~2017-18 Big Ten Basketball Thread~

[mcwterps1]

B1G scheduling is absolutely disgusting. 

I don't think I've ever seen a schedule where we didn't have back to back home games. 

Home, away, home, away..... 

[Brutus Buckeye]

At least you have back to back road games. 

[MichiFan87]

That's because 10 years ago or so there were a lot of complaints about having 3 consecutive road games (and/or opposing teams having 3 straight home games).... 

I'm more frustrated that the Big Ten gave into having Monday and Friday night games with the addition of Fox apparently being the reason (all of Michigan's BigTen games for those nights are on FS1, so someone can correct me if I'm wrong if that's not a coincidence).

[ELA]

Yeah, the schedule this year is a disaster.  Everyone has problems.  I think MSU has like 7 of first 9 at home, then 7 of last 9 on the road.  Then a fun Friday night in Madison, followed by Sunday afternoon in College Park.  Nothing like road games against two good teams, 36 hours apart.  There is no more assured loss on the schedule than that game at Maryland on zero rest.

But yeah, it's the Friday and Monday games creating that problem, plus the moronic week early MSG to tourney.  It's awful, across the board.

[bayareabadger]

Yeah, the schedule this year is a disaster.  Everyone has problems.  I think MSU has like 7 of first 9 at home, then 7 of last 9 on the road.  Then a fun Friday night in Madison, followed by Sunday afternoon in College Park.  Nothing like road games against two good teams, 36 hours apart.  There is no more assured loss on the schedule than that game at Maryland on zero rest.

But yeah, it's the Friday and Monday games creating that problem, plus the moronic week early MSG to tourney.  It's awful, across the board.

/Does not enjoy the prospect of losing a slugfest to MSU only to see the loss lose value two days later.

Also, that game is in EL. 

[bayareabadger]

On the UW side, I'm excited for this Xavier game. 

I don't really thing UW will win, but I vividly remember Creighton last year, when it started to dawn on me, "Oh boy, this team won't be as good as we hoped." This year's team has less pressure on that front. Play well and it's good. Pull off a win and it's gravy, plus a nice chip going forward. 

The other thing I want to see is the frontcourt rotation. UW's been able to go plenty deep in blowouts of small teams. This'll be different. It seems UW's No. 6 and 7 guys will be freshman guards, so I want to see if Aleem Ford continues to get eighth man work and how that balances with Charlie Thomas. Neither seems all that reliable, but I don't know if you just get 30 minutes from Happ and Andy Van Vliet, or if they can sneak Iverson at the 4. Should be fun to start learning that the next few games, even if some Ls might come. 

[betarhoalphadelta]

Many ACC programs are still angry about the departure and won't have anything to do with Maryland.  Not sure how long that will last.  North Carolina seems to be the least resistant.  The two schools play each other in several sports now.  That's partly because they are both pretty good at a lot of the same non-revenue sports.  I think Virginia will be the next to mellow out.  Both fan bases want that, I think.  

Huh. The two schools that a lot of B1G folks think might be on our radar for the next round of expansion...
...I mean, before NC because an academic joke of an institution.

[MichiFan87]

Central Arkansas almost had the upset of the season against UCLA in the aftermath of the their 3 players' (most notably Ball) stupidity in China. They don't have a non-con tournament this year, for whatever reason, and their best games before coming to Crisler are Creighton and Montana, so they still might be undefeated (and very overrated) by then.

The most notable upsets so far are Georgia Southern and Liberty over Wake Forest, Navy and Montana over Pittsburgh (maybe the Demon Deacons & Panthers are just that bad), Belmont over Vanderbilt, Milwaukee over Iowa State, UC Riverside over California, Eastern Washington over Stanford, and of course Indiana State over Indiana.

[mcwterps1]

At least you have back to back road games.

LOL

[ELA]

/Does not enjoy the prospect of losing a slugfest to MSU only to see the loss lose value two days later.

Also, that game is in EL.

Yup, that's right, the finale is at Wisconsin.
Somehow MSU has 3 home games in a row early and a pair of back to back road games late.  Another weird stretch is to go west to play Indiana and Iowa back to back, to come home for Purdue, to go back west to go back to back at Minnesota and Northwestern, come home for Illinois, then go back west to Madison.

[ELA]

As for the game, I couldn't believe Maryland wasn't ranked, and they looked good last night.  Cowan I think scares me more than post-freshman year Trimble did.

Northwestern's defense was absolutely atrocious.  The number of uncontested drives Creighton got was frightening.  The almost weirder part was how cool the Wildcat players were with it.  Usually when you see assignments blown that badly, you see guys chirping at each other afterward trying to figure out who missed what.  Northwestern was almost like "nah, that's how we meant to defend that."

[847badgerfan]

On the UW side, I'm excited for this Xavier game.

I don't really thing UW will win, but I vividly remember Creighton last year, when it started to dawn on me, "Oh boy, this team won't be as good as we hoped." This year's team has less pressure on that front. Play well and it's good. Pull off a win and it's gravy, plus a nice chip going forward.

The other thing I want to see is the frontcourt rotation. UW's been able to go plenty deep in blowouts of small teams. This'll be different. It seems UW's No. 6 and 7 guys will be freshman guards, so I want to see if Aleem Ford continues to get eighth man work and how that balances with Charlie Thomas. Neither seems all that reliable, but I don't know if you just get 30 minutes from Happ and Andy Van Vliet, or if they can sneak Iverson at the 4. Should be fun to start learning that the next few games, even if some Ls might come.

Xavier is point to last year's tourney for a revenge point. But only Happ returns from that team as a starter so I don't know how much revenge there will be other than the name on the front of the jerseys.

This game is big for the young Badgers. We will learn a whole lot tonight.

[rolltidefan]

how is minnesota going to be this year? bama faces them in a couple weeks and we might have a decent team finally.

[HailHailMSP]

how is minnesota going to be this year? bama faces them in a couple weeks and we might have a decent team finally.

I dont want to throw too much hyperbole out there, but if this conference didn't have the loaded and powerful Sparty team I think we would be hearing even heavier talk of the gophers for Elite Eight / Final Four mentions. They have the makeup of what you need. Experienced guard play, a couple slashers, and a couple bruisers. Lot's of athleticism among the starting five too. 
We'll have to see how Ricky matures as a coach now that he has a team that's the target. His game-planning and adjustments will be more under the microscope this season.