Big Ten Basketball 2022-23 Discussion

Playing 6 games in 12 days is tiring. Playing tired leads to injuries. Injuries lead to poorer play. I don’t see how that’s hard to see.

I didn’t say I think it is primarily responsible for the B10 title drought, but if the B10 does ask teams to do that more than other conferences (I don’t know that’s true or not), it is at least something that lowers the odds by some percent. If one of the say 5 teams the conference has produced that could win the title gets hamstrung by a stress fracture, that seems like a rather large % discount right? Especially when one (1) win ends the drought.

Like, I think most of us think that Michigan team was capable of a title at full strength, right?

There’s never going to a case where we are 100% sure why a guy got injured.

Also Charles Matthews, who played but was greatly diminished

Sorry but this is all still a lot of reaching.

“The big East would never have a team play 5 of their first seven on the road”

LAST YEAR, Seton Hall, the team Willard coached, played 5 of its first 7 conference games on the road.

10 Likes

The coaches comment was:

“… and the Big Ten’s scheduling has caused its NCAA title drought.”

I need more than the Isaiah Livers injury to give that statement credibility.
-Was the injury caused by how the Big Ten schedules? Maybe, maybe not.
-Would Livers have gotten the stress fracture with different schedule? Maybe, maybe not.
-Would Michigan have won the tournament with Livers? Maybe, maybe not.

It’s still a huge reach to have that be the main support behind a statement of “… and the Big Ten’s scheduling has caused its NCAA title drought.

1 Like

I’m all for any coach complaining about 9pm tipoffs.

3 Likes

Livers or no Livers, I don’t think anyone was beating Baylor in 2021.

4 Likes

We win in 2014 with a healthy McGary though. Nobody can tell me different!

7 Likes

Purdue mightve won the Hummel year, too. But Hummel was injured after Big East type Wed-Sat-Wed-Sat scheduling. Talk about a glitch in the matrix. How can we shape that to fit the narrative?

1 Like

Villanova clearly would have won the national title last season if Justin Moore didn’t tear his Achilles due to overuse. Oh crap he’s from the Big East isn’t he, scratch that, this is only a Big Ten thing according to a coach who has coached in a whopping two Big Ten games

4 Likes

To be fair I don’t recall him saying Big East players don’t get injured.

I don’t think it’s nuts to say that a schedule that lends itself to greater fatigue levels (which seems sort of true?) could lead to more injury, and more injury to worse play.

It’s obviously not the primary or even top 5 reason the Big Ten hasn’t won a title but I’d buy that it could result in a marginal decrease of likelihood played out over a decade plus.

(I also don’t think he’s nuts to point out that 9 pm tips suck for the players, they suck for me too)

I think it’s pretty fair for instance to say that the Livers injury had a very real decrease on a conference champion. I think that with him, we are in the final four pretty easily, and the chances of winning a title from the final four, even with Baylor in there, aren’t 0%. Was a title LIKELY? No.

I haven’t researched exhaustively to find other cases (and won’t) but I’m sure they exist.

I don’t think scheduling “has caused the title drought”. I think it’s very possibly a minor contributor!

1 Like

I’m all for criticizing late tips, he lost me the moment he tried to attribute lack of postseason success to that.

6 Likes

How’s this

6 games in 13 days stinks

That’s probably his actual point

2 Likes

I love all the detailed analysis, but wasn’t Willard’s claim a bit of hyperbole and exaggeration? I think of it as more of a hot-take and blowing off steam rather than a reasoned doctoral thesis.

1 Like

In general I think the conference does an extremely poor job with their schedule. Illinois has 6 conference games in a span of 16 days. Then they go having 3 conference games over a 12-13 day span. Maybe they average it out to 9 conference games in a month but it still doesn’t look great.

2 Likes

If you want to coach in one of the best leagues with the best TV contracts then you get used to what that means.

The Big Ten schedule is optimized to put the games that people care about most in the most valuable tv windows.

That’s also why Willard makes what he makes.

18 Likes

Robbie Hummel is a cyborg? You think he’s mortally injured but he just keeps comin’ back.

1 Like

Well he literally said this:

“… and the Big Ten’s scheduling has caused its NCAA title drought.”

3 Likes

IIRC Livers in the team knew about and were monitoring his injury long before we did. I think it was a thing even before the covid shut down that year.

2 Likes

Being a very good coach is an extremely lucrative profession. I don’t really seem to see a correlation between coaches salaries and conference tv deals. Pac 12 is terrible Cronin still gets close to 6 a year. If salaries are that high why cant there be better tv times for the players.

1 Like

Good thing they don’t have 6 games in 13 days then.

Someone mentioned Illinois has 6 in 16 which I’m not seeing? I see a 6-in-18 stretch from January 7 to the 24th which seems to be their worst and does not seem that unusual or onerous. Kansas has a 6-in-17 stretch for example from January 21 to February 6.

3 Likes