And this Iowa W moves us to 31 on KenPom!
3 Likes
Izzo is broken because he put in a football player in the 1H of a meaningful game just to appease Mel Tucker
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If you were wondering:
3 Likes
He’s become even more one-dimensional—he just stands in the corner waiting for his defender to fall down so he can shoot a 3.
he literally blamed his tech on Juwan!
14 Likes
I knew he was innocent. I just knew it.
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So in Izzo’s mind you need to run on the floor and swear to get a T?
1 Like
Warde Manual deserves credit for lobbying behind the scenes to get a tech called on Izzo.
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I haven’t seen Iowa much this year so did I just catch them on a really really bad game? I thought they looked pretty weak. Murry was obviously a great player but I don’t know they looked much weaker to me than normal.,
The big payoff. 4D chess has been played.
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Keegan Murray padding his stats against another mid-major —
listens in earpiece
I’m sorry I’m being told…
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As I watched MSU get blown out by Iowa last night, I started thinking about their roster. Will they even get any players on the all big 10 team this season? It feels like they have a collection of solid role players without anyone they can count on consistently.
I then took that thought one step further and started pondering the all big 10 teams. But I like to think of them as functional basketball teams where you can have very limited positional switches and not what is likely to happen this year with three or four centers on the first team. As I went through it, you realize that there are more NBA quality wings in the League this year than in the recent past, but the lack of point guards is astonishing.
First Team
PG - Frazier (who saw that coming?)
SG - Ivey
SF - Davis
PF - Liddell
C - Kofi
Second Team
PG - ???
SG - ???
SF - Murray
PF - TJD or Williams
C - Hunter
Who are those other guards? Wheeler? Jones? Geo? Davison? McConnell?
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Payton Willis and Boo Buie are in the top tier of point guards with Frazier
On that note, our own team is pretty lacking in guards. We have 2 point guards and 2 guards in Brooks and Kobe. Incoming class has zero 2s and looking forward the only guard on our roster will be Kobe Bufkin.
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Think the first team is pretty easily:
Ivey/Davis/Murray/Liddell/Kofi at this point. I don’t see why that doesn’t follow the “functional basketball team” format.
Second team is Hunter and some other guys 
I agree with @ReegsShannon that Buie and Willis are both having really good season but their teams aren’t great.
I assume the real 2nd team will be mostly bigs: Dickinson, Edey, Trevion, TJD and Frazier maybe.
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Yeah, I thought about that option and it at least is a functional team that makes sense. The lack of guards in the league is pretty shocking - and might partially explain the overall mediocrity and game-to-game variation.
I thought of Buie but didn’t realize he had been as consistent as his stats indicate. I forgot about Willis. Pretty sad that they are on two of the worst teams and we struggled to come up with guards.
I mean, Ivey is a guard and a lottery pick and the most talented player in the conference.
Reminds me a bit of '14 when Nik and Gary were two of the best guards in the league. They aren’t short point guards but they were definitely guards. Davis/Ivey is the same thing IMO.
2 Likes
Oh, I agree. Ivey, Davis, and Murray are all high draft picks most likely and Liddell probably sneaks into the first round. That would be more first round picks in any year since 2018. They’re definitely being ranked higher overall than last year with Franz (only 1st), Ayo (2nd), and Wieskamp (2nd). Looking through this link shows you the general mediocrity of B10 players going to the draft lately. My point was just that the conference has a lot of decent non-Ivey guards…but is light on actual notable guards when you start listing guys like Buie, Jones, Brooks, Davison, Willis, etc. Those are all fine…none stand out. I guess when most of the conference went out and got transfers this year that’s what you’d expect.
https://basketball.realgm.com/ncaa/conferences/Big-Ten-Conference/2/nba-draft
Two of the three teams in contention have 1st Team All-Big Ten guards though… Trent Frazier has been the most underrated player in the league probably so it isn’t like the best teams in the league have weak guards really.
I don’t think Buie/Willis are really any different than someone like Carr last year – good stats, bad team.
I feel like there are usually only a couple of really great PGs… The COVID year we had Winston, Simpson, Cowan, Trice so maybe that was decent?
I just don’t think the 4th, 5th, 6th best guards in the conference usually stand out.