We had actual B1G Basketball yesterday! Mostly it was easy wins by B1G teams over opponents who visited solely for the payday but there were two exceptions:
- Michigan lost at home to CMU, and
- Iowa got obliterated in Lincoln.
So how does this impact our view of the teams involved?
Iowa:
Kris Murray hadn't played since the Dook game on December 6 which may explain the home losses to Wisconsin and Eastern Illinois but he was back for the Nebraska game and . . . Iowa got drilled. Murray had 17, Filip Rebraca had 16 and the rest of the Hawkeyes combined to score 17. Seriously, Iowa's other three starters (McCaffery, Perkins, Ulis) played a combined 67 minutes and only scored six more points than I did in that game. Something is wrong with this team and Murray's return does not seem to have fixed it.
Nebraska:
Maybe the Cornhuskers are better than we thought? They just drilled Iowa and earlier this season they pushed Purdue to OT. They also beat a ranked Creighton team on the road.
Michigan:
A month ago the Wolverines pushed (then) #3 Virginia to the max in a two point home loss in the Challenge. Losing by a single bucket to a top-3 team is obviously nothing to be ashamed of and at that point I thought Michigan looked like a pretty good team with their more questionable results being perhaps flukes or outliers. At this point it looks like the Virginia game was the fluke/outlier. Michigan:
- Barely beat EMU,
- Got drilled by ASU,
- Needed OT to beat OhioU
- Beat Lipscomb by only 8
- lost to CMU and:
#296 in KenPom. Michigan didn't have a good win, but they also didn't have a bad loss. Now they have a horrific one. Probably have to go 13-7 at worst to get in
That is REALLY bad.
The Wolverines don't have an upset (per the tiers) yet but they have only played one league game, against Minnesota. Minnesota might actually be worse than CMU so beating them, even in Minneapolis, isn't much of an accomplishment.
I am unilaterally moving up the date to update the tiers to Friday, January 6. Between now and then we have:
- MSU, RU, and UW have what should be easy home payday games tonight
- No games on NYE
- Three league games on NYD: UMD@M, IA@PSU, tOSU@NU
- RU@PU amidst the bowls on 1/2
- UNL@MSU and MN@UW on Tuesday, 1/3
- PSU@M and IL@NU on Wednesday, 1/4
- UMD@RU, PU@tOSU, and IU@IA on Thursday, 1/5
Current tiers (needs updated but waiting until next Friday) are:
- PU, IL, IU
- IA, tOSU, RU, UMD, MSU
- UW, M, PSU
- UNL, NU
- BLANK
- MN