chris collins

It's basketball preview season everyone! With the dawn of a new Michigan hoops campaign upon us, we will be counting down the final 8 days before the season opener with the usual content you've come to expect, except with me taking over the role of author. This week we will be scouting the competition in the B1G, which will be done in a power ranking format instead of tiers like past years. Today we'll look at the bottom half (14-8) and tomorrow we'll cover the upper half of the conference (7-1). Our expedition begins with a team that has a chance to be one of the worst teams in the conference in a while: 

14. Minnesota 

Projected lineup:

- G, Payton Willis

- G, EJ Stephens

- F, Jamison Battle

- F, Eric Curry

- C, Treyton Thompson

This is extremely grim. Richard Pitino is gone from Minneapolis and left behind a roster that is the basketball equivalent of a smoldering nuclear bomb crater. Nearly everyone who didn’t graduate opted to transfer somewhere else, leaving only Eric Curry and Isaiah Ihnen as the two returners, a pair of players with <100 ORTGs who played <50% of minutes. Oh and Ihnen is out for the year. Grim.

The reconstructed roster was put together entirely of transfers and recruits by new head coach Ben Johnson, who has never been a head coach before in the NCAA. Freshman big man Treyton Thompson is the only player above 6’9” on the roster, and he is Freshman Caris LeVert skinny. Jamison Battle transferred in from GW and was at least a decent A-10 player, and the same could be said of Payton Willis at Charleston, who has power conference experience in his past amid a tumultuous career path (actually was on Minnesota before, prior to transferring away and now transferring back).

EJ Stephens and Luke Loewe were both good players at small schools, too, but there are real reasons to wonder whether they can adjust to the B1G. The rest of the bench are players who were not even starters at mid-majors (Charlie Daniels), DII players (Daniel Ogele), JUCO players (Abdoulaye Thiam), or America East players who haven’t played in two seasons due to injury (Sean Sutherlin). Grim.

Even if some of these transfers hit, not all will, and all have never played with each other before, nor have they played with this new coach before. It’s going to be immensely painful in Minneapolis and they are the worst B1G by a wide margin. A trip to The Barn may not even be threatening this year.

13. Northwestern

Projected lineup:

- Boo Buie, G

- Ty Berry, G

- Chase Audige, G

- Robbie Beran, F

- Pete Nance, F

A Canadian who doesn’t follow college basketball intensely but has general cognitive knowledge of the subject recently said to me about Northwestern hoops “I remember them from one of those March Madness runs” and I had to note that it was one (1) run and the “run” was one NCAA Tournament win, but the combination of it seeming like the biggest deal in the world and Julia Louis-Dreyfuss going ballistic has resonated with sports fans everywhere and in the process, has bought Chris Collins a lot of time in Evanston. That time may be running out.

Since the 2017 team was bounced from that NCAA tourney, Northwestern is 45-74. Last year’s team seemed good for a few weeks but Eli Brooks dunking on them broke their soul and the ship crashed down to earth. The Wildcats lost 13 straight games before a three-game win streak closed the regular season, which came just before they scored only 46 points in the BTT, mercifully ending the Cats’ season.

Northwestern enters 2021-22 with Chris Collins fighting for his life. He returns the stellar Pete Nance, a big and long stretch five who is one of the conference’s better players, but the rest of the roster does not look particularly great. Optimism probably has a lot to do with a returning backcourt of Chase Audige and Boo Buie.

Audige is a plus defender but was also a central problem with Northwestern last season: he was the Wildcats’ highest usage piece and he put up a 86.9 ORTG with one of the worst eFG clips in the conference among players who played at least 60% of minutes. Want to know who else ranked in that cellar among eFG%? Boo Buie himself, owner of the best name in the B1G. Buie’s saving grace is that he’s a great distributor of the basketball, but those two guards need to be better on the offensive end.

Robbie Beran returns as an efficient, low usage stretch big who fits the five-out scheme that NW is trying to run. Returners Ty Berry and Ryan Young add depth, as does transfer Elyjah Williams, but this team hinges on what those big pieces, Nance, Audige, and Buie, can do. Last season wasn’t good enough and with rather few new pieces compared to similar B1G teams, it’s a matter of how much improvement Chris Collins can get out of a largely identical roster. Color me skeptical.

[AFTER THE JUMP: your least favorite B1G player returns]

THE ESSENTIALS

THE OVERVIEW

There are three Big Ten games today, two of which will have an impact on the teams directly behind Michigan in standings (Iowa just beat Rutgers, Illinois-Purdue at 6) and one with delightfully little relevance to the conference title picture (MSU-Nebraska). No matter how those play out, Michigan can maintain first place in the conference by holding serve at home on Sunday against the surprise of the season thus far, Northwestern, which is in the four-team pack one game behind M in the loss column.

This game marks the first time in 175 meetings between Michigan and Northwestern that both programs enter the game ranked in the polls.

THE US

Seth's graphic [click to embiggen]:

faq for these graphics

Austin Davis remains out with a plantar fascia injury. Juwan Howard tightened the rotation to seven players against Maryland, playing Brandon Johns for eight minutes at center and two alongside Hunter Dickinson at power forward while Terrance Williams didn't get off the bench.

THE LINEUP CARD

Seth's graphic [click for big]:

So, yeah, we added a Disaster Factory tag.

[Hit THE JUMP for the rest of the preview plus an updated WBB preview for tomorrow's Northwestern game.]

I thought Rutgers would be the least likely team to find itself atop the conference standings this season. I was wrong!

Northwestern went 3-17 in the Big Ten last year. They're now 3-0 this season after following up last week's upset of Michigan State with victories against Indiana and Ohio State. Here are the results from last week's conference slate (home team listed second):

• Purdue 55, Iowa 70
• Nebraska 53, Wisconsin 67
• Rutgers 68, Ohio State 80
• Penn State 81, Illinois 98
• Northwestern 74, Indiana 67
• Iowa 95, Minnesota 102 (OT)
• Wisconsin 85, Michigan State 76
• Michigan 80, Nebraska 69
• Maryland 70, Purdue 73
• Indiana 60, Illinois 69
• Ohio State 70, Northwestern 71

It was a particularly good week for Northwestern and Illinois and a rough one for Indiana, which lost to both aforementioned teams. Meanwhile, the most entertaining game of the week was Iowa's late collapse and eventual overtime loss at Minnesota. The Hawkeyes still can't guard anybody.

The Standings

Now ordered by conference record since everyone has actually played multiple Big Ten games.

The top-to-bottom strength of the conference is remarkable; 13 of the 14 teams are inside the top 55 nationally when you average KenPom and Torvik rankings. KenPom predicts all 13 of those teams to finish with at least eight conference wins, leaving Nebraska—which isn't an awful bottom-end power conference team!—with a projected 3-17 record.

Even with that 3-0 start, Northwestern is predicted to finish .500 in Big Ten play. Ohio State and Indiana are projected to finish with losing conference records despite sitting just outside the top 20 teams in the country; ditto MSU at #32. It's a scarily strong league; the Big Ten and Big 12 are well in front of the rest of the pack in KenPom's conference rankings with the former topping the list. Fox Sports' latest (way too early) bracket has 11 B1G squads in the field with Wisconsin/Iowa as two-seeds and Michigan/Illinois as three-seeds.

[Hit THE JUMP for five-out Northwestern, State's terrible defensive profile, and more.]