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.
September 22, 2008
Iamnot kidding:
Believe it or not, #3 is true, the tickets have already been ordered. Their seats are in section 5, rows 22 and 23, seats 1-9.
September 23, 2008
t king seira:
No, IU will have a losing record, lose in the conference tournament, and have no postseason after that.
September 23, 2008
Jeffrey Frank:
Bruce Weber will lose 16 games this year and he will be fired at the conclusion of the season. At least he loses the “right way.”
September 23, 2008
Spartan Sports Page:
Michigan State will miss Neitzel, but not as much as you think. Kalin Lucas is the real deal and Chris Allen will light things up from beyond the arc.
September 23, 2008
CGL:
Purdue. Enough said. We will dominate the conference by three games, and have every chance to go to the Final Four— for the next two years. Losing Scott Martin will improve team chemistry even more than it was last year (don’t need underachievers.) Lewis Jackson could win Frosh of the Year in the Big Ten in a backup role behind the best point in the conference— Keaton Grant. Underestimate us, PLEASE… we like it that way. No one gets within ten pts. of the Boilers in Mackey, including the Dukies. Buckle your seatbelts, folks.
September 24, 2008
Wildcat:
Thanks for your assessment of Davidson as the “most intriguing non-conference test for a Big Ten Team”. I will agree with you. However, your crystal ball must still have a crack in it from when it was dropped after the Big Ten Conference champion, Wisconsin, was given a clinic in what team basketball looks like.
September 26, 2008
Kevin Beane:
Very good and well-written article, but some of the pieces don’t seem to fit. Your first point is Michigan State will miss Neitzel “more than anyone thinks,” but you are still predicting they will vault from fourth to first in the Big Ten and make it just as far in the big dance. That doesn’t sound like an outcome that will have MSU missing him too mich.
You curiously have Indiana making the NIT despite returning only one player who logged any kind of minutes at all.
Also weird that you try to predict something that cannot possibly be logically predicted (NCAA Tourney opponents).
September 28, 2008
Corrie Trouw:
Thanks, Kevin.
Fair points on Michigan State and IU. I think despite the Spartans’ lower conference finish last year, they still carry the most juice nationally as far as championship credibility goes. So winning the Big Ten this year certainly wouldn’t be missing Neitzel, but I think their ceiling on the national stage will be lower than it was with him. They’ll get a nice test of this early against UNC.
As for IU, that was probably my shakiest prediction. But I think the middle of the Big Ten is relatively weak, and I think Tom Crean gives the Hoosiers a decided advantage on the sideline over some of those middle-rung teams like Minnesota, Iowa, and Michigan.
And I know it’s silly to try to predict the NCAA tournament six days before it starts, let alone six months, but the crystal ball does not lie! I just post what it tells me.
A bonus crystal ball prediction that I didn’t have the guts to put in the column: I’m skeptical about this year, but I really think John Beilein is the right guy for Michigan. That’s somewhat of a tough spot to recruit with Tom Izzo in his backyard, Thad Matta to the south, and basketball-crazy Indiana also on the border. But just as he did at West Virginia, Beilein will find the right guys to run his system eventually. For a conference that loves grind-it-out man-to-man as a rule, Michigan’s quirky zone as its primary defense is a unique weapon. Soon, but probably not until next year, they’ll be the team that comes out of nowhere to contend for the league title.