2019-2020 B1G Basketball Thread

[MaximumSam]

Tier Projection KenPom

1. OSU (1)
2. MSU (5)
3. Maryland (8)
4. Michigan (11)
5. Purdue (13)
6. Iowa (20)
7. PSU (24)
8. Indiana (34)
9. Minnesota (45)
10. Illinois (46)
11. Wisconsin (51)
12. Rutgers (53)
13. Northwestern (100)
14. Nebraska (139)

[medinabuckeye1]

Tier Projection KenPom
1. OSU (1)
2. MSU (5)
3. Maryland (8)
4. Michigan (11)
5. Purdue (13)

6. Iowa (20)
7. PSU (24)

8. Indiana (34)

9. Minnesota (45)
10. Illinois (46)
11. Wisconsin (51)
12. Rutgers (53)

13. Northwestern (100)
14. Nebraska (139)

So, tiers:

• tOSU, MSU, UMD, M, PU
• IA, PSU
• IU
• MN, IL, UW, RU
• NU, UNL

???

[847badgerfan]

Glad he's finally able to go.  Strange that OSU did everything they could to help him play and NCAA still said no.  Hopefully he can give the Badgers a nice boost.

644 days since he last played in a game. Total BS. Anyway, 12 points on 3-6 shooting, 5 boards. 13 minutes.

He will give the Badgers a boost. Finally. And he might have a Ph.D. by the time he leaves too.

[847badgerfan]

So, tiers:

• tOSU, MSU, UMD, M, PU
• IA, PSU
• IU
• MN, IL, UW, RU
• NU, UNL

???

Those would be mine.

[Abba]

That would make 3 major upsets 2 games in.  It may eventually smooth out and be ok, but I think too much is still unknown to get that detailed.

[mcwterps1]

Maryland that high?

No way. 

No banger down low. Anyone with a decent center, will shut Maryland down.

So, basically everyone in the B1G. 

Perhaps the most overrated Maryland team I've ever seen. 

[bayareabadger]

Maryland that high?

No way.

No banger down low. Anyone with a decent center, will shut Maryland down.

So, basically everyone in the B1G.

Perhaps the most overrated Maryland team I've ever seen.

I mean, it's the second-highest rated since the title team, and you tell us they're all monstrously overrated, so checks out. 

[bayareabadger]

I get that KenPom / BartTorvik are predictive based on tempo-free stats and not results, but the discrepancy between how they rate Purdue (and to a lesser extent with Sparty) and their results to date is particularly large, even considering the losses have been close except maybe Nebraska, which is by far their worst loss, no less. I also know those ratings still might have some preseason bias, but I thought that would be lessened by this point in the season.

I wonder how much preseason factors in right now. Obviously Purdue was super high early. 

But with this stuff, I tend to side more with the stats when it comes to looking longterm. Basically, if you're good in those numbers, if implies you're playing at a good level, but not getting the results just yet. You're tight with good teams, blowing away bad teams, etc. They're 26th in scoring margin at the moment. 

I recall UW and Purdue having moments like this last year. Purdue's near Final Four team was 6-5, and later upset UW to reach 10-6. UW fans got all whiney at 11-6 after an OT loss to Maryland (4th loss in 5 games) the next game, but both teams were playing well and leveled out.

When I see a team like that, with a record below its numbers, I remember three things can happen:
1. They will continue to play at that level and things will even out.
2. They will continue to play at that level and things don't even out, meaning a team loses all the close ones, blows everyone else out and finishes with a record 3-5 games worse than they played.
3. Their level of play actually drops off 

The first tends to be the way things happen, but not always.

[MaximumSam]

Tier 1: Ohio State, Michigan, Maryland, Michigan State

Tier 2: Purdue, Indiana, Wisconsin, Rutgers, Illinois, Penn State, Minnesota, Iowa

Tier 3: Northwestern, Nebraska

By results tough to disagree with this.  Only road win is MSU's fairly tight win over Northwestern.  A lot of the home upset wins, like Minny over OSU and Nebraska over Purdue, haven't even been competitive.

[Abba]

Purdue, I think we'll have to see.  They have a few ok wins, and a lot of losses.  I wonder if the monster win over Virginia can completely hide all of their warts...I think not right now.  For now, I have them as a team full of potential that could rise to Tier 1 at some point, but because the middle part of the conference is so strong, they better get it together soon.

