Three Important Big Ten Openers

Happy New Year everybody! I know that we have a great season of college basketball ahead of us, and I wish all of my readers the very best for the coming year. But since I didn't want to spend New Year's Eve recapping college basketball games, we've got to get to yesterday's lineup of games now. I'm going to separate this into two posts, the first of which is dedicated to three important Big Ten regular season openers:

#15 Michigan State 70, #21 Minnesota 58
Even before this game started I expected a relatively easy victory for Michigan State, even though they were on the road. The fact is that they're under-ranked due to that clubbing by North Carolina when Goran Suton was hurt. Since Suton has been back and healthy, I don't think there's any question that the Spartans are one of the ten best teams in the nation. They might be the best rebounding team in the nation and their defense is outstanding, so the only question is whether they have the offensive firepower to make a Final Four run. At this point, I can't say that I have a good answer to that question. And for Minnesota, they were clearly overrated at 21st in the nation. They moved up in the rankings because of what seemed like a huge victory over Louisville, a team that was in the Top Ten at the time. But they will likely be out of the Top 25 altogether on this coming Monday, and might not be that good of a team at all (I'll discuss Louisville in more depth later today). So if you throw out that Louisville win, you're looking at zero quality wins. They beat Colorado State by 1, Virginia (the worst team in the ACC) by 10, and 9 mediocre small conference teams. The difference between Minnesota and Illinois State at this point is the name of the school, because they have looked equivalent so far this season. Both Pomeroy and the Sagarin PREDICTOR even put Illinois State slightly ahead. But that said, Minnesota is still a good team, and if they can bounce back from this loss with a win over Ohio State on Saturday then all will be fine. If not, the questions will start to rise whether Minnesota is even a Tournament team. With their weak out-of-conference record (Pomeroy currently ranks their out-of-conference strength of schedule 271st in the nation), Minnesota will most likely need a 10-8 Big Ten record to earn an at-large bid.

Wisconsin 73, #24 Michigan 61
I say this over and over again, mostly because I know that most readers only come to this blog once every few days, and don't get to read every post: but this early in the season it's the predictive numbers that matter more than the wins and losses. When Selection Sunday rolls around then your wins are your wins and your losses are your losses, but the biggest mistake that bracketologists make early in the season is to just look and wins and losses and assume that the teams will keep winning the same games while losing the same games. I spoke about Houston in this sense yesterday, and Michigan is another great example. Entering this game they had wins over UCLA and Duke, with zero bad losses. Their RPI was up to 9th, and everybody viewed them as clear favorites over Wisconsin. But the fact was that those two big wins were something of flukes, and Michigan also had a 2 point overtime win over Savannah State, a 13 point win over Oakland, and zero other wins of any kind of any team that I would qualify as anything other than "bad." They play a very scattered style with lots of chaos that leads to big wins but also big losses. They're the polar opposite of a Wisconsin team that plays very steady and under control, and so while lacking the star power to be a top team will never fall on their face against a bad opponent. They're the same team every game. And by doing a great job of not bailing out Manny Harris with fouls they frustrated the young star, leading Michigan to have a bad day and really never make much of a game of this one. Wisconsin collects their first Top 25 win, and will likely move back into the Top 25 if they take care of business against Penn State on Saturday.

Penn State 61, Northwestern 57
Talor Battle continues to make his case for first team All Big Ten as Penn State deals Northwestern a very tough loss. More than anything, Penn State exploited Northwestern's lack of athleticism by dominating the boards. They only shot 31% from the field, but took seven extra shots from the field, and 15 extra from the line. Penn State is now 12-2 with a win at Georgia Tech to go with this win here, but I really don't see them as too likely of a Tournament team. They've played a very easy schedule, and both of their losses have been to Atlantic Ten teams. Once they start playing the meat of the Big Ten schedule they're going to collect a whole lot of losses, and I just can't see them finishing over-.500 in conference play. For Northwestern, those big wins over Florida State and DePaul are getting further and further in the rear view mirror. I do think that Northwestern is improved, and really has developed some nice parts to complement Kevin Coble. I especially like their back court of Craig Moore and Michael Thompson (a combined 24 points, 7 assists and 6 rebounds per game). But five of their next six games are against ranked teams, and the sixth is at a Wisconsin team that has probably lost only about three or four home conference games during the entire tenure of Bo Ryan. The Big Ten is just too good for a team like Northwestern to make the Tournament.