Wisconsin’s still at the top (source)

Your Weekly B1G Hoops Column

Table of Contents

1. Revisiting preseason predictions
2. Checking in on Wisconsin
3. Who’s #2?
4. Creativity charts – Ohio State and Maryland
5. Nebraska spends too much time at the beach
6. Indiana, Purdue both lose
7. Is Penn State for real?
8. Halfway-point All-Conference teams
9. Re-Ranking the conference
10. Viewer’s guide: Week One

1. Revisiting preseason predictions

Back before the season, I made some predictions as to how the Big Ten pecking order would shake out. With the end of non-conference play, it’s time to check on who I hit and missed on:

Here’s how the teams rank according to a variety of metrics:

The biggest outliers (from what I predicted) so far:

• Michigan (minus 8) – the Wolverines’ performance in the non-conference season failed to meet even the most pessimistic of expectations, as a 6-5 record against D-I opponents and brutal home upsets at the hands of NJIT and Eastern Michigan are far cries from the lofty standards of these past few years. John Beilein’s characteristically beautiful offense has become a stagnant mess and Michigan simply doesn’t shoot the ball well enough from the field to succeed. Chances are that UM isn’t as bad as they’ve shown, but there needs to be a lot of improvement for an NCAA Tournament bid to be in play.
• Nebraska (minus 6) – Tim Miles doesn’t have Michigan’s excuse (inexperience), as the Huskers returned pretty much the same team as the upstart squad from a year ago and have looked incredibly listless. Losses to Incarnate Word and Hawaii rival Michigan’s bad results and Nebraska’s offense actually worsened from “mediocre” to “bad.” Walter Pitchford has gone invisible, Terran Petteway is still quite inefficient, and the Huskers might have the worst point guard play in the entire conference.
• TIE: Minnesota and Maryland (plus 4) – both of these teams have been pleasant surprises thus far; neither have bad losses and both have a great chanceof finishing above .500 in conference play. Minnesota beat a surprisingly decent Georgia team, Maryland defeated Iowa State and won at Oklahoma State. Impressively, the Terrapins have been operating without star senior Dez Wells, though true freshman lead guard Melo Trimble has been a revelation. Minnesota’s freshman PG, Nate Mason, hasn’t garnered the attention Trimble has, but he’s been a key part of a devastating pressure defense by the Gophers.

[After the jump: things after 1]

2. Checking in on Wisconsin

Surprise! They’re pretty much as good as people thought they’d be. Frank Kaminsky is currently Ken Pomeroy’s National Player of the Year; Sam Dekker has had an impressive blend of usage and efficiency; Nigel Hayes added the threat of a three-point shot to an already solid cache of offensive skills; most importantly, the Badgers are playing more cohesive defense than they did a year ago and are the best on both ends of the floor in the conference.

From last Monday:

This is classic Wisconsin. They didn’t seem to play that well, but they stymied a pretty decent team on the road and – after adjusting for the Badgers’ preferred (slow) pace) – it was almost a de facto blowout.

It’s almost pointless to try to contextualize Wisconsin with everybody else. The expectation was that they’d be dominant – aside from an understandable home L to an excellent, hot-shooting Duke squad, they’ve been that. It’s a down year for the rest of the league at-large, for the most part (although nobody knows how good Ohio State might be) and Wisconsin’s as good as ever.

I’m trying out a new type of data visualization: assessing the individual “creativity” of a team’s individuals. If this type of graph proves instructive, I think it will give a good indication as to the general ecosystem of an offense, which players are producers and consumers, so to speak. Here’s the quintessentially egalitarian Badgers:

Wisconsin divvies up the majority of its possessions between Kaminsky, Dekker, Hayes, and Traevon Jackson – predictably, they all distribute fairly well and all can create their own shot to some extent. The next few graphs will probably be more interesting.

[AFTER THE JUMP: More interesting graphs! Other stuff!]

3. Who’s #2?

It might be D’Angelo Russell and the Buckeyes (source)

Last week, I asked the hivemind which team it thought was second-best in the Big Ten behind Wisconsin. Thank you to the 336 who responded – they thought that Maryland (40%) and Ohio State (31%) were the best teams behind the Badgers. Michigan State garnered 11% of the vote, Indiana 7%, Iowa 6%, Minnesota 4%, and Illinois 1%.

