~2017-18 Big Ten Basketball Thread~

[ELA]

MSU opens at #2 in the coaches poll, Duke #1

http://sportspolls.usatoday.com/ncaa/basketball-men/polls/coaches-poll/

With Kansas and Kentucky to follow, barring a major upset in the opening weekend, the Champions Classic in Chicago will be #1 Duke vs. #2 MSU and #3 Kansas vs. #4 Kentucky.  And nobody will care, because, tournament.

[medinabuckeye1]

Yuck

@kylebaustin
Jim Delany said Big Ten hopes to have an 80/20 split between Big Ten tourneys in the midwest and in the east

Agreed.  It would be bad enough once every ten years but once every five is just silly.  The only good thing is that I was actually concerned it was going to be more than once every five years.  

[grillrat]

Those were the only two I could think of.

IU and Purdue have been doing the Crossroads Classic for many years now, usually with Butler and ND>

[betarhoalphadelta]

Obviously they want to protect all three of the in-state rivalries.

Actually, I doubt that. I think that was a cop-out that allowed them to protect Purdue/IU and UM/MSU without having to define protected rivalries for other teams. Since the only other in-state matchup is Illinois/NU, it was easy to add them, despite the fact that Illinois and NU are not really long-standing basketball rivals. 
They created an arbitrary criteria to protect the ones they wanted while maintaining a veneer of fairness by ensuring that criteria only really affected the ones they wanted to protect in the first place.

[NickSmith4Three]

Illinois is finally on the board in 2018.  5* star sure to be Illinois Mr. Basketball,  Ayo Dosunmu commited a few minutes ago 

[MichiFan87]

I don't get why Michigan is so underrated. Walton was good, but Simmons should be all-BigTen caliber, as well as a grad-transfer where he was all-MAC at Ohio and Matthews (the transfer from Kentucky) should be better than Irvin. Donnal wasn't that great, either, so one of the young big men should adequately replace him behind Wagner. I don't discount the loss of DJ Wilson, but his production is still replaceable.

Fortunately the schedule will let them prove themselves pretty quickly with the Maui Tournament, and non-con games @Texas, UCLA, and @North Carolina.

[MarqHusker]

Do any of the newbs still play their old rivals? Maryland?

Nebraska v Creighton is a fairly regular occurrence.  

[847badgerfan]

Ahem.
In addition to Marquette, UW often plays uwm  and GB

I can't remember the last time UW and MU didn't play.

It was only a couple of years ago that they took GB and Milwaukee off the permanent rotation to open things up to other schools that would come for a one and done at the Kohl. GB and UWM always had return games to me recollection and UW no longer wanted that on a regular basis.

[LittlePig]

http://www.bigten.org/sports/m-baskbl/sp...17aab.html

Starting in 2018-19, Big Ten men's basketball will go to 20 confetence games.

Only 3 protected rivals. Mich-MSU, Indy-Pur, ILL-NW

The three in-state rivalries – Illinois/Northwestern, Indiana/Purdue and Michigan/Michigan State – will be played twice annually, while the new schedule will also include a regional component to increase the frequency of games among teams in similar areas. Over the course of a six-year cycle (12 playing opportunities), in-state rivals will play each other 12 times, regional opponents will play 10 times, and all other teams will play nine times

[ELA]

Yeah, we've been discussing it in the basketball thread

[ELA]

Sounds like MSU is trying to put together a couple of scrimmages in NYC against Manhattan and Iona following the incredibly stupid week early MSG BTT, to avoid too much lag time between the conference and NCAA tourneys

[Brutus Buckeye]

That's a good idea. 

Is anyone else playing games that final week? 

[NickSmith4Three]

Unrelated to the sort of post season scrimmages mentioned

Illinois will scrimmage Indiana State on Sunday and Vanderbilt on the 29th since there are no exhibition games this year

[ELA]

Unrelated to the sort of post season scrimmages mentioned

Illinois will scrimmage Indiana State on Sunday and Vanderbilt on the 29th since there are no exhibition games this year

Why isn't Illinois playing any exhibition games?