I shudder to think what Syracuses last two seasons would have been if he hadn’t hadn’t fathered two decent players at an advanced age.
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Missed this a few days ago. This is an amazing subheadline: “Led by junior forward Coleman Hawkins, Illinois edges out Indiana as our experts’ pick to win the Big Ten”
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Kenpom has his stuff out now.
Indiana - 12
Iowa - 23
Purdue - 25
Michigan - 26
Michigan St - 31
Ohio St - 32
Illinois - 33
Penn St - 46
Rutgers - 50
Wisconsin - 55
Maryland - 56
Northwestern - 70
Nebraska - 108
Minnesota - 109
Little surprised how much this follows the national consensus. Indiana viewed as heavy favorite. 2-7 is kinda interchangeable. Then a drop off.
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Penn State at 46 with that frontcourt is big yikes. I don’t know how much better you can expect Myles Dread to be and while I like Cam Wynter more than Sam Sessoms, the latter shot 42% on threes last season. Is all the improvement coming from Pickett and Lundy?
I know his ratings are based on recent program history and not player projections but… well I don’t have a but. That explains it I suppose.
At least he has Michigan ahead of msu unlike Bartholomew
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Returning minutes is usually a pretty key factor in these, I think. Note Virginia at 5 too.
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The guy who is pathologically afraid to shoot is suddenly going to drop 15 a night? Ahahahahahahahaha hahahaha.
Give me a break, Bart.
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I know Illinois lost a lot of production in Kofi, but I figured their transfers would make up for that in kenpom’s model.
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You apparently didn’t read the memo that Coleman-Hawkins is required to be a breakout candidate and star in any conversation about 2022 Illinois. No word on whether that memo was written by the Brandon Johns fan club or not.
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I actually do believe in Coleman Hawkins breakout candidate. And figured Mayer and Shannon would boost their projection.
Happy National KemPom preseason rankings release day!!! 
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yeah, honestly, this makes me believe a whole lot more in indiana and makes me think maybe we’ve been too rough on them?
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Nah.
They have a lot of returning minutes from a mediocre bubble tournament team. Other teams have more unknowns, which hurts the rankings, but likely unlocks a higher upside when we find out which new players are legit
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Coleman Hawkins??? On top of the RJ Melendez hype all off-season???
Might as well pencil them into the Final Four now.
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Surprised Indiana’s defense is projected to be so good. I don’t remember them standing out as great last few seasons. (Looks like they ended up #24 in Kenpom defense last year.)
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I’m starting to get that vibe too, but 22nd for them nationally offensively feels like such a stretch. Their O rating was worse last year than any point under Miller. Even looking late in the year, their offensive efficiency didn’t get better in February or March.
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More preseason projections: https://evanmiya.com/
- Iowa
- MSU
- Indiana
- Purdue
- Illinois
- Michigan
- Wisconsin
- OSU
- Maryland
- Rutgers
- PSU
- Northwestern
- Nebraska
- Minnesota
Edit: Not sure why it shows up this way. Looks normal until it posts.
wait, what? the big ten has all 14 teams between 12th and 25th in the country?
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I’m guessing it was a copy/paste and the forum software auto-generated the list using Iowa’s #12 ranking as the starting point (although MSU is #13).
The actual ranks are as follows:
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I will eat my shoe if Iowa and MSU end up 1 and 2 in the conference
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