2021-2022 B1G Basketball thread

[medinabuckeye1]

Nebraska's home game tonight against Minnesota is probably their best remaining chance to get a win in league play this year which matters a little because no B1G team has gone winless in league play in over 20 years:

Congratulations to Nebraska on avoiding the 0-fer.

[TyphonInc]

4 minutes left, OSU up 8 with the ball. I think one more basket will about end this.

Instead Rutger goes on a 10-0 run to end the game.

I wasn't watching, just getting game cast updates. Where was Liddell for the last 4 minutes?

[medinabuckeye1]

4 minutes left, OSU up 8 with the ball. I think one more basket will about end this.

Instead Rutger goes on a 10-0 run to end the game.

I wasn't watching, just getting game cast updates. Where was Liddell for the last 4 minutes?

Same here, I wasn't watching, just getting updates from my phone but I did watch the B1G YouTube and it was frustrating to watch.  Zed Key got fouled with 3:48 to go and the Bucks up six, 62-56.  That instigated the U4 timeout and when they came back Key made both FT's to put the Bucks up eight, 64-56, they obviously never scored again.  Ending possessions:

• RU, Geo Baker missed a three
• tOSU, EJ Liddell turnover
• RU, fouled, made both FT's, 64-58 with 3:07
• tOSU, Zed Key layup blocked
• tOSU, Jamari Wheeler missed a layup
• RU, Geo Baker made a layup, 64-60 with 2:33
• tOSU, Malaki Branham layup blocked
• RU, Geo Baker made a bucket, 64-62 with 2:03
• tOSU, turnover
• RU, Clifford Omoruyi dunked, 64-64 with 1:13 (8-0 run in less than 2 minutes to tie it up)
• tOSU, Malaki Branham missed a bucket
• RU, Geo Baker fouled by Zed Key, made both FT's, 66-64 with 0:18
• tOSU, Malaki Branham shot blocked out of bounds
• tOSU, Justin Ahrens missed a three off the in-bound pass as time expired 

UGLY.  They had it and it slipped away.  

[medinabuckeye1]

I'll wait until after tonight's games to update the projections because IA@UMD and PU@M both seem like they could go either way so I want to wait for actual results before the update.  

That said, there is something statistically amazing.  With Nebraska's win last night over MN, Ohio State is now the only team without an upset.  Every one of the Buckeyes' games has gone as projected.  There have been 20 games that did NOT go as projected which is a lot but despite that, each of the 14 teams are within +/-1 of the projection because other than UNL (+1) and tOSU (no upsets) all the rest have partially or fully offsetting upsets.  

Maryland (6) has the most upsets but it is three up and three down so they are on pace, same for Northwestern (4) which has the second most upsets.  Two-thirds of Maryland's and half of Northwestern's are what I call "reverse splits" where the road team won both match-ups:

• UMD won at NU, lost at home to NU
• UMD won at RU, lost at home to RU

Anyway, our projections are holding up remarkably well despite all the upsets because, as I said, the upsets are mostly offsetting each other.  

[medinabuckeye1]

An important potential tiebreaker:
In the current model Maryland and Northwestern project to finish tied for 10th/11th at 7-13:

• The first tiebreaker is H2H but they split (road team won both, see above).  
• Second tiebreaker is record against the best team(s) in the league, then the next, etc.  Since both are projected to go 0-fer against the top five teams in the league this basically means that the team with the most impressive upset win wins the tie.  Northwestern has an upset win over MSU which is great but Maryland has an upset win over Illinois which is better so Maryland projects to win the tie.  

Why the 10th/11th place tiebreaker matters:

• #10 doesn't play on Wednesday, #11 gets an easy layup game against #14 (almost certain to be Nebraska).  
• #10 plays #7 on Thursday while #11 (assuming they beat #14 on Wednesday) plays #6.  This is really somewhat irrelevant because #6 and #7 are both projected to be roughly .500 in the league.  
• #10 plays #2 on Friday (assuming they are still alive) while #11 plays #3 (same assumption).  

I honestly think that #11 gets a better deal.  The easy win on Wednesday helps with win volume which is important for teams in this situation and the Thursday and Friday games are basically a wash.  

[medinabuckeye1]

Rutgers right now projects to finish 17-13/11-9 and get the #6 seed in the BTT.  Their early OOC losses are killing them.  Their current NET ranking is #91 (after their two game winning streak over MSU and tOSU) and it is all because of their bad losses.  They are actually 4-3 in Quad-1 games which is better than most of the league including the aforementioned Spartans (4-4) and Buckeyes (3-5).  In fact there are only 18 teams in the whole country with more QUAD-1 wins than Rutgers:

• Two teams (UW and Baylor) have eight.  
• Four teams (Marquette, KU, PU, Aub) have seven.  
• One team (Bama) has six.  
• 11 teams (ISU, TxTech, Nova, UK, IL, LSU, Gonz, Zona, Dook, Providence BoiseSt) have five.  

