At least until last night, this week was largely about the top end of the conference separating itself from the rest of the league. Notable scores from last week (home team listed second):

• Maryland 55, Indiana 63
• Rutgers 45, MSU 68
• Minnesota 57, Michigan 82
• Iowa 89, Maryland 67
• Indiana 73, Wisconsin 80 (2OT)
• Illinois 81, Northwestern 56
• Purdue 55, MSU 54
• OSU 79, Rutgers 68
• Minnesota 71, Iowa 86
• Maryland 66, Illinois 63

Iowa went an emphatic 2-0, Michigan blew out Minnesota, Illinois demolished Northwestern, and Wisconsin survived a scare from Indiana. Northwestern, Rutgers, and Indiana all had rough weeks; the only win among them was the Hoosiers righting the ship after blowing a big lead against last-place Nebraska.

Then Maryland went on the road to upset the Illini last night despite missing Eric Ayala, their only rotation player who somewhat resembles a point guard. The top four may be separating from the pack, but that pack is still dangerous.

We had more COVID-related postponements this week: Wisconsin at Penn State, Nebraska at Purdue, Penn State at OSU, and Michigan at Penn State did not happen as scheduled. PSU paused their program last week and their game against Rutgers originally slated for tomorrow night is postponed.

The Nittany Lions are going to have at least four games to make up when they're able to retake the court; they'll either face a brutally packed schedule to fit them in or the Big Ten is going to have an unbalanced final schedule unless the NCAA pushes the NCAA Tournament back, which they're considering—but more on a one-week-later timeline than a "May Madness" timeline.

The Standings

*Torvik includes projections for games that have been postponed, KenPom does not.

Teams are mostly settling into their spots in the advanced rankings pecking order, with the four top-ten squads, a couple tiers in the middle, and Nebraska hanging just below 100th. The exception is Rutgers, which has seen their offense plummet after a hideous loss to MSU and a less-hideous one to OSU. After looking like they might move into the top 15, they're now threatening to drop out of the top 40.

[Hit THE JUMP for trying to pin down Maryland, OSU's injury issues, the league's most indispensable players, and more.]

What Are You, Maryland?

Darryl Morsell (11) was the hero in MD's upset of Illinois [Paul Sherman]

Bart Torvik's site boils down a team's performance in each game into a "game score" (a concept adopted from Bill James and baseball's sabermetrics movement) that boils it down to a nice, easy-to-understand number; the scale is from 0 (awful) to 100 (amazing) and the average is 50.

Michigan has posted game scores between 89 and 99 in every game save Oakland, when they escaped with a win despite a 37, which passes the sanity test given the Grizzlies rank 280th in the country. Outside of that zone-induced, early-season hiccup, Michigan has been remarkably consistent.

The same cannot be said for Maryland, which has:

• beaten Wisconsin and Illinois on the road
• lost all five of their other Big Ten games

The schedule can explain some of it. It's tough to face Michigan and Iowa anywhere, even at home. There's no shame in losing at Indiana and Purdue. (The 14-point home loss to Rutgers isn't looking so good this week.) But game scores are adjusted for opponent quality and the Terps are all over the damn place. Each dot represents a game; the red line is their moving average, the black line their five-game moving average:

They played like one of the worst teams in the country against Clemson, a below-average D-I team against Rutgers and Iowa, and a Final Four-caliber squad against Wisconsin and Illinois. Notably, both the Badgers and Illini have one primary perimeter threat—D'Mitrik Trice and Ayo Dosunmu, respectively—driving a lot of their offense.

When Maryland can put shutdown defender Darryl Morsell on the other team's top option, they have a chance to play above their heads; Morsell was the main reason Dosunmu needed 25 shooting possessions to score 23 points last night. Even then, though, they needed help; they were getting crushed by Kofi Cockburn (21 points on 13 possessions) before the Illini stopped giving him the ball down the stretch and Da'Monte Williams missed a pair of critical late free throws.

The Terps seem exceedingly matchup-reliant but if one falls into their wheelhouse they can evidently hang with top-ten teams. Thankfully, Michigan has already shown they're not such a matchup.

