Big Ten Round-Up 11.24.25: Purdue's dominance, Nebrasketball, Michigan State and more

Quick Recap

Feast Week is here!! The Big Ten is pretty heavily involved in some major MTE's, with the primary one being the Player's Era Festival.

The Big Ten picked up a couple big time wins which includes Purdue over Texas Tech and Michigan State over Kentucky. The Big Ten also got its first true bad loss of the season as Rutgers lost a home game to Central Connecticut (ranked 250 in Kenpom) by 13 points.

5 Trends and Observations

1.) Purdue showed why they can be the best team in the country

After not looking ultra impressive the first week, and looking like a great team the next few games, Purdue finally had their "we're elite" moment against Texas Tech which included a 31-3 run that spanned almost 13 minutes.

Purdue was able to claim the Baha Mar championship, their 5th straight MTE championship. Aside from purely winning the games being positive, the main positive might just be that Purdue did it without both Braden Smith and TKR on their A-games. They were still solid overall, but neither of them had performances like they did against Alabama, where they clearly imposed their will. Instead, it was a combination of guys like Oscar Cluff and CJ Cox who provided big time outputs in addition to the Big Three of Smith, TKR, and Fletcher Loyer. Against Texas Tech especially, Purdue looked like a defense that could be competitive enough to win a National Championship.

Speaking of the defense, everyone knows the limitations they have on the perimeter. What Purdue is doing to make up for it though is by having the low man (person guarding weak side corner) be pulled well over into the paint. This isn't a revolutionary concept, and you can see many teams do it, but Purdue is really selling out on taking away the paint. Right now, teams are taking 48.5% of their shots from three against Purdue, which would be the highest rate in Matt Painter's career.

2.) Nebrasketball is here, and they are fun

Nebrasketball!!!!!!!

Nebraska finds themselves at 6-0 and right around #40 on Kenpom, as of this writing, after getting neutral site wins over New Mexico and Kansas State.

Nebraska's offense is clicking on all cylinders, and it's making for some very entertaining basketball. The next time you're looking for a game to watch and you see Nebraska is playing, turn them on, I'll bet you enjoy watching. (They play a very good mid major in Winthrop on Tuesday).

Nebraska is one of the lowest pick and roll usage teams in the country. Instead, they utilize a ton of off-ball screening, handoffs, and cuts to generate their looks. Having Rienk Mast back helps open up the offense with his ability to pass from the center position. Pryce Sandfort is having a big time season as he's fit into the Nebraska system perfectly. He seems to be constantly running off different screens, and the Veer action is one that stood out this week. This is when someone sets an on-ball screen before immediately setting a pindown for a shooter.

Granted, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Kansas State isn't the absolute best competition, but going 3-0 against that group is a very good sign that Nebraska has what it takes to make the tournament.

3.) Never count out Michigan State

Tom Izzo put together a roster this off season that on paper, didn't make a ton of sense. However, he's (very loudly) bet on retention and trusting his guys to be able to develop. So far this season, that bet has paid off after MSU now has wins over Arkansas and Kentucky.

Michigan State is running back a very similar formula to last season. This includes dominating the glass, dominating the paint, and making life tough for opposing offenses. This defense is one of the elite ones in college basketball again, and it's arguably a bit more balanced than last season. Michigan State has a better mix of perimeter and interior defenders that simply punked Kentucky from the jump.

Add in Jeremy Fears Jr, the leader in assists in college basketball. He's assisting on 56.1% of Michigan State's shots while on the floor, and the MSU offense looks lost when he isn't out there. He is the definition of a floor general, and although he isn't a prolific scorer, he's good at foul baiting and being aggressive, allowing him to get to the line, making it just that much more difficult to guard him. He is the complete engine of the offense, and right now, the Spartans will go where he goes.

4.) The offense and defense in the Big Ten may be as balanced as we've seen

As of this writing on November 23, there are currently nine teams in the Big Ten with a better offensive Kenpom rating compared to defensive Kenpom rating. That means there are also nine Big Ten teams with a better defensive Kenpom rating than offensive Kenpom rating.

If we compare that to the last two seasons (small sample), last season there were 8/18 teams with an offense better than defense. The previous season there were 9/14 teams with an offense better than defense.

Here is also the average offensive and defensive rankings within Kenpom for the past 3 seasons

Right now, the difference from the offensive average to defensive is only 0.7. For 2025 it was 8.6, and for 2024 it was 3.3. It's worth noting that the 2024 season had Rutgers finish 298th in offense in the country. There's only been two offense in Kenpom to have a worse offense ranking since 1997. That helped raise the offensive rating a lot single handedly.

At the end of the day, does this mean anything? Probably not, and it most likely is more random chance than any specific changes in philosophy, although further analysis would have to fully prove it one way or another. It is interesting though how the feel of this conference has changed over the last few seasons. The Big Ten is known for its brute bigs and a ton of physicality on the interior. Although there are spots of that throughout the conference, the game has really shifted to being more guard and perimeter heavy. If you run through who you think are the best players of the conference, it's likely you consider more guards than bigs.

5.) The bottom of the Big Ten is going to be worse than we've had in recent years

Right now, there are two teams that are worse than 100 in Kenpom (Rutgers and Minnesota), and a third isn't far behind (Penn State). Comparing that to last season, the Big Ten only had one team that finished worse than 100, Washington who finished 104.

Things can change and teams can grow, so maybe one or two of these teams are able to claw their way to being competitive. However, there is a very big gap from the 15th best team in the conference to the 16th as things stand. Usually the Big Ten will have one, maybe two, teams that really bring down the conference ratings. However, it could end up being three teams this time. That matters because it's the Big Ten, and these teams are still going to pick up a few wins during conference play. That means that there'll be a few bubble teams with a bad conference loss or two on their resume, and that doesn't bode well for the Big Ten getting as many teams as possible into the tournament.

Team of the Week

Purdue Boilermakers

Winning by 30 points over Texas Tech and looking like they don't even belong in the same class as you will help win you Team of the Week, especially when you factor in they got a win over Memphis as well. With them only playing Eastern Illinois next week, it'd be incredibly difficult for Purdue to three peat as Team of the Week.

Player of the Week

Jeremy Fears Jr - Michigan State

Fears has continued to be one of the best point guards in the conference and country. Against Kentucky, he had 8 points and 13 assists. He followed it up with an 18 point, 11 assist double-double against Detroit Mercy.