REALLY bad B1G basketball on now

Submitted by Blueverine on March 6th, 2019 at 9:58 PM

In case you weren't sure of the gap between the top and bottom of the conference, there is an epic battle of incompetence on the BTN now between Northwestern and OSU. OSU just scored their 15th point with 2:08 left. 

The game is a series of airballs, balls clanging off the heel and backboard, roller skate defense, poor ball movement and, of course, turnovers. After watching 30 games of our guys, the difference is obvious and stunning. We've really got a great thing going. And I fear that a number of schools will be coming to throw big cash at Yak and Saddi very soon. 

Monk

March 7th, 2019 at 2:02 PM ^

Michigan has been involved in a few games like this too, recall the UM-PSU at the end of the first half was 25-20, exactly the same number of points as this one.  Now this is not bad I think because UM as we know is a superb defensive team, so I expect the opponent not to put up a lot of points.  But as we all know if the offense isn't clicking you can have a few dud scores. 

Monk

March 7th, 2019 at 2:02 PM ^

Michigan has been involved in a few games like this too, recall the UM-PSU at the end of the first half was 25-20, exactly the same number of points as this one.  Now this is not bad I think because UM as we know is a superb defensive team, so I expect the opponent not to put up a lot of points.  But as we all know if the offense isn't clicking you can have a few dud scores. 

bluesalt

March 7th, 2019 at 2:59 AM ^

That would be silly to get rid of Holtzman.  Matta left that program in shambles, and Holtzman did a terrific job to get that team a four seed last year.  He’s got three top-50 recruits coming in for his first true recruiting class, and while this year’s team seems to have played itself to the wrong side of the bubble, certainly deserves more than two seasons.

fishgoblue1

March 7th, 2019 at 6:40 AM ^

  Holtmann is a great coach.  He took over Butler under weird circumstances.  He left a HC job to be an assistant to Brad Miller.  Miller took a leave of absence and never returned.  All Holtmann did was take them to 3 consecutive NCAAs.

He will build a good program at OSU and I don't like that.

LSAClassOf2000

March 6th, 2019 at 10:19 PM ^

I asked on Twitter and I will ask here - can you be excused from the second half of a basketball game in the NCAA if you can't even score 20 points in the first half? I think this is something that needs to be addressed. 

Blue in Paradise

March 6th, 2019 at 10:30 PM ^

Yak is getting his just due as a great asst coach but I think Saddi is criminally underrated.

Does anybody remember the 2016 Moneyball League seems story?  According to Sam Webb, back in 2016, Saddi came in and thought the team would was soft.  So he takes them to this Moneyball League up in Lansing and our guys basically get run out of the gym by the MSU players.  After a few games, our guys basically stop showing up because they are intimidated.

Saddi makes the point that if they can’t compete with them in Moneyball, how will they compete in a B1G game?  A few months later, Maverick Morgan makes his white collar comment and the rest is history.  What are the chances our current players would get run out of that Moneyball gym or any other gym by other college basketball players?  Pretty close to zero and I think Saddi is a big part of that...

https://www.freep.com/story/sports/college/university-michigan/wolverines/2016/07/18/michigan-wolverines-basketball-saddi-washington-moneyball/87276472/

Plus, look at the development of our bigs since he got to Ann Arbor!

xtramelanin

March 6th, 2019 at 10:51 PM ^

cats up by 14 with 6:00 left.  love it.  NW my second fav school, beating ohio. 

EDIT: up 15 with under 3:00 left.  hopefully gaining momentum to beat purdue this weekend.  go cats! 

TrueBlue2003

March 6th, 2019 at 11:58 PM ^

OSU is not firing Chris Holtmann.  The guy just had a massively overachieving season last year at 15-3 in conference play despite playing Andrew Dakich for significant minutes.  Thanks to that season, he is the defending B1G coach of the year.

This season, he has a team that lost their only good player from last year improbably on the bubble.

He has 3 top 50 recruits coming in.  Not only is he not going anywhere, he's poised to be a perennial conference title contender.  I bet they finish top 4 in the conference next year.

As for Collins, hard to see a program that had never made the NCAA tournament prior to the current coaches arrival fire the guy just two years removed from that appearance.

With the strong finishes at Illinois, PSU and Rutgers, I'd think the only coach on the hot seat might be Tim Miles and even he is probably safe.

A Lot of Milk

March 7th, 2019 at 2:29 AM ^

Does Holtmann have some tremendous track record of plugging in highly ranked freshmen to his team that I don't know about? He was handed a big ten player of the year and a team full of senior players. Obviously they were pretty good in the regular season, but losing three times to Penn State in one year and going 1-2 in the post season tournaments (none of the games were impressive) makes it seem like Holtmann isn't exactly the sharpest Xs and Os guy.

