Midweek Madness: The Big Ten’s Top 5 and What I Got Wrong in the Preseason

Posted on by thefloorslap

by Jordan Beckley

At this point in the season you can kind of get a feel for a good amount of the teams and players in College Basketball.

While there are erratic bubble teams that are hard to gauge night to night like Iowa or Nebraska, we have a good handle on the best (and worst) teams in the conference right now and a Top 5 has formed.

After whatever the hell is happening to Mick Cronin causing UCLA to implode, the Big Ten’s upper tier teams are Illinois, Michigan, Michigan State, Oregon and Purdue.

I’ve been banging the drum that Wisconsin is still absolutely capable of getting back into the Big Ten Title mix after their 0-2 start. I also can still envision a deep March run for Maryland. However, those teams are just a notch below this Top 5.

For this week’s Midweek Madness, I wanted to shout into the void about the Big Ten’s Best plus I decided to revisit some of what I got wrong but also what everyone got wrong in the preseason. So here are ___ points on the B1G 5 and __ Things We now know are wrong from the preseason.

Illinois is the Ultimate High Floor/Low Ceiling Team

I am for sure sounding like a broken record at this point and I imagine Illinois fans want me to crown them Big Ten Champs and Final Four bound, but we are seeing some crazy variance from the Illini.

Here are the past three results for Brad Underwood’s crew:

  • 39 point win over Penn State
  • 10 point loss at home to USC
  • 25 point win at Assembly Hall over IU

Truly anything can happen any given night for Illinois this season.

This team’s ceiling is soooo high and is easily the highest of the Big Ten’s Top 5. Illinois’ ceiling lead to record breaking wins with a 32 point victory at Top-10 Oregon and a brutally embarrassing home loss for Indiana leading to “Fire Woodson” chants.

This team’s floor is also pretty low and unfortunately they play to it semi-regularly. Illinois is filled with NBA type talent and they play an NBA style with an NBA shot diet of a Big Ten leading 31.5 3PA per game. The Illini are chucking it and unfortunately they are only the 11th best three point shooting team in the league so they’ve been prone to off nights just like NBA teams have.

The Illini have lost to a USC team who is firmly outside of the NCAA Tournament picture by shooting 21.9% on 32 attempts from three, Northwestern’s only Big Ten win came when Illinois went 26.5% on 34 attempts, and Tennessee escaped State Farm Center with a Dub after Illinois went 17.6% on 24 attempts.

Underwood has been flexing his Math muscles the past few seasons as he continues to evolve his offense towards maximum efficiency. Still, there are several standard deviations away from the mean and sometimes the math of the 3pt shot will fail the Illini. On those nights, can a healthy Kasparas Jakucionis, a revived Kylan Boswell, the Orange’s excellent team rebounding, and their defense carry them?

Illinois could absolutely win the Big Ten and make their first Final Four in 20 years, but a few more subpar shooting nights could sink their Big Ten banner hopes and an exit before the Sweet Sixteen is also equally possible.

Michigan State is the Cliché Team We Always Want Our Favorite Team to Be

Sweeping Declaration!

I am done arguing against Michigan State’s inflated AP Poll ranking, complaining about their lack of a no.1 option, or in general downplaying the job that Tom Izzo has done in East Lansing this year.

My eye test tells me that the Spartans don’t have IT. It could be a clear cut best player, go-to guy for every game, All-Big Ten candidate, or true blue chip NBA talent because Michigan State kind of doesn’t have any of that?

Yet, the Spartans are 14-2, winners of 9 straight and are up to no.12 in the AP Poll, because they have bought into all of the little things the fans say they want their team to do.

Everybody has sacrificed and bought into their role. They all know what they are capable of and what they aren’t capable of and they stay within their limits. MSU plays excellent team defense, controls the glass, shares the ball well without turning it over… damnit they even make their free throws!

You look up and down a roster of limited players like Simon Zypala, Xavier Booker, Coen Carr, Jaden Akins, etc. and… understand the coaching job Tom Izzo has done to make this a Top-10 team without a true superstar and a very poor three point shooting team.

So, appreciate this coaching job from Tom Izzo. Root for a team that isn’t built from the transfer portal, or focused on NIL or NBA futures, or chucks threes on half their possessions or everything else that people hate in modern basketball. This Spartan team should be the people’s champion because they are everything that people claim to want.

Imbalanced Schedule Will Hurt a Wide Open Race

Oregon is behind the 8 ball compared to the rest of the Top-5 Big Ten teams because of two early home losses. The Ducks were on the wrong end of an Illinois ceiling game and a banked in game winner by UCLA. Now, Oregon has the uphill battle to get back from being 2 games behind and having to play at Michigan, at Michigan State, at UCLA, at Wisconsin and hosting Purdue this Saturday.

Meanwhile, the Boilermakers only have to play Michigan twice out of the Top-7 Big Ten teams. But the Wolverines have to play Michigan State and Purdue twice still. And Illinois only plays Michigan State twice out of the Top-5 teams.

It’s all overly complex and if your team ends up losing the Title I’m sure they got screwed by the schedule and the Champ got off easy.

Still, it sucks that the schedule is like this. It feels like all of these best teams are constantly playing the lower half of the table and we are not getting the Top-15 ranked matchups that promote the conference.

And we will have to wait for some of them too. Illinois and Purdue will meet for the only time on their last game of the regular season. Then the Big Ten regular season will end Sunday March 9th with our current Title favorites Michigan and Michigan State doing battle in East Lansing to potentially decide the Title.

