2025-2026 B1G Basketball Thread

[SFBadger96]

I'm not a basketball expert, but that lack of reliance on the 3 is why I expect Michigan to make a deep tournament run--an off night shooting won't doom them. And MSU--also because Izzo wins in March. 

[SFBadger96]

As for the Badgers, they seem equally likely to have a big upset over a 1- or 2-seed in the second round of the tourney, or to lose a head scratcher to their first round, 7-10-seed opponent. Who knows?

[medinabuckeye1]

They are very 3 point dependent.  Gives them a very high ceiling,. amd low floor.

I've long believed this as well.  It just makes sense to me that a team that is highly dependent upon the three will have high variability because on a good night they are going to light up the scoreboard and on a bad night they are going to struggle to score at all but . . . Does it check out?  

Per my table above, do Nebraska, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Indiana have higher variability than most?  Do Washington, Northwestern, and USC have lower variability?  

[bayareabadger]

Agreed. And even though I highlighted it in my post about the Purdue / Northwestern game, I didn't mean to imply that Purdue is a 3-dependent team.

We're not as post-heavy as we were with Edey, but we still have two decent centers and a forward that basically only plays (scoring-wise) inside the arc. 

And Purdue, for better or worse, is actually one of the few teams IMHO that is still taking a fair number of mid-range two-pointers, and NOT having that be a disadvantage. The analytics may not say it's a great shot, but that's only if your shooting percentage from that range is too low... I think Purdue takes those shots and makes enough of them to make it worthwhile. (Having strong offensive rebounding helps too lol.)

Purdue is 12th nationally in far 2-point shooting. They’re the best team at the rim in the country, 26th in 3-point percentage. Plus they shoot 3s at an above average rate nationally, rarely turn it over and offensive rebound at a top-45 rate.

So they've got almost every base covered.

[FearlessF]

it's a good thing that they did last night - got a little dicey in Lincoln at the end

[ELA]

Purdue is 12th nationally in far 2-point shooting. They’re the best team at the rim in the country, 26th in 3-point percentage. Plus they shoot 3s at an above average rate nationally, rarely turn it over and offensive rebound at a top-45 rate.

So they've got almost every base covered.

Credit Painter and Braden Smith.  I don't think this is how they expected to look, but Fletcher Loyer has been unplayable at times, and Kaufman-Redd has been below expectations.  They've adjusted on the fly, and even if they aren't quite where we expected, they are pretty damn close considering how the presumed 2nd and 3rd best players on the team have looked.

If those 2 figure it out, watch out.

[bayareabadger]

I've long believed this as well.  It just makes sense to me that a team that is highly dependent upon the three will have high variability because on a good night they are going to light up the scoreboard and on a bad night they are going to struggle to score at all but . . . Does it check out? 

Per my table above, do Nebraska, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Indiana have higher variability than most?  Do Washington, Northwestern, and USC have lower variability? 

The longer I watch how this sport works, the less I agree with this.

There's a big belief that a 5-for-30 day from 3 is always just around the corner, and it's true there are some games where you say "well, they missed a lot of open shots." But it probably oversells the idea that good 2-point shooting is more dependable.

The issue there is that 2-point shooting can also be off (how often do you see a game where a team just struggles rolling balls off the rim?) and it's enormously defense dependent. You can lean into 2-point shooting, but if the other team has size and physicality like MSU/Illinois/Michigan, you best have some real mooses inside with good touch, or you'll have a bad day from 2 (and you might just end up with meh shooters taking long 2s, making it worse).

Keeping turnovers down seems somewhat dependable. Offensive rebounding, hit and miss unless it's a real core principle. And getting to the line is one of those things that can evaporate with a tough whistle in March or a really good interior defense. So in some ways, if you don't have a decent diet of 3s, you're lowering your ceiling and lowering your floor.

There's also the factor that the question is as much about what the other team is doing as what you are. As a Wisconsin fan, I arrived when UW was still a team that wanted to bash inside a good bit, get to the line, using the talent they had. And in the postseason that got harder. And they often got upset, sometimes to a smaller team that just bombed them from 3. It turned out, even if you were chasing a more stable floor, it doesn't matter when the other team blasts out the ceiling (or if more physicality is allowed).

In some ways, it doesn't totally matter. Even if Michigan and Purdue are lower, they're still taking about 40 percent of their shots from 3, a super high number just a few years back. That's an average swing of about six shots per game. Maybe six more 2s make a big ole difference, but it feels like they might not?