Also, Illinois and Rutgers love their coaches, Penn State coach definitely bought himself another year, and Tim Miles is looonngg gone. Would be absolutely shocked if he was kept on after this year

bluesalt

March 7th, 2019 at 3:11 AM ^

He was handed a team that went 17-15 the prior season and had such little depth that Andrew Danish transferred in to play the 6th most minutes.  This year he’s lost all those upperclassmen and has the team still with a chance for the tournament.

Not to mention Keita Bates-Diop looked nothing like a player who’d become the Conference POY last season prior to Holtzman’s arrival.

MH20

March 7th, 2019 at 8:21 AM ^

Have to disagree on Miles.

For starters, it's pretty obvious that his team has quit on him. That he had to bench his stars for half-assing it in the first half against Michigan says as much. Secondly, Nebraska had tremendous expectations coming off of last season and who they returned. Now they're looking a 5-15 league record squarely in the face and next season likely won't be any better when you factor in all of the pieces that will be leaving (Palmer, Copeland, Watson, Borchardt, possibly Roby). And the final nail, IMO, is that Nebraska has a new-ish AD who has already made a new hire in football and could look to do the same in hoops, especially when factoring in next season's likely poor record. Assuming his buyout isn't ridiculous, might as well cut your losses and get a new guy in there to rebuild the program and culture.

Look, Miles seems like a great guy but I don't think that's going to save him.

J.

March 7th, 2019 at 11:00 AM ^

I think Miles sealed his own fate with the comment about how he doesn't care if he gets fired because he'll still get paid.  I'm sure this has been an incredibly frustrating season for him, but there are some things you can't say, and "I'm in it for the money" is one of them.

Nebraska is a really tough job for a basketball coach.  There's little local talent, Lincoln isn't exactly Chicago, and they're the #2 basketball tradition within their own state.  Miles did an impressive job getting a good group of players to come there in the first place; whoever comes in next is going to find they've got a serious uphill climb for relevance.

I think Tim Miles will be a great studio analyst somewhere by this time next year. :)

Reggie Dunlop

March 7th, 2019 at 12:16 PM ^

I would probably fire him for Nebraska's on-court performance. The "millionaire" line is nonsense. It was taken completely out of context. I'm not surprised nobody bothered to research it, but he didn't say anything close to "I'm in it for the money".

He was on a podcast and they were discussing life on the proverbial hot seat. The host, Jeff Goodman, brought up how he used to cook up a "hot-seat meter" for coaches even at the low- and mid-major levels -- coaches who weren't making millions of dollars, as is the case with Miles at Nebraska.

To that, Miles essentially replied that even if he's fired at least he IS making millions of dollars, so he's got that going for him.

That's it. It was a joke. And he's right. Good for him. He never said he didn't care or that the only thing that matters to him is money. If you carefully select his quote and remove all context, it sounds much worse than it was. And there you have 21st century sports journalism in a nutshell.

Reggie Dunlop

March 7th, 2019 at 12:36 PM ^

Fair enough (Giving you some friendly leeway here as you clearly misquoted him - intentionally if you were aware of the context, which makes you part of the problem in my eyes). I don't think there's any way you can proactively parse your words to prevent somebody with an agenda from lifting phrases and presenting them in a different light than intended. That's impossible. Especially when you're in front of a microphone as much as high major coaches are.

I'm not angry at you or anything. I just don't think Miles did anything wrong and it irritates me that our society dictates that he has to apologize for that - all because nobody (other than you and I) will take 5 minutes to read it or hear it for what it was.

J.

March 7th, 2019 at 1:22 PM ^

OK, fair enough.  I paraphrased what he said and left out context that would have been relevant to someone who wasn't familiar with the situation.  Mea culpa on that.

That said, if he were winning, people might have laughed at the joke.  Since he's not, it reads like a middle finger to the fanbase.  That's the core problem, and no amount of context is going to make up for the fact that he did something you're just not supposed to do in Nebraska -- talk about how rich you are.  Warren Buffett lives in a modest house in a nice neighborhood of Omaha.  Miles's joke was pure California.

CMHCFB

March 7th, 2019 at 10:36 AM ^

It was the same type of morbid curiosity as watching a car wreck, you don’t want to see it but you can’t turn away from the horror.   I couldn’t make it to the end.  I don’t know what they were doing but it wasn’t playing basketball. 

shoes

March 7th, 2019 at 8:53 AM ^

Did not see it. But did watch PSU and Rutgers and I would argue that they are both far, far better than the bottom of any of the other conferences.

Reggie Dunlop

March 7th, 2019 at 11:44 AM ^

I'm with you.

And I know the standings are the standings*, but right now the worst teams in the B1G are Nebraska - who is absolutely mailing it in right now, and Northwestern - who just never found their footing. I'd throw Wesson-less OSU in there too, but I assume he'll be back soon. Everybody else in the conference plays their ass off every game which makes this league a nightmare.

*Just realized that Nebraska has sunk to the bottom of the B1G with NW. Wow. I guess my impression was correct. The standings are indeed the standings.