2024-2025 B1G Basketball Thread

[medinabuckeye1]

This Ohio State team is crazy to follow.  

In early December they got crushed by Maryland and then crushed worse by Auburn.  It looked like the wheels could come off with Kentucky coming up and . . .

They beat #4 Kentucky on a neutral court by 20 points.  

More recently they lost three straight including home games against Oregon and Indiana and had #11 Purdue in Mackey coming up and again it looked like the wheels could come off and . . .

They somehow won at Purdue.  

There are 12 games left on the schedule and to be honest there is not a single one that I feel confident the Buckeyes will win but there is also not a single one that I feel they can't win.  Good Ohio State could easily go 12-0 while bad Ohio State could go 0-12.  

[medinabuckeye1]

Which tracks well with your hypothesis. It's a hard thing for smaller schools to find 6'6" chiseled athletes with legs made of flubber who can play above the rim. There just aren't that many of them out there, and they get recruited by the big schools. It's easier for them to find some smaller and less athletic kids who can't do everything a P4 team's basketball player needs to do, but they CAN shoot the lights out of the gym and hustle.

And all it takes is a hot shooting night for that team to scare the hell out of, and sometimes beat, the school with the athletes. Especially when the big schools have ALSO used the same analytics and built teams around the 3 ball because they need it to compete with the other big schools ALSO doing that. A team built to dominate in the paint can usually count on that day in day out. A team relying on the 3 ball can just have an awful shooting night every once in a while.

Yep, that is my theory in a nutshell.  I'm going to try to bring a chart over that displays it better:


If that posts right, you can see that the number of major Tournament upsets (13-16 beating 1-4) bottomed out in the 00's but was higher before and is much higher now.  

[bayareabadger]

Yep, that is my theory in a nutshell.  I'm going to try to bring a chart over that displays it better:


If that posts right, you can see that the number of major Tournament upsets (13-16 beating 1-4) bottomed out in the 00's but was higher before and is much higher now. 

I wonder why it started out so high.

[bayareabadger]

Wisconsin-UCLA was wild. 

Badgers threatened to Start creating some distance at halftime, but a weird intentional foul call kept the Bruins in pretty close contact.

UCLA led a lot of the second half, and Wisconsin just couldn’t stop them. But the badgers did some scoring of their own and managed to stay close enough to get a game-tying shot that was blocked on a fairly nice defensive play.

Coming in, this was a game of a good Wisconsin offense against a good UCLA defense, and some mediocrity on the other side for both teams. What we got was The, Wisconsin offense scoring extremely well, despite too many turnovers, wall, the UCLA offense just went nuts. They hit a bonkers percentage of 2s, got to line a tone, protected the ball exquisitely. 

Also interesting, they have a 7 foot 3 reserve center who doesn’t play a lot and he delivered a game that reminded me of what felt like Edey’s Big 10 breakout against UW. 

[betarhoalphadelta]

I wonder why it started out so high.

I do as well... 

Potentially given the lack of exposure of so many of these small schools, it was easy for smaller schools to have tape/scouting on the power conference programs, and there was little to no film on the small schools? Leading to a disparity of preparation?

Or potentially less sophistication of the selection committee where perhaps due to not as much knowledge/analytics, perhaps there were some teams getting over-seeded into the top 4 seeds and more ripe for upset? 

It would be an interesting problem to solve... I don't have enough historical knowledge about the conditions of college basketball in that era, so obviously the above is just wild conjecture. 

[medinabuckeye1]

I wonder why it started out so high.

I do as well...

Potentially given the lack of exposure of so many of these small schools, it was easy for smaller schools to have tape/scouting on the power conference programs, and there was little to no film on the small schools? Leading to a disparity of preparation?

Or potentially less sophistication of the selection committee where perhaps due to not as much knowledge/analytics, perhaps there were some teams getting over-seeded into the top 4 seeds and more ripe for upset?

It would be an interesting problem to solve... I don't have enough historical knowledge about the conditions of college basketball in that era, so obviously the above is just wild conjecture.

I don't have much in the way of theories other than what @betarhoalphadelta already listed.  Maybe recruiting was a little less nationalized so there was a higher chance of a very good player flying under the radar and ending up at a small school rather than being located and recruited by the power teams?  

I do think that he is onto something with the committee being less sophisticated.  Some would answer that if that is the case the two 16>1 upsets should have happened in the 80's rather than in the last few years but I would answer that seeding the #16's has always been pretty straightforward.  The bigger grey area is seeding say #11-#14ish.  Most of those teams haven't played more than one or two bigtime programs all year so if they had a great night and upset one then they tend to push up to #11 but if they had a bad night and got run out of the gym they might slide to #14 or #15.  

I really don't have a solid theory like we do for the recent uptick.  The recent uptick makes sense to me because three point defense is barely a thing so basically three point shooting is just about how hot you are on a particular night.  

[ELA]

I wonder if high is just the norm, and rather than viewing it as dropping, and then rising, that if we review this in 50 years, it's consistently at the two peaks, and then that dip is the one dip.

Then you could rephrase the question, why did it dip there for a minute.  And maybe it's because that was the period where recruiting became more nationalized and mainstream, so you had fewer guys slipping through the cracks to the lower programs, but before the rise in 3 point shooting led to more variable results?

[SFBadger96]

I was pretty upset when Davidson upset Wisconsin in the NCAA tourney in 2008. It's easier to take now that I understand that it was on the back of a generational talent who literally changed the way basketball is played.

[ELA]

Another road upset this week in the conference.  Is that 4?

[FearlessF]

I wouldn't call it an upset in Lincoln

[ELA]

Listening to a couple college basketball podcast, it feels like we haven't totally shifted the narrative yet.  They keep discussing "how did Pitino turn St. John's around so quick?"

It's a year to year sport now, more than ever.  Plenty of teams have completely different rosters than they had 2 years ago.  If you are at a school with an NIL commitment, and are a good coach, 2 years is plenty

[ELA]

Looks like Illinois spent too much time complaining that their freshman wasnt getting star treatment, and not enough time prepping for Maryland

[ELA]

Looks like Illinois spent too much time complaining that their freshman wasnt getting star treatment, and not enough time prepping for Maryland

And Brad Underwood is still complaining about the officials after last night.

Illinois had the same number of fouls and FTs as MSU, and actually shot more FTs than Maryland.  Illinois has 4 Big Ten losses, including home to USC and Maryland, and at Northwestern.

I think he's a good coach, but when you create a false narrative like this, it seems like his team is following and just assuming "if we lose, we were screwed"

[boilerbanger]

There were some questionable foul calls that got their "star" player in trouble, the freshman (sophomore) in the MSU game, his 4th foul in that game was a complete phantom call ... I get it there may have been bad calls both ways, but to give him his 4th foul and limit his minutes in that game was impactful.