Quick Recap
Michigan all but locked up, at minimum, a share of the Big Ten Title. They simply have to win one of their remaining games to get a share, and they only need to go 2-2 in their final four to lock up the outright title. The Wolverines went into Mackey and controlled pretty early in the game. They then went to DC and took on Duke in a highly entertaining matchup, but ultimately fell short.
Purdue followed up the Michigan loss by taking it out on in-state rival, Indiana. Purdue got up early and never looked back, winning by the largest margin for Purdue in the rivalry since 1969.
Illinois stomped on USC, and early it looked like they'd make it 2/2 on the west coast, getting up 33-10 against UCLA. However, the Bruins clawed back quickly and were able to win in overtime, a VERY big win for their tournament hopes.
Ohio State and Iowa both got good wins for their tourney chances, getting home wins over Wisconsin and Nebraska respectively.
Nebraska followed up the Iowa loss by dominating Penn State, including Pryce Sandfort knocking down 8 3s.
Rutgers also beat Penn State, on the road, getting their 4th Big Ten win of the season. Maryland got their 4th Big Ten win of the season by knocking off Washington.
Minnesota went 2-0 this week, beating Oregon by 17 and Rutgers by 19.
Michigan State and Wisconsin both got home wins on Sunday, beating Ohio State and Iowa.
Score recap (Away Team - Home Team)
Michigan 91 - Purdue 80
Wisconsin 69 - Ohio State 86
UCLA 59 - Michigan State 82
Nebraska 52 - Iowa 57
Minnesota 61 - Oregon 44
Rutgers 85 - Penn State 72
Maryland 74 - Northwestern 78
Illinois 101 - USC 65
Indiana 64 - Purdue 93
Rutgers 61 - Minnesota 80
Penn State 64 - Nebraska 87
Washington 60 - Maryland 64
Michigan 63 - Duke 68 (in Washington DC)
Illinois 94 - UCLA 95 (OT)
Ohio State 60 - Michigan State 66
Iowa 71 - Wisconsin 84
5 Trends and Observations
1.) UCLA Runs On Donovan Dent
UCLA was had the largest comeback against an AP Top 10 team in history? (Source - ESPN ticker at the bottom while I was watching Iowa State/BYU).
I must admit, I was only box score watching the start of the Illinois/UCLA game as the Michigan/Duke game was going on (and fully rewatched the game later). My reactions went something like this
- Sees score is 12-10, Illinois leading - "Solid start for UCLA"
- Sees score is 33-10 - "Oh so Illinois just loves playing in the west coast"
- Sees score is 50-43 at half - "Well, I have legitimately no idea what is happening anymore"
It ended up being one of the most exciting games of the season, highlighted by Donovan Dent going 94 feet in just 5 seconds, before hitting a double clutch layup at the buzzer.
More than anything, Donovan Dent looked like superstar Donovan Dent as we expected in the preseason. Dent's two best games of the season were probably in UCLA's two biggest wins of the season. He went for 23 points and 13 assists against Purdue, and he had 14 points and 15 assists (0 turnovers) against Illinois.
This UCLA team goes where he goes. For example, UCLA lost by 23 to Michigan State just a week ago. In that game, Dent had 6 points, 4 assists, and 4 turnovers.
At their best, UCLA has showed they can play with anyone. They've also showed they can look uncompetitive against anyone as well. When Dent is at his best, he gives the Bruins a point guard that can control every aspect of the offense, getting downhill at will and causing havoc for defenses. The issue has been the consistency simply hasn't been there, and that could be applied to pretty much the entire team.
It isn't just Dent for this team though. UCLA got Skyy Clark back, and the Illinois game was the first one that UCLA went small to start with the lineup of Dent/Trent Perry/Skyy Clark/Eric Dailey/Tyler Bilodeau. This lineup hadn't played much all year long, and in fact, it's only played for 15 total minutes this season per CBB Analytics. It'll be worth monitoring to see how much UCLA goes to it or not, as it gets their 5 best players on the floor, but the tradeoff is having no true interior size.
I'm sure the players will make sure to not raise their voice at Mick Cronin about playing time though.
2.) Indiana Lacks Interior Size, And It's Showing
There's still 4 games left for Indiana to try and make a big of noise, so I don't want to just completely skip over those, but I'm going to for a second. Jumping to how this first season of the DeVries era will be interesting.
