

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There’s a video circulating on Twitter. I don’t know exactly what happened but it appears a certain basketball player (Jordan) was running his mouth too much and someone took exception to that.

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D3 transfer

Hey, get your own D3 transfer story, Minnesota!

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They have a D2 transfer and a D3 transfer, what could go wrong.

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RIP, Ben Johnson’s head coaching career.

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I don’t see the issue. I like the Golden Gophers to win the GLIAC this year.

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Hiring him might be the strangest decision I can remember a Big Ten team making.

The whole Pitino thing is so odd. Little Richie had hardly any resume before he got the job, he was terrible while there for the most part, they fired him, they hired one of his former assistants who also had a thin resume, Richie gets an immediate D1 job, the former assistant doesn’t keep anyone from the previous regime…which would seem like one of the few reasons you would hire a guy like him in the first place.

Feeling better about Nebraska finishing out of the basement, that’s for sure. MN is clearly at the bottom, Northwestern was mostly garbage last year and rolls it back, Wisconsin/Rutgers/Iowa/PSU are all going through a rebuild (?) phase…Hoiberg has them right where he wants them!

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He was hired because of his in state connections… that he had a chance to recruit while an assistant and only got a couple. The hire never made sense. A mid level B1G school hiring a Big East assistant that was not under some famed or well thought of coach is bad. No other way to put it

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The Gopher Hole message board was fun to check in on this season. The first half of the year they had a long thread about the urgency of extending Pitino’s contract and debating how long the extension should be. By season’s end they were unanimously calling for him to get the axe. They’re now trying to talk themselves into the Johnson hire.

JuCo? NAIA? They’re 60% of the way to a Bingo!

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What else would there be to do? Only option at this point.

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Maybe this is the “Top 40” program Fran Frascilla was talking about.

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Seems unexpected, no?

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