Their next few conference games:

MN
@ILL
@Mich
MSU
ILL
WIS
@Rutgers

I think a tier 2 team will just win the home and lose the road games, maybe drop the MSU game.  Tier 1 probably only loses to Michigan and maybe one of the other two road games.  Worse than 3-4 against that, we'll have to think about Tier 3.  

They do get a slight breather against Northwestern after that, but then it's another full slate of live bodies to close out the Big Ten season.  There are definitely no easy games this year, so it's gonna be a lot of fun.

[betarhoalphadelta]

Sagarin Predictor as of today:




That might give us tiers of:

• OSU, MSU, UMD
• UM, IA, PSU
• IU, MN, PU, RU, IL, WI
• <blank>
• NU, UNL

Originally I had IU/MN/PU up in tier 2, but I'm not entirely certain any of them could take down OSU or MSU, even at home. I'm also torn on whether Michigan should be the last team in tier 1 or the first team in tier 2. I ended up dropping them because they're 5 wins worse in the RR than OSU and 3 wins behind MSU/UMD, but also that I think given the schedule they'll finish closer to IA/PSU than the teams above them.

[betarhoalphadelta]

Purdue, I think we'll have to see.  They have a few ok wins, and a lot of losses.  I wonder if the monster win over Virginia can completely hide all of their warts...I think not right now.  For now, I have them as a team full of potential that could rise to Tier 1 at some point, but because the middle part of the conference is so strong, they better get it together soon.

Purdue is a weird team this year. 

They're actually playing well, with the exception of being unable to put the ball through the hoop. They defend well, they rebound well, and their offense gets open looks. They just can't hit open looks. Literally we were 33% overall shooting against Butler, and that was despite being 45% from behind the arc. With the numbers, that meant we shot 27.2% from 2pt range??? How is that even possible?

It means teams can just pack the paint and dare us to shoot, and we're somehow unable to make anything. And we're not talking entirely about players who can't shoot or are bad shooters--many of these guys are just shooting WAY below their averages for no apparent reason. 

If our shooting averages improve, and if we can get a little better about feeding the post, this team will look completely different. 

I do think against Butler, not having Matt Haarms was a problem. Hopefully his recovery is going well.

[medinabuckeye1]

Originally I had IU/MN/PU up in tier 2, but I'm not entirely certain any of them could take down OSU or MSU, even at home. 

Well I'm pretty sure MN could take down tOSU at home mostly because it happened a few days ago.  OTOH, their other B1G game was a loss at Iowa.  What is REALLY weird is that neither game was all that competitive.  The Gophers lost by 20 in Iowa City and beat the Buckeyes by 13 in Minneapolis.  In the Iowa game they were down eight at the break and never got a whole lot closer in the second half.  In the Ohio State game they were up nine at the break and kept tOSU at about that distance throughout the second half.  

Both of IU's B1G games look pretty suspicious.  They got flattened in Madison then needed OT at home to beat Nebraska.  

Purdue looks better to me but that is mostly based on their OOC and the fact that I agree with @Abba above that teams playing "better than their record" tend to even out but their B1G games are quite unimpressive with a fairly close home win over NU and a not very close road loss to UNL.  

[betarhoalphadelta]

Well I'm pretty sure MN could take down tOSU at home mostly because it happened a few days ago.  OTOH, their other B1G game was a loss at Iowa.  What is REALLY weird is that neither game was all that competitive.  The Gophers lost by 20 in Iowa City and beat the Buckeyes by 13 in Minneapolis.  In the Iowa game they were down eight at the break and never got a whole lot closer in the second half.  In the Ohio State game they were up nine at the break and kept tOSU at about that distance throughout the second half. 

Both of IU's B1G games look pretty suspicious.  They got flattened in Madison then needed OT at home to beat Nebraska. 

Purdue looks better to me but that is mostly based on their OOC and the fact that I agree with @Abba above that teams playing "better than their record" tend to even out but their B1G games are quite unimpressive with a fairly close home win over NU and a not very close road loss to UNL. 

Understood, and obviously the tiers I proposed shouldn't have had Purdue losing on the road to Nebraska either, even though it happened.

I think both the OSU/MN and the PU/UNL games were upsets, and should be considered upsets in the tiers.