It coincided with the improbable football championship, and honestly, it seemed like basically no one cared about Indiana basketball for the first two months of the season. Now that the eyes are back on basketball, it's been a mixed bag, but the issues are pretty clear.
This Indiana team is a high-skill team that lacks real interior size and enforcements. They have enough skill and shooting to win any game (see earlier Purdue game), but they also can simply not have chances in games because of their lack of size (see their last two games).
Against Illinois, the Illini gathered 15 offensive rebounds, had 17 2nd chance points, and scored 40 points in the paint.
Against Purdue, the Boilermakers ended with 32 points in the paint, but Indiana simply had no answer for whatever Purdue wanted offensively.
It seems like the general consensus for this season will be along the lines of "DeVries did what he could this year. There were real issues with the roster construction, but those can be excused for year 1. If those issues persist into next season, it becomes a real problem."
Maybe Indiana just gets on an all-time heater though and makes some noise in March, who knows? That's why college basketball is the best.
3.) Iowa and Ohio State Get Important Wins
Ken Pomeroy put out an article this week that mentioned how although Duke-Michigan was the biggest game of the entire season, it was one of the least meaningful in terms of impacts on March. There's truth to that, and it can sort of lead into the argument that very few teams in the country had bigger wins than UCLA, Iowa, and Ohio State this week.
We already discussed UCLA, so we'll focus on just the Iowa and Ohio State part of this.
Iowa, a team who had great metric but lacked any sort of high quality win, got a home win over a Nebraska team that is reeling just a bit. It's by far Iowa's biggest win of the season, and it gives them at least a bit of breathing room over the next few weeks. It probably doesn't lock them into the tournament, but it makes it much likelier. It was the defense that won it for them in that one, holding Nebraska to just 52 points. With Bennett Stirtz on the roster, that's all Iowa needs to do to win. Stirtz scored 25 of Iowa's 57 points, and it was enough to secure the win.
Ohio State's win at home against Wisconsin isn't nearly as big as Iowa's, but for a team that is right on the bubble of every single bracket projection, simply not losing that game is big. After letting the Virginia game slip away, Ohio State was able to control from the jump against Wisconsins and secure the home win.
Of very major note, these two teams play each other on Wednesday, a very big matchup for postseason implications.
4.) Michigan's Shooting Variance
Is Michigan frauds? Is Duke the best team in the country?
No. Maybe?
Michigan will have one of the stranger talking point weeks this week. They beat Purdue in Mackey Arena, a game Purdue had only a glimmer of hope at most in the 2nd half. That's a REALLY big win. Then they lose in a neutral site game to Duke.
I think anyone with some common sense will realize that two things can be true.
1 - Michigan is still an incredibly elite team
2 - Michigan had a just ok game and got beat by also an incredibly elite team.
Getting into the actual basketball, that exact game script feels like the one that can get Michigan in trouble, other than a team simply just shooting 55% from three or something.
Duke controlled the tempo, and it was the fewest possessions Michigan had in a game all season. Michigan got a lot of their buckets early in the game via transition, but the Blue Devils did a good job of shutting them down after that. Once in the half court, Michigan simply just struggled to score in a consistent basis. Going 6/25 from 3 is some poor variance, but it's also been the way of this Michigan team shooting the ball. Through __ games, Michigan has the following shooting percentages from 3, grouped into buckets.
- Under 25%: 7 games
- 25% - 35%: 7 games
- 35.1% - 45%: 7 games
- 45.1% and above: 6 games
Michigan beat Purdue this week in large part because they had their 2nd best three point shooting performance of the season. They lost to Duke in large part because they shot 24% from three, their 7th worst shooting performance of the season.
But even in the midst of this, it almost helps show why Michigan is probably still just the best team in the country. They can largely withstand bad shooting variance and still find ways to win because of their defense and interior dominance. Even against Duke, Michigan had every chance to win within the last few minutes of the game. They lost the rebounding battle by a good margin, something that Michigan needs to dominate in pretty much every game.
At the end of the day, it was a very fun game, and I'm hoping we get a part 2 at some point in March.
5.) Big Ten Standings/Bracketology Check In
Here is where we currently stand for Big Ten Tournament seedings, and their corresponding Big Ten conference records.
Note - I believe I have the tiebreakers correct, but could be wrong.
