Absolutely true. They don’t. I’m just obsessing because 0-3 in '19 was just so incredibly and memorably painful. I hope we get them in the conference tourney as well. (Maybe lose the very next game, since I for some reason have convinced myself that a loss would be for the greater good).
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This is a super tough question. Every one of those losses will be incredibly annoying. I think I have to pick a MSU sweep since we’ll still win the title fairly easily and the Illinois “rivalry” will dissipate in a month.
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It’s tough because losing to Sparty is always gross . . . but if we lost to the Illini, we’d hear forever that we weren’t the “real” champion, that the Big Ten favored us, bla bla bla…
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I have zero social overlap with Illinois people and I don’t use Twitter or Reddit so I won’t really ever have to hear/read anything. On the flipside, I have tons of Sparty overlap. Not interested in hearing a single word from them, especially after the abomination that occurred on Halloween.
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recklessly swung arms are enough evidence IMO.
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Two against Sparty, no brainer. You wouldn’t shut up the Illini anyway especially if Ayo doesn’t play. “Well. . . we would have beaten you if Ayo was playing”, kind of thing.
On the Izzo topic: we should rejoice in the fact that whinny Izzo is not our coach. Howard is a true class act.
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Exactly. You need to beat Illinois to legitimize the regular season title
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Of course, if you had to lose to Sparty, it would have to be the second one, when you could legitimately argue that we had nothing to play for. The game in Crisler is non-negotiable.
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Yeah but consider that beating us without Ayo and still losing the conference tourney would probably result in most Illini fans just absolutely losing it. Many might short-circuit, or become hermits on uncharted Polynesian islands. There would be a lot fewer Illini fans in the future who remember what happened and to give us a hard time about it.
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No, you don’t. We’d have 2(!) conference losses. In only 17 games sure, but the games we missed were not tough. We are going to win the conference going away and there’s really nothing Illinois fans can do to make it any less legitimate
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Welp, sounds like we’ll just have to win all 3 I guess.
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Shoutout to @buckets12, who we’ve seen go from peasant among us to podcaster and, most recently, the social media manager for Ken Pomeroy!
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easy choice, sweep sparties
This is a ridiculous hypothetical because we are obviously going 0-3
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I have achieved the desired outcdome. I probably didn’t need to resort to those tactics, but you can never be too sure.
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If Michigan is 15-2 and then were to still play the three games that were cancelled, they would need to go 1-2 to end up tied with a win-out Illinois. There is just no way that Michigan would lose two games against IU, NW, and PSU.
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It seems like lots of these narratives are just schedule driven. They won 9 of 10 but played 3 good teams. Now they’ve played 2 of their last 3 games against top 10 teams and lost them (losing one they shouldn’t have). 12-7 /12-8 in the big ten seems about right for them.
Now that you mention it, ive never seen buckets and kenpom in the same room 
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Not in the same room… but I have seen them on the same Zoom call
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Let’s see what happens. I find it hard to believe that that approach is a winner, or that anyone tolerates it, with three possible games in hand. Another serious injury–let alone to a title contender–and Izzo’s reputation is toast.
I have been wrong before!