Posts from the future: “22-10. Nebraska +11.5 tonight”
2 Likes
22-10.
Nebraska +12 (-120)
Michigan State -11 (-120)
It sounds like Juwan Morgan is go tonight so I’m not sure on Maryland/Indiana. Lean Maryland.
1 Like
The B1G studio guys made a good point recently about the strength of the conference. Basically saying that after the top 3 teams, if you are setting In fourth or fifth place and you lose a couple of games, you could be in tenth place.
On a similar note, we need Nebraska to lose at OSU tonight and they likely will. They have a pretty easy schedule the rest of the way and hold the tie breaker against us.
I think UM is pretty solidly 4th in the conference at this point and it’d take a bit for UM to fall out of the top 5 by most any metric. UM has 6 wins, and MD and IU at slots 6 and 7 only have four, and here are their next 5 and 4 games respectively (to get them to 12 conference games):
IU - MD, @Ill, PU, @OSU, MSU – also, Deron Davis is out for the year.
MD - @IU, MSU, @PU, Wiscy
We have @PU, NW, Minny for our next 3. I think we have a pretty good chance at having at least a 2-game cushion at the 12-game mark.
Also, I’m not sure I’d say the Big Ten is strong. There may be a lot of teams that can beat each other on any given night and that are tough wins to get, but the conference seems pretty mediocre this year.
If I read right the team now has 9 games in six weeks ahead. Maybe the recent compressed schedule pays off–especially given the relative success–in a lot of time now for Beilein to tinker with this team. In my view, this team is way ahead of schedule in terms of success and expectations. Six weeks is a lot of time to evolve and for the offense to begin to hum.
And just to add–with Matthews I think they probably just need to continue to encourage him. Quite often he looks like he’s seeing some nice play in front of him, gets halfway into it and freezes a little. And although there does look like a tendency to play hero ball I’ll bet that Beilein, with few other options, is encouraging him to get it done. He’s quite a deft passer, so there’s that. . .
3 Likes
I think it’s five weeks, but it’s still pretty manageable considering the team just played 8 games over essentially 3 weeks (22 days).
Speaking of schedules, look at how brutal Nebraska’s is purely from a games/days perspective. 4 games in 8 days, three of which are on the road.
Yeah, and it’s not like they’ve been road warriors so far (1-5). They do get lucky that OSU is on their 7th game in 19 days. And then Nebraska goes 8 days before another game. It seems like they should improve the scheduling with the Mon/Fri addition.
OSU, by the way, will then play their 8th game in 22 days against PSU. It will be impressive if they come out of that stretch at 12-0 in the Big Ten. They have to play @PU and @Mich, but otherwise have a fairly easy remaining schedule. Definitely the biggest (positive) surprise and story of the league.
The other thing is that the second half of our league schedule is objectively easier than the first half. If you look at the current Big Ten standings, we played six of our first nine games against the top half of the conference and only three against the bottom half, while in the second half it’s reversed: we’ll play only three against the top half (@PU, vs. OSU, @MD). We haven’t even played the 8th, 9th, 10th or 11th-place teams yet (Wisc, PSU, Northwestern, Minnesota, respectively) but we’re going to play a total of five games against them coming up, plus another game against 13th-place Iowa.
2 Likes
Unfortunately our games against Minny will come with Coffey back from injury
We only play them once and it’s at Crisler. And even with him they haven’t looked that good.
1 Like
Yes, but look at who they are playing. After tonight, it is the bottom of the standings.
Nebraska trails OSU 24-22 at the half. Both teams shooting under 36% from the field and are a combined 3-23 from three. Why didn’t they shoot like that against us.
Cowan really struggling at the end of this game for Maryland… looks rattled, unlike the Superman effort he put up against Michigan
Maryland loses another tough one… may end up being only a 4 bid league… has the big ten ever gotten only four teams in the tourney?
2008 was only 4 bids I believe. Of course, there were fewer teams then.
1 Like
Who do we want to win this OSU/Nebraska game? Hopefully Nebraska. I can’t root for OSU.
MSU has 8 turnovers in the first 8 minutes against 0-7 Illinois right now. They look like the entire team didn’t read the scouting report it’s like they had no idea full court pressure was coming
1 Like
Root for who you want to win the game! If you are worried about Big Ten tie breakers then you probably want Ohio State, but if you are worried about that now… Just enjoy some quality hoops.
The sad part is…they’re 9-11 from the floor with 8 turnovers and have still scored 20 points in the first 10 minutes despite how careless they are. That pretty much tells the story of how talented that team can be
If Nebraska wins this one, I think they have the inside track on us for 4th place.