Point: [Blank]

injuries may force Duane Washington Jr. to man the point [Campredon]

Point guard hasn't been a position of strength for Ohio State. It's at least been a position they had, though, and now they're stuck choosing between a Maryland-like all-wings lineup and fielding some potentially overmatched players after injuries struck down starter CJ Walker and replacement Jimmy Sotos.

Walker was shut down indefinitely after last Sunday's loss at Minnesota when a lingering hand injury turned out to be too serious to play through at all effectively:

The day after Walker scored two points while missing all five shots from the field with two assists and one rebounds in 23 minutes of Ohio State 17-point loss to Minnesota, he got his hand looked at. From those tests, they learned of the torn ligaments and made the choice to shut him down for the time being.

Sotos, a Bucknell transfer who's been a poor combination of low-usage and mistake-prone so far at OSU, started the following game against Rutgers, hit a couple threes, had four assists against only one turnover—and injured his shoulder in a collision late in the game. Chris Holtmann just called him a game-time decision for Wednesday's tilt against Northwestern, which would be an impressive turnaround given Sotos seemed to indicate he'd dislocated his shoulder.

Even if Sotos comes back, the Buckeyes need other lead ballhandler options. Starting shooting guard Duane Washington Jr. isn't a traditional lead guard by any means but he can create his own shots and guard the position; he'll likely see a number of his minutes shift to the point. Cal transfer Justice Sueing, a 6'7 wing, has 13 assists over the last four games and spent a lot of time with the ball in his hands down the stretch against Rutgers. It's possible Holtmann can use his current rotation to patch the hole.

He might not have many other options. 6'1 PG Meechie Johnson is a very young freshman; the #123 overall recruit enrolled mid-year after reclassifying from 2021, and he missed his entire junior season with a knee injury. He played four minutes without recording a statistic in his season debut against RU and Holtmann is talking about a "slow build" for him.

It's an unfortunate confluence of events for the Buckeyes, which added depth at the point in the form of Utah State transfer Abel Porter only for their medical team to uncover a career-ending heart condition in the offseason. Playing with no true point guard and an undersized center is a hard way to live in this conference. OSU is fielding such a team while facing one of the most brutal schedules in the conference from this point forward; they still have two games apiece against Illinois and Iowa, a road date at Wisconsin, and a final stretch of Michigan-@MSU-Iowa-Illinois. Oof.

The Indispensables

Myles Johnson is one of the B1G's best rim protectors when here's there to protect the rim [Campredon]

This section was inspired by the OSU-Rutgers game, which turned—just like their previous matchup—when RU center Myles Johnson got into foul trouble. Rutgers had just gone on a 13-2 run to take a six-point lead when Johnson got tagged with his second foul of the first half. From that point into the early portions of the second half, the Buckeyes went on a 27-4 run, and they never looked back. Frustratingly, Johnson only picked up one more foul the rest of the way.

This season, Rutgers has outscored OSU 77-64 with Johnson on the floor and been outscored 95-59(!!!) when he's on the bench. This inspired me to look for players whose teams have the biggest gaps in all-around quality between when they're on and off the floor.

A stipulation to prevent this from being too easy and center-focused: players in the KenPom Player of the Year top ten are excluded. That leaves out Iowa's Luka Garza, Indiana's Trayce Jackson-Davis*, Michigan's Hunter Dickinson, and Purdue's Trevion Williams.

These three are only a little less obvious but we are discussing indispensable players here. Despite inspiring the list, Johnson doesn't make it; if you take out the OSU matchups, Rutgers has been a significantly better defensive team against good competition when he's not on the floor. Your opinion of Johnson may depend on which night you caught him playing as much as any player in the league.

Marcus Carr, PG, Minnesota. The Gophers have been extremely reliant on Carr to be their offense. They're at their best when they're able to get out and run—or, at least, when Carr is able to get out and run, as he scores in transition so much better than his teammates that it's only partially an indictment of said teammates:

That halfcourt number undersells Carr's value there, too. A lot of that Minnesota halfcourt production is coming off of his passes, which aren't included in Carr's figures above. He's also tasked with taking a lot of tough, late-clock shots when nobody else is able to create something. He's second in the league in minutes after finishing first last season.