Ohio State and Maryland would be my top picks as well. The Buckeyes are second in the computer models, even though the truly valuable data points (read: games against quality opponents) are quite sparse. They’ve lost to Louisville on the road and to North Carolina at a neutral site, both of which are perfectly fine. Aside from that though, they’ve rampaged through a creampuff home schedule and haven’t seen much real competition aside from the teams they’ve lost to.

Still, it’s hard not to like the Buckeyes. Their team effective FG % ranks second nationally – the issues with perimeter shooting from a year ago are a thing of the past, as freshman phenom D’Angelo Russell, sophomore sniper Marc Loving, and redshirt freshman Kam Williams have carried the team to a 42% mark behind the arc. Shannon Scott and Russell distribute the ball excellently, a contrast from last year’s often stagnant offense. Of course, Thad Matta’s defenses are almost always excellent; this year though, the Buckeyes are running quite a bit of 2-3 zone.

Maryland has been impressive against quality teams – their only loss is to a stingy Virginia team currently ranked 2nd by Pomeroy’s system; their two best wins might be better than anyone else’s in the league (Iowa State at a neutral site, Oklahoma State on the road). Jake Layman has had a massive jump this season and shoulders a good amount of responsibility for the Terrapin offense after being a role player a year ago.

Most impressive is how well they’ve dealt with Dez Wells’s absence. Melo Trimble is part of a very good freshman class this year in the Big Ten (along with Ohio State’s Russell and Indiana’s James Blackmon) and has exceeded even the loftiest of expectations for him coming in. Incredibly, he’s already had 94 free throw attempts on the season (and he converts those opportunities at 90%).

At this point, it looks like those two are at the front of the pack chasing Wisconsin.

4. Creativity charts – Ohio State and Maryland

Shannon Scott’s assist rate – 40.7, good for 7th nationally among qualifying players – is almost literally off the chart; his senior year taking over for Aaron Craft’s point guard duties has gone exceedingly well thus far. This chart suggests a few things: Scott and Russell are the straws that stir the drink; Russell, in particular, has taken on an impressive amount of responsibility thus far; the Buckeyes’ cast of role players (with the exception of Jaylon Tate) are all low-usage guys reliant on Scott and Russell’s playmaking. It’s worth noting that Kam Williams and Marc Loving are absurdly efficient in their low usage.

Maryland is just returning Evan Smotrycz from injury – he hasn’t played enough to have a statistically significant profile yet.

Dez Wells is possibly the biggest outlier I’ve seen in the data thus far: he uses Maryland’s highest share of possessions, but his baskets are assisted just 24% of the time. That definitely fits with his reputation as a free-wheeling, ball-dominant gunner. Trimble and Layman are the other two high-usage players and they’re both able to create and distribute. Wells is the most interesting figure here though – fortunately his ability to pass the ball excuses his proclivity for unassisted baskets.

If you’d like to see your team, shoot me a message on Twitter at @alexcook616. I’ll have a chart up for Michigan on this site in a few days as part of a larger post.

5. Nebraska spends too much time at the beach

Before I get too far ahead of myself, there was some action this past week and, well:

• #151 (Kenpom) Hawaii – 66, Nebraska – 58
• Nebraska – 50, #251 Loyola Marymount – 42 (OT)
• Nebraska – 71, #191 Ohio – 58

To say that this was a disappointing overall result at the Diamond Head Classic in Hawaii is a bit of an understatement. I won’t belabor the point too much, as I’ve already written quite a bit about the Huskers’ struggles over the past several weeks, but it’s getting safer to say that they’re a huge disappointment with each passing result. I mean, Corn Nation wrote this after a win:

Just when you think Nebraska had moved on from that identity [a team that gets into a lot of “rock fights”] and become a team with playmakers and energy and excitement, a product that is all too familiar to diehard fans: poor shot selection, stagnant offense, sloppy turnovers, untimely mistakes, poor basketball IQ, and an inability to rebound. But, hey, they played good defense.

I can’t tell what’s most to blame – the lack of development at the point guard position (Tarin Smith might be the best one as a true freshman), the losses of Leslee Smith and Moses Abraham inside, the frightening propensity for a barrage of mid-range bricks from damn near everyone, or the general disappearance of Walter Pitchford. Certainly all of those faults contribute to the Huskers’ struggles.

6. Indiana, Purdue both lose

The other notable results from this past week feature the two teams from the Hoosier State – both Indiana and Purdue lost, though the losses were quite different.

