18th on KenPom. 25th on Torvik. I'm pretty happy given the uncertainty they had coming in. They also have been missing a starter the past two games and Eugene Brown has yet to play. Hard for me to see anything but goodness in that. The B1G, yet again, has a lot of good teams, so tiers are going to be especially difficult this year.
I hope you are right, but I'm not seeing it.
Maybe the issue is that instead of moving Illinois and Indiana down, we should move Purdue up.
Current tiers are:
- PU, IL, IU
- IA, tOSU, RU, UMD, MSU
- UW, M, PSU
- UNL, NU
- BLANK
- MN
Upthread
@ELA suggested moving IL and IU down and UW up. Part of the problem, as I see it, is that creates a MONSTER tier-2 including more than half of the conference's teams (IL, IU, IA, tOSU, RU, UMD, MSU, UW). In theory that might be correct but it probably isn't so we almost certainly need some separation there.
If we move Purdue up instead of IL/IU down and also move UW up that gives us:
- PU
- IL, IU
- IA, tOSU, RU, UMD, MSU, UW
- M, PSU
- UNL, NU
- BLANK
- MN
Tier-3 then has six teams which is probably too many but we can wait that out and see how those teams perform the rest of December and the first few league games in January to determine which teams look a little better (move up to tier-2) and/or which teams look a little worse (move down to tier-4).
The net effect of those changes would result in the following projected final standings:
- 19-1 Purdue, up from 16-4. The Boilermakers do not play in Champaign or Piscataway so their four current projected losses are in Bloomington, Columbus, College Park, and East Lansing. With the change all but the game in Bloomington become wins.
- 14-6 Indiana, no change. A game in Madison would become a projected loss but the Hoosiers do not play in Madison.
- 13-7 Illinois, down from 14-6. The game in Madison becomes a loss.
- 12-8 Iowa, no change. A home game against Purdue would become a loss but the Hawkeyes do not host the Boilermakers.
- 12-8 Rutgers, no change. Same as Iowa.
- 12-8 Wisconsin, up from 10-10. The home game against IL becomes a win as does the road game against Northwestern. A home game against IU and a road game against Nebraska would also become wins but the Badgers do not host the Hoosiers nor visit the Cornhuskers.
- 11-9 Ohio State, down from 12-8. The home game against Purdue becomes a loss.
- 11-9 Maryland, down from 12-8. Same as Ohio State.
- 10-10 Michigan State, down from 11-9. Same as Ohio State.
- 9-11 Michigan, no change.
- 8-12 Penn State, no change.
- 5-15 Nebraska, no change.
- 4-16 Northwestern, down from 5-15. The home game against Wisconsin becomes a loss.
- 0-20 Minnesota, no change.
FWIW:
I do not expect either that Purdue will actually win 19 games nor that Minnesota will actually lose all 20. I do think that the Boilermakers are good enough to potentially win every game and that the Gophers are bad enough to potentially lose every game but upsets do happen and when you are projected to go 19-1 or 0-20 those potential upsets are all going the same way for you so you'll probably move toward .500.