Don’t rule out the Purdue Three-peat

In December, Purdue lost to a good Texas A&M team and dropped in the polls a handful of spots. Then they got blown out by Auburn in essentially a road game and dropped another handful of spots.

Instead of being fair and rational, the AP Poll suffered from recency bias and plummeted Purdue in the polls, their Big Ten Title odds skyrocketed, and everybody forgot about the Boilers. Well hopefully a KenPom outlier in Auburn has blown out enough other teams for people to realize that Matt Painter’s team is still the class of the Big Ten. If Auburn’s greatness isn’t understood well Purdue is also showing people on the court how good they are with a 6-game win streak including 5 Big Ten victories 3 of which came on the road.

Matt Painter rearranged the starting lineup after the demolition from Auburn yanking Myles Colvin and Cam Heide and swapping in Caleb Furst and CJ Cox instead. Furst hadn’t played more than 18 minutes a game all season and now is averaging 7.7pts and 5.5reb in 26mpg in his six starts. CJ Cox, like Braden Smith & Zach Edey before him, was a low rated recruit and is now playing the most of any of the Boilers 5 Freshmen. Cox has had explosive outbursts like his 23 points in Purdue’s disembowelment of Nebraska and his solo-run against Alabama may have swung that game.

Oh did I mention that Braden Smith — the Big Ten’s best player — has been averaging 19.5ppg, 10.5apg and 2.7spg in the six game win streak? Yeah, Illinois fans can pine about the prospect that Jakucionis is compared to Smith, but Smith is separating himself as Big Ten POY and demanding All-American consideration too.

The Old Gold and Black are 38-9 the past three seasons in Big Ten play with Smith, Trey Kaufman-Renn and Fletcher Loyer and could get the first Big Ten Threepeat since… Purdue in the 90s. None of the Big Ten’s Top 5 has topped Purdue and I’m not sure we can say anyone else should be the favorite until one of them beats Purdue.

Oregon will have the first shot at it this Saturday in Eugene. If you believed my Purdue propaganda bet them now at +550 on FanDuel because that number will shrink if they pull that one out.

Michigan will compete for a Big Ten Title in Year 1 under Dusty May

In the preseason I made fun of an Athletic Preseason Power Rankings that had the Wolverines 4th overall.

I didn’t believe in Michigan at all. As an Ohio State alum I was out on Roddy Gayle, I didn’t see a lead point guard in Tre Donaldson, Nimari Burnett on the Sour Patch scale last year was more sour than sweet, but I completely whiffed on my evaluation of Danny Wolf basing it a little too much on my dumb Ivy League transfer rule.

Wolf is likely a 1st Team All-Big Ten player and solves the “point guard” question I had for the team while also creating major mismatches on offense and tilting the glass in favor of the Blue. I didn’t see the big-to-big pick and roll coming and to be fair the Big Ten coaches didn’t either.

The Wolverines are 5-1 in Big Ten play (I wrote 90% of this before Dawson Garcia’s OT heave) and have already recorded 3 road wins over UCLA, USC and Wisconsin. The zero in the loss column with road wins over two of the Big Ten’s better half had Michigan in the driver’s seat and the betting favorite.

So, I admit I was wrong about Wolf and Michigan… but that’s not all I was wrong about

What I Got Wrong in the Preseason

Myles Rice will be a 1st Team All-Big Ten Player

Rice is putting up fewer points this season at a tremendously inefficient rate. The 1st Team All-PAC 12 player is not near the same status in the Big Ten.

PAC-12 All-Freshman Kanaan Carlyle has been worse getting benched with paltry 4.7pts per game on a horrific 27.6% Field Goal percentage. Oumar Ballo is knocking his Hunter Dickinson impression out of the park by scoring points, quietly putting minimum effort in when off the ball, and staying out too late at the bars.

As “Fire Woodson” chants rain down from the rafters in Assembly Hall it’s safe to say that my preseason belief in IU being a Big Ten Title contender was wrong too.

Penn State doesn’t have another Top-40 Big Ten player

Nick Kern has been excellent for the Nittany Lions averaging double digit scoring, a couple dimes and a handful of boards on excellent efficiency. Kern has been a borderline All Big Ten third teamer if it wasn’t for the losses they have been stacking.

I say another Top-40 in the Title as a reference to Ace Baldwin. Baldwin’s been beat up on their 4 game losing streak and while Zach Hicks has stepped up, Freddie Dilione, Puff Johnson, and D’Marco Dunn haven’t been the guys they were in nonconference play.

Oregon is too small

Just a quick apology to Nate Bittle. I was not familiar with your game and I didn’t expect you to play like you have this year.

The Ducks are actually one of the best and most versatile frontcourts in the conference and it’s the streakiness of my All-Big Ten selection Jackson Shelstad who has actually hurt them.

Aaron Bradshaw

The former 5-star and Kentucky transfer has had an embattled second season averaging just 7.7pts, 3.4reb in 19 minutes. I didn’t have an opinion on him in the preseason, but the underwhelming second impression is disappointing.

Rutgers will win the Big Ten Title

This is easily my worst take, but also this was more so a “bold” prediction than one I had any true conviction for.

The Scarlet Knights suck. They have two Top-3 picks probably and it just doesn’t matter. They don’t play defense. They kind of can’t score either. They aren’t even remotely on the bubble of the NCAA Tournament right now. Unless major changes happen (they won’t) I’m not sure we see an NIT out of this year’s Rutgers team.

Read more on The Floor Slap: