Liddell more POY votes than Dickinson. I’m not alone! (Although i will note this poll doesn’t necessarily have the best track record lol)
I’m still unsure why so many people like Purdue over Illinois
Minor grammatical point: “Illinois will dominate (not dominant) the paint.”
Whoops 
Typo there, reminds me of the “most dominated” Tarris Reed highlight vid.
Illinois’ 3 first place votes came from their 2 beat writers… and Dylan.
… yet Kofi Cockburn won POTY pretty easily. Doesn’t completely add up for me.
Here’s my issue with all of the Purdue love. They were 0-3 against the top three programs in the conference last year (Michigan, Illinois, Iowa) and got blown out in two of those games. So not only did they never beat a single one of them…they only had to play each once! What does their record look like if they play a couple more games against those big three and are we still in love with them bringing back their entire roster?
They did go 2-1 against OSU if you want to give them that, but two of those games were toss-ups.
While I obviously don’t agree with Dylans order of placement of teams #1 and #2, or as he says teams 1A and 1B , I absolutely agree with his rationale. Illinois is a team that possesses great experienced talent and they will be good, but by the end of the year WATCH OUT for that combination of young talent and experienced talent on our Michigan squad!
If I were a gambling man, I’d put more money on Illinois to win the conference than Purdue. I haven’t looked at schedules yet to see who gets the favorable single-plays, but otherwise we’ve seen a similar Illinois team be significantly better than a similar Purdue team already. Maybe Ivey/Edey make a leap while Illinois misses Ayo I guess…but I’m more aligned to Dylan’s thinking than all of this Purdue love.
I think people are betting on Ivey. Which might be smart. Maybe. He’s the best talent among returnees in conference. But that’s Purdue’s only way to get better. So if Ivey is the runner up in B1G POY as this poll suggests then Purdue may very well win the conference.
I don’t really see why that matters too much. Last year’s POTY was Garza and Iowa finished 3rd in the B1G last year. Obviously Garza was a unique case since he was NPOTY while being an offensive force and a defensive liability, but I don’t think it’s hard to envision a scenario where Kofi is the best player but Illinois doesn’t win the league.
Also I’ll come out now and say I think a lot of this Illinois love and Purdue questioning seems like overcorrecting to me, kind of like you mentioned about Maryland on the pod. Purdue was a top 25 KenPom team last year despite being one of the youngest teams in the country. They played 5 freshmen significant minutes, meaning we could realistically expect noticable improvements from all 5 of those guys (not that all 5 will improve but have the potential to improve). And obviously the entire world is high on Ivey, including you who had him as a top 5 player preseason. If he’s a top 5 player, along with Trevion being top 5/10, I don’t see how Purdue isn’t top 1/2. I get that there are concerns about Edey and Williams overlapping in skill set, but they made it work last year. Worst case you do the exact same thing and just reduce Edey’s role from what it probably should be, and you still have a much better version of the same team from last year. If any coach gets the benefit of the doubt there, for me it’s Painter.
With Illinois, you obviously still have Kofi, Curbelo, Frazier and some nice role players. But this is the same team from last year minus the 2nd best player in the country in Ayo, a 4/5 star freshman who started every game in Miller, and Giorgi. To fill those roles you add…Plummer and Payne? I definitely think Illinois will be good, I’d say preseason top 3, but that seems noticably worse than last year. Especially since a lot of this relies on a freshman who had a 101 ORTG last year who couldn’t shoot the ball or stop turning it over becoming an All-League type player. And I see massive questions on the perimeter defensively since they somehow got smaller than last year. And to add on one more, they lost all 3 assistant coaches from last year who were allegedly the guys that got Underwood to move away from his terrible defensive pressure scheme and and fixed the defense.
Considering all that for both teams, I feel a lot more comfortable with Purdue being better than Illinois this year. I’d much rather put my faith in Painter figuring out those issues than Underwood.
Illinois could have the best big man and the best point guard in the league, I just don’t see why they aren’t considered in the mix at the top.
I understand what you are saying but there’s also the fact that Illinois was already really good. Luka Garza had been great and Iowa was not great, that was kind of established.
If Kofi is the best player in the Big Ten, Illinois should be good for a lot of the same reasons it was great last year.
It’s possible I’m missing it, and if so my apologies, but I’m guessing you intended to link to the Athletic piece in the article.
Here’s Jardy’s Dispatch write up as well (it isn’t just a “The Athletic thing”), I’m sure other people posted their ballots too.
One note on Purdue, I think Sasha Stefanovic is like 5-10% worse than Ryan Cline/Dakota Mathis/PJ Thompson were. Last two years in B1G play Stefanovic has shot 34% and 33% on threes. He had COVID to deal with last year and I do think he’s a very good shooter, he’s just not quite on that level.
I am curious to see if Illinois has any chemistry issues. A lot of strange offseason happenings there…
In the end, they got a couple of key seniors back for extra years and Kofi is back. They brought in another guard who is friends with Curbelo. Doesn’t seem like much potential chemistry issues that I can see.
Based on everything that’s been out there for a long time now, Adam Miller leaving is probably a net-positive as far as chemistry. Or just generally less drama to deal with at least.
My ONLY “concern” with Illinois is that they lost a lot of ice-in-the-veins with Ayo’s departure. How they operate in the final 3-4 minutes of a game will be pretty interesting to watch this year (I’d assume a lot of Curbelo/Kofi action). Ayo hit a lot of 1 possession shots, but he also stretched leads with clutch jumpers in the final minutes of games…