Another 11 teams (including Rutgers) have four QUAD-1 wins but Rutgers is the lowest ranked of the group because while they have three losses in QUAD-3 and QUAD-4 games none of the others have more than one.  

What is holding Rutgers back compared to the two teams they just defeated is that while the Spartans (2) and Buckeyes (1) have a combined three Quad-2 losses (and two of the three were their recent losses at Rutgers) and NOTHING worse than that the Scarlett Knights have three Quad-2 losses, two Quad-3 losses, and a Quad-4 loss.  Rutgers' nine losses are to:

• Illinois on the road 86-51:  #12 in NET, QUAD-1
• Seton Hall on the road 77-63:  #33 in NET, QUAD-1
• Northwestern on the road in OT:  #66 in NET, QUAD-1
• Penn State on the road 66-49:  #89 in NET, QUAD-2
• Maryland at home 68-60:  #100 in NET, QUAD-3
• Minnesota on the road 68-65:  #102 in NET, QUAD-2

• DePaul on the road 73-70:  #104 in NET, QUAD-2 
• UMASS on the road 85-83:  #176 in NET, QUAD-3  
• Lafayette at home 53-51:  #319 in NET, QUAD-4

Those bottom five losses are just UGLY but note that four of the five were one-possession games.  That just sucks for the Scarlett Knights.  If they had just made a couple more plays in each of those four games that ended up being a BAD loss they'd project as something like a #6 seed right now but instead they are barely on the fringe of the bubble.  

[medinabuckeye1]

B1G NET rankings (Rank, Team, Record, Quad-1, Quad-2, Quad-3, Quad-4):

• #4 Purdue, 21-3, 7-2, 4-1, 3-0, 7-0
• #12 Illinois, 17-6, 5-4, 4-2, 5-0, 3-0
• #18 Ohio State, 14-6, 3-5, 3-1, 5-0, 3-0
• #19 Wisconsin, 19-4, 8-4, 3-0, 4-0, 4-0
• #20 Iowa, 15-7, 1-5, 3-2, 4-0, 7-0
• #27 Michigan State, 17-6, 4-4, 5-2, 4-0, 4-0
• #35 Indiana, 16-7, 2-4, 2-3, 4-0, 8-0
• #47 Michigan, 12-9, 1-5, 3-3, 4-1, 4-0
• #66 Northwestern, 11-10, 1-8, 2-0, 2-2, 6-0
• #89 Penn State, 9-11, 2-8, 1-2, 2-1, 4-0
• #91 Rutgers, 14-9, 4-3, 2-3, 2-2, 6-1
• #100 Maryland, 11-12, 3-6, 3-3, 1-3, 4-0
• #102 Minnesota, 11-10, 2-9, 0-0, 4-1, 5-0
• #182 Nebraska, 7-17, 0-8, 0-6, 1-2, 6-1

Rutgers is just weird.  Their QUAD-1 record is better than tOSU or MSU but their QUAD-3 and QUAD-4 records are roughly equal to Nebraska.  

[ELA]

Iowa's NET rating is curious

[847badgerfan]

So is Wisconsin's. No losses out of Q1. 9-2 away from the Kohl Center.

[medinabuckeye1]

So is Wisconsin's. No losses out of Q1. 9-2 away from the Kohl Center.

I don't get why UW is behind tOSU (and a bunch of other teams). Wisconsin's eight Q1 wins are tied with Baylor for best in the land and all four losses are Q1 so nothing particularly bad. Maybe the losses are relatively worse Q1 losses than the teams ahead of them?

[847badgerfan]

I don't get why UW is behind tOSU (and a bunch of other teams). Wisconsin's eight Q1 wins are tied with Baylor for best in the land and all four losses are Q1 so nothing particularly bad. Maybe the losses are relatively worse Q1 losses than the teams ahead of them?

I don't know.

UW's losses are to Providence, @OSU, MSU and @IL.

All are ranked teams in both polls. Providence #11 in AP. OSU 16, MSU 17, IL 13.

NET #25, #18, #27 and #12, respectively.

Then you look at win quality. I don't get it.

[MaximumSam]

I don't know.

UW's losses are to Providence, @OSU, MSU and @IL.

All are ranked teams in both polls. Providence #11 in AP. OSU 16, MSU 17, IL 13.

NET #25, #18, #27 and #12, respectively.

Then you look at win quality. I don't get it.

The NET still has an efficiency ranking, I believe, so tight wins against crappy teams (which Wiscy has a few of) still weigh them down.

[betarhoalphadelta]

Purdue needs to get their sh!t together.

[ELA]

MSU women upset #4 Michigan.  Ya hate to see it