Yeah. Started watching a few minutes ago. OU with 68 at halftime. Trae Young…good grief!
Trae Young is amazing. He’s the best player in the country.
Wow penn st loses at the buzzer to rider.
And Rutgers goes down in ot to stony brook. Tough night for the big ten so far. Iowa about to tip against Colorado.
Yep, B1G continuing to lay an egg in the Out of Conference season. Luckily for UM, Texas picked up a nice win over Bama tonight — need the Texas and UCLA wins to do some heavy lifting for the resume come March.
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UCLA up 10 over Kentucky with just over 7:30 to go!
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Nice win for the Bruins.
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Could be wrong but I don’t see a single game on the remaining sked that has to be a loss with the exception of MSU in EL on a Saturday at noon, and maybe Purdue away? It’s helpful that we play the latter at home first, especially if we can eke out a win. Are my glasses too maize and blue-colored?
Yes, your glasses are too Maize-and-Blue tinted. Michigan should be significant underdogs in the MSU game and both games vs Purdue. Plus until Michigan shows it can consistently finish off road games, any game away from Ann Arbor is at best a 50/50 proposition.
Iowa, Nebraska, Northwestern, Wisconsin, Penn St, Maryland … split those 6 road games, win the home slate (minus Purdue) and finish 11-7 in conference. A 12-6 conference record is still in play as well, but until the team shows more consistency, 12-6 is probably the ceiling for the B1G schedule.
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Barttovik gives us at least a 35% chance to win every game except the two you mentioned, and we’re favored in all but 5 of our remaining games - the two you mentioned and Purdue (home), @PSU, and @MD.
On the flipside, of the games we’re favored in, 7 give us a 72% or less chance of winning and include games like @Wiscy. And despite being favored in 11 remaining big ten games, he projects us winning only 9 of them.
So, yeah, the only nearly sure losses are @MSU and @PU, but there are also a lot of games we could lose. I feel pretty good about our direction, although our FT shooting worries me.
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Yes, free throw shooting is the elephant in the room that no one is talking about. At last glance, we were essentially tied with Rutgers as the worst FT shooting team in the conference. That’s going to cost us at least a couple of close games. Even in a weaker Big Ten, there’s no way we go 12-6 with free throw shooting that bad, especially when our three point shooting is nothing special, either.
I think you’re agreeing with me. We’re going to lose a few of those away games, but I don’t think we have to. I think we have a third or fourth-place conference finish in us. Free throw shooting has been godawful, but I see a regression to the Beilein mean in the offing.
I see encouraging signs on the 3 point shooting. And the better we learn to run our offense the more optimistic I get about our 3’s falling, although obviously some of the big ten defenses will be more challenging than a lot of what we’ve faced so far. Matthews is looking a little better at the line, but yes, our free throw shooting woes are terrifying.
Except that there is no “Beilein mean”. Not for this team, anyway. You have Matthews, Teske, Simpson, Poole, Brooks all as new contributors, and none are shooting free throws well enough.
Just to give some perspective, this team shot 81% on free throws in non-conference games last year, and 75% in the Big Ten. That’s compared to 63% so far this year. You’re not going to make that kind of gap up just by extra FT shooting in practice.
True that there are a lot of new pieces. But none of them has particularly poor form. Most of our terror arises from a stretch where they couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn. I don’t think it’s likely we remain so bad–in fact, we may already have turned the corner. Some caveats: Matthews needs to be able to hit them. And whether we hit them down the stretch in a critical game. . .
Simpson was a 71% FT shooter last season (31 attempts) and looks comfortable enough at the line. Seems reasonable to expect his 6/11 start to rise closer to 70% by season’s end.
Robinson & MAAR are pretty good FT shooters. Poole & Brooks both look like good shooters, so I’m willing to stay confident that they’re just caught in small sample sizes (5/10 & 8/12 respectively).
But Matthews was under 50% as a FR at Kentucky and has used a “hot streak” to improve to 50% this season. It is starting to look like he’s just not a good FT shooter.
Same with Teske. Yes it is smaller sample size with Teske, but he was 3/6 last season; 14/24 this season. Not much visual evidence that he “should” shoot FTs better, so the numbers probably represent what he is from the line.
Unfortunately for the team FT% most offensive possessions will go through Wagner (average FT shooter) or Matthews (poor FT shooter), so team average will struggle to improve too much. Late game with a lead, ball will probably be more in Robinson’s or MAAR’s or Simpson’s hands so better odds of average/above average FT results in those scenarios.
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Ouch, that’s a major setback for a tournament bubble team.
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Rutgers loses to my school Hartford. Let me just say for a Big Ten team that is horrible, Hartford ranks near the bottom of their conference and are in an extremely weak conference.
Remember what I said about this being a different Rutgers… uh, forget what I said about this being a different Rutgers. Rutgers, Home of the Eternal Facepalm.
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