Monday, September 22, 2008
2008-09 Big Ten Basketball Crystal Ball
It's the first week of autumn. Across the Northeast and Midwest, leaves are changing. The air is getting its first hints of crispness. The first conference football matchups hit Big Ten campuses this weekend. So this is a perfect time to take a look into the crystal ball and see how the Big Ten will shape up ... on the hardwood.
Believe it or not, college hoops practice starts up next month. So let's take a break from hearing from SEC fans about how weak our conference is on the gridiron and look forward to November — when we can hear from ACC fans how they've owned the ACC/Big Ten Challenge. Here are my predictions for the Big Ten roundball season.
1. Michigan State will miss graduated Drew Neitzel much more than anyone thinks. The Spartans can talk-up their rebounding and toughness all they want, but it was amazing how many mistakes No. 11's sharpshooting covered up. Tom Izzo always brings in highly rated recruiting classes, but the Spartans will not evolve into a national title threat because they will miss having a reliable go-to guy.
2. For the third year in a row, Ohio State will pin its hopes on a seven-foot freshman. The next in the line of Thad Matta blue-chippers, center B.J. Mullens, is probably a little closer to Kosta Koufos than Greg Oden in the immediate impact department, but the 2008-09 Buckeyes have a much stronger supporting cast returning than what Koufos worked with in 2007-08. The exodus of Mike Conley, Jr. and Daequan Cook, along with Oden and some key seniors, left the cupboard relatively bare for Matta last year. This year, David Lighty and Evan Turner return and will propel the defending NIT-champs to a first-round win in the big tournament.
3. Indiana will rally behind new head coach Tom Crean and make the tournament ... the National Invitational Tournament, that is. There's a reason why the opposing players IU will face this year will go to school for free: They're good. No matter how good a coach Tom Creen is, the cream and crimson will simply be outclassed by superior talent too frequently this season. The program will struggle this year as they retain more NCAA violations than scholarship players from the Kelvin Sampson Era.
4. Iowa, regardless of its record, will upset one of the conference's top four (MSU, UW, Purdue, OSU) in Iowa City. I've never been to Carver Hawkeye Arena, and I think I never want to. Apparently there's something about that building that makes the Bates Motel seem welcoming to visitors.
5. Northwestern and Penn State will continue to be the last stops before basketball Siberia in the Big Ten. The two will combine for five conference wins, but don't feel sorry for their fans. The Nittany Lions will be too excited over an increasingly rare January bowl appearance, while the Wildcat faithful will be wrapped up in doing what they do best — interviewing for jobs that pay six figures and getting ready to shape the free world.
6. The 2005 National Title Game will seem like decades ago to Illinois, which will struggle to a second-consecutive losing season. The Illini have bid adieu to former guard Jamar Smith for good after legal issues, and forward Brian Randle's graduation leaves a gaping leadership void. Bruce Weber continues to make inroads to the 2009 and 2010 seasons with his recruiting, but there won't be any corks popping in Champaign this season.
7. The ACC will, once again, smack around the Big Ten in the increasingly stale ACC/Big Ten Challenge. With the exception of Wisconsin going to Virginia Tech and Virginia traveling to Minnesota, the ACC will be favored in the remaining nine matchups. But here's a fun fact, courtesy of TheACC.com: ACC teams are 33-4 at home in the challenge. Let the latest round of Big Ten bashing begin!
8. You can have your high-profile, big name non-conference games. The most intriguing non-conference test for a Big Ten team will be when Purdue faces Davidson and Stephen Curry in Indianapolis on December 20. The last time Big Ten fans saw Curry and the Wildcats, they had their feet firmly planted on the throats of Bo Ryan and the Badgers. When the Boilers beat Davidson by 12, it will cement Purdue as a conference title contender and show how much Curry will miss having graduated point guard Jason Richards to set him up.
9. Speaking of the Badgers, Ryan's squad will be underestimated yet again, and find a way to be in the regular season conference title race into late February. Has anyone this side of Jason Voorhees been left for dead this often, only to roar back to life? Brian Butch and Michael Flowers may be gone, but the Badgers return enough firepower to fly beneath the radar until we look at the standings in late January and wonder just how we overlooked them again.
10. And while the Badgers will scratch and claw into contention, the road to the Big Ten crown will ultimately go through East Lansing, where Michigan State will beat Wisconsin on February 22 and clinch the crown March 8 or 9 against Purdue.
11. Two Big Ten teams, Michigan State and Wisconsin, will survive the NCAA Tournament's first weekend. (No, I didn't miscount. We all know that in the Midwest, Big Ten really means 11.) The Badgers will fall again in the Sweet Sixteen, this time to the interior strength of Oklahoma, while the Spartans will be the victim's of a loaded bracket and fall to Louisville.