Indiana’s loss at a neutral site to Georgetown exposed their deficiencies, but reminded that the Hoosiers are probably an NCAA Tournament-caliber squad despite them. The Hoyas were able to pound it inside with regularity and in turn, Indiana shot the ball often (and decently enough) from three-point range. It was a quality game between two good teams and most encouraging was Indiana’s excellence from the perimeter – Troy Williams, Yogi Ferrell, and James Blackmon each scored at least twenty points at a reasonably efficient clip. Stylistically, the Hoosiers almost resemble a Beilein-style squad with their four-out, one-in, three-point heavy offense with multiple creators / scorers. The interior is still a mess, but Emmitt Holt could provide reinforcements for the struggling Hanner Mosquera-Perea.

Purdue’s latest loss – another embarrassing home upset (this one at the hands of Gardner-Webb) – probably eliminates them from NCAA Tournament contention barring a massive turnaround in Big Ten play. This game followed the archetypical David vs. Goliath script: Purdue feasted inside against an overmatched Bulldog front line, but Gardner-Webb shot a lot of threes and, to be blunt, was lucky enough to make quite a few of them. Its hard to believe that Purdue conceded 1.24 points per possession at home to an offense that isn’t in the top 100 nationally, but 14-25 from three will make that happen. After starting 8-2, the Boilermakers have dropped three in a row.

7. Is Penn State for real?

WE ARE (NOT FOR REAL) (source)

Penn State is off to a 12-1 start, but the Nittany Lions rank just 84th in Kenpom and 97th in Sagarin. They’ve only played one Kenpom Top-100 team (#38 George Washington, who they beat at home) and their loss to Charlotte was a double overtime nailbiter against the #102 team at a neutral site.

Here are some of their other results:

• Barely escaped with a one-point win over #196 Cornell in a game they should have lost.
• Beat #150 USC by two.
• Went on the road to beat #235 Bucknell by eight – was a two-possession game with two minutes left.
• Three-point home win over #177 Virginia Tech.
• Beat #270 Marshall on the road by four – was a one-point game with a minute left.
• Beat #233 Duquesne at home by two.
• Beat #199 Drexel at a neutral site by five.

Not all wins are created equal – Ohio State had a similarly weak non-conference schedule, but absolutely torched the mediocre teams it faced. Penn State, on the other hand, has won games that have been essentially even over forty minutes against teams that are of much lower quality than what they’ll face in the Big Ten. Managing to slip by the likes of Marshall and Duquesne doesn’t bode well for future matchups against pretty much everyone in the conference.

Penn State isn’t being penalized for winning, but, given the schedule that they’ve been handed, they haven’t had objectively impressive results. Perhaps nothing is more evident of that than this: they started off the season at 56th in Pomeroy’s ratings, but have plummeted to 84th despite their wins against feeble teams.

8. Halfway-point All-Conference teams

Dez Wells and Branden Dawson would have probably made the list in some capacity if they were able to stay on the floor. Wells is back now; here’s to a speedy recovery for Dawson.

With somewhat disparate schedules across the board, as well as the difficulty of watching a lot of non-conference basketball (each game only lets you see one Big Ten team at a time, opponents are often crappy, etc.), it’s hard to come up with these teams at about midseason. Still, these are the guys who have stood out to me the most.

Terran Petteway, Caris LeVert, Zak Irvin, Denzel Valentine, Andre Hollins, Troy Williams, Marc Loving, and Nigel Hayes were probably the toughest omissions, in some order. With 14 teams, it’s a challenge to whittle it down to 15 names.

9. Re-Ranking the conference

Earlier in this post, I posted what my preseason guesses were, and I also took a look at how the teams stacked up right now. Since this is a convenient midpoint, I’ll put down another set of guesses as to how the conference will finish (based on Kenpom ranking, not final standings):

1. Wisconsin
2. Ohio State
3. Maryland
4. Michigan State
5. Minnesota
6. Illinois
7. Michigan
8. Indiana
9. Iowa
10. Purdue
11. Penn State
12. Nebraska
13. Northwestern
14. Rutgers

10. Viewer’s guide: Week One

Game rankings are pretty much arbitrary.

***

Since the start of college basketball season, I’ve written eight Monday Ten columns (three of which came on Tuesday, which is just not good branding on my part. Darren Rovell would be so disappointed.) Including this post, I’m at about 23,700 words total, in case you’re curious. As always, comments and suggestions are welcome and appreciated. With conference play starting up, I’m brainstorming ideas for single game previews.