Triple Byes
- #1 Michigan (15-1)
- #2 Illinois (13-4)
- #3 Michigan State (12-4)
- #4 Nebraska (12-4)
Double Byes
- #5 Purdue (12-4)
- #6 Wisconsin (11-5)
- #7 UCLA (10-6)
- #8 Iowa (9-7)
Single Byes
- #9 Ohio State (9-7)
- #10 Indiana (8-8)
- #11 USC (7-9)
- #12 Minnesota (6-10)
- #13 Washington (5-11)
- #14 Maryland (4-12)
No Byes
- #15 Rutgers (4-12)
- #16 Northwestern (3-13)
- #17 Oregon (3-13)
- #18 Penn State (2-15)
Below is where bracket matrix and Torvik has current Big Ten teams, at the time of writing.
Note - The first number is the current seed on bracketmatrix.com. The second number is based on barttorvik.com TourneyCast, updated through 2/22, which focuses more on predicting final bracket, not saying what it'd be if it ended today. It runs 10,000 simulations based on the projections to average out the seed for each team. Included next to each team's name and seed will be their WAB, Wins Above Bubble.
It feels like there are 11 potential bids for the Big Ten, but only 6 teams feel comfortably in right now.
- Michigan - 1 Seed - 1 Seed - #1 WAB
- Purdue - 2 Seed - 2 Seed - #5 WAB
- Illinois - 2 Seed - 2 Seed - #9 WAB
- Nebraska - 3 Seed - 3 Seed - #7 WAB
- Michigan State - 4 seed - 4 Seed - #11 WAB
- Wisconsin - 6 Seed - 7 Seed - #28 WAB
- Iowa - 8 Seed - 8 Seed - #31 WAB
- Indiana - 10 Seed - 9 Seed - #45 WAB
- UCLA - 11 Seed - 10 Seed - #41 WAB
- USC - 1st Team Out - Out - #44 WAB
- Ohio State - 2nd Team Out - 11 Seed (Last 4 in) - #46 WAB
Team of the Week
UCLA Bruins? Iowa Hawkeyes?
It was a weird week where 11 of the Big Ten teams went 1-1, and the teams that went 2-0 didn't have super big wins.
Both UCLA and Iowa lost this week, but both got very big wins to improve their tournament cases, so I guess they get team of the week this week.
Player of the Week
Bruce Thornton - Ohio State
Wisconsin
- 37 minutes - 27 points - 9 rebounds - 8 assists - 2 turnovers
- 6/12 2s (50.0%) - 3/6 2s (50.0%) - 6/7 FTs (85.7%)
@ Michigan State
- 40 minutes - 32 points - 4 rebounds - 2 assists - 0 turnovers - 2 steals
- 10/14 2s (71.4%) - 2/8 3s (25.0%) - 6/8 FTs (75.0%)
Week Schedule
Note - All times listed are in Eastern Standard Time
Game(s) of the Week
- Michigan @ Illinois - Fri, Feb 27 - 8:00 - FOX
- Michigan State @ Purdue - Thu, Feb 26 - 8:00 - Peacock
Tuesday, February 24th
- Washington @ Rutgers - 6:30 - Big Ten Network
- Northwestern @ Indiana - 7:00 - FS1
- Minnesota @ Michigan - 8:30 - Big Ten Network
- USC @ UCLA - 11:00 - FS1
Wednesday, February 25th
- Maryland @ Nebraska - 7:00 - Big Ten Network
- Ohio State @ Iowa - 9:00 - Big Ten Network
- Wisconsin @ Oregon - 11:00 - Big Ten Network
Thursday, February 26th
- Michigan State @ Purdue - 8:00 - Peacock
Friday, February 27th
- Michigan @ Illinois - 8:00 - FOX
Saturday, February 28th
- Iowa @ Penn State - 12:00 - Big Ten Network
- Oregon @ Northwestern - 2:00 - Big Ten Network
- UCLA @ Minnesota - 2:00 - FS1
- Wisconsin @ Washington - 4:00 - FS1
- Nebraska @ USC - 4:00 - Big Ten Network
Sunday, March 1st
- Rutgers @ Maryland - 12:00 - FS1
- Purdue @ Ohio State - 1:30 - CBS
- Michigan State @ Indiana - 3:45 - CBS