The other point guard option is Jamal "Hair Trigger" Mashburn Jr., who's in the Disaster Factory of the Year conversation. Center Liam Robbins has largely gone missing against the Big Ten's better centers. This team goes as far as Carr can (sorry) drive them.

EJ Liddell, F/C, Ohio State. This one has to be a little worrisome for the Buckeyes; one of the most irreplaceable players is 6'7 and getting a lot of his minutes at center. They haven't played a team with a dominant interior presence outside of Purdue, which has one on the offensive side in Williams—who had 16 points and 9 boards in only 27 minutes in their win over the Bucks.

So, we'll see if this holds when OSU faces the Garzas, Cockburns, and Dickinsons of the conference. That all said, right now, the Buckeyes badly need their undersized stretch big on the court. Via Hoop Lens (cupcakes removed):

OSU's offense can stay afloat without him but their defense goes from good to atrocious inside the arc, allowing opponents to hit nearly 60% of their two-pointers. The combination of Kyle Young, Zed Key, and Seth Towns—the other three players to rotate at the center or power forward spots unless OSU is throwing out a rare ultra-small lineup with Sueing at the four—is providing almost no rim protection or interior defense. Liddell may not be tall but he's holding up a heck of a lot better.

Micah Potter, F/C, Wisconsin. One big question facing Greg Gard this season was how he'd handle his two bigs, Potter and 6'11 senior Nate Reuvers. So far, they've played a similar number of minutes, with each getting a little over half the available time on the court because they share the floor for about 20% of Wisconsin's non-garbage possessions.

The issue is that those two-big lineups, while great defensively, destroy UW's spacing and bog down the offense—it's a niche lineup, not one to be used for the long-haul. Meanwhile, while Gard is slightly favoring Reuvers over Potter when he plays one center, the numbers indicate he should be leaning the opposite way, and pretty hard at that.

Potter has been a significantly better offensive player, both individually and functioning within the team, and his individual defense is good even though he doesn't amass blocks like Reuvers. Wisconsin's worst defensive group, in fact, is when Reuvers is their only big man.

If there's an adjustment coming, it wasn't on the way last time out, when Potter appeared frustrated in the huddle and saw only 24 minutes in a double-overtime game—hey, maybe it wouldn't have reached that point if he'd played more—despite Potter going 5/7 from the field with four boards, one turnover, and only two fouls. I'm not sure what's going on between Gard and Potter but I hope it continues through Tuesday night.

[*I need to get this TJD on/off stat in here anyway. With him on the floor (cupcakes removed), IU scores 0.99 PPP with a 50.8 2P% while allowing 0.93 and 43.6% for a +0.06 efficiency margin; when he's off the floor they score 0.83 PPP (WOOF) with a 43.8 2P% while giving up 1.12 and 57.1% for a -0.29 EM. Holy hell!]

Updated Tiers

From last week:

Tier I: Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Iowa
Tier II: Rutgers, Minnesota
Tier III: Indiana, Ohio State, Northwestern, Purdue, Maryland
Tier IV: Michigan State, Penn State
Tier V: Nebraska :(

Updated:

Tier I: Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa, Illinois
Tier II: Ohio State, Purdue, Minnesota, Rutgers
Tier III: Indiana, Northwestern, Maryland
Tier IV: Michigan State, Penn State
Tier V: Nebraska :(

This Week's Games

All times Eastern.

Tuesday: Wisconsin at Michigan (7 pm, ESPN)
Wednesday: Northwestern at OSU (7, BTN), Illinois at Nebraska (9, BTN)
Thursday: Purdue at Indiana (7, FS1), MSU at Iowa (9, FS1)
Friday: Wisconsin at Rutgers (7, FS1)
Saturday: OSU at Illinois (noon, FOX), Nebraska at Maryland (noon, BTN), Michigan at Minnesota (2, ESPN2)
Sunday: Indiana at MSU (TBD, CBS), PSU at Purdue (TBD, BTN)