Heading into the 2014-15 college basketball season, there was only one certainty for the Big Ten conference. That certainty was that Bo Ryan and the Wisconsin Badgers were far and away the best team the conference had to offer. A Final Four-caliber group with two, maybe even three, All-American candidates, a Hall of Fame head coach that finally got over the hump last year and an overall team makeup that makes basketball purists swoon.
But after the Badgers, it was anybody’s guess as to who would be the second-best team in the conference. In fact, that’s really all it was. A guess. Aside from Wisconsin, there were too many questions, too many losses and too much uncertainty for all of the other teams in the conference to put confidence in them.
Michigan State, Ohio State and Nebraska seemed like the frontrunners to be the team to challenge the Badgers, with Michigan, Iowa, Indiana and Minnesota just a bit lower on the totem pole. On paper, the pure talent wasn’t in the Big Ten anymore, but the teams still had some appeal and could result in an interesting conference battle down the stretch. Most of these teams loaded up their non-conference schedule with easy home games, so at the very least, the Big Ten’s overall record heading into conference games would be pretty solid.
Except things haven’t gone the way that anybody thought they would. In actuality, all those question marks have not been answered, but rather more question marks have arisen from Big Ten teams. Wisconsin is still doing damage with an 11-1 record and their only blemish is a home loss to top 5-ranked Duke. After the Badgers, though, it’s a bit of a mystery to say who’s the best team in the conference.
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Right now, and shockingly, it appears to be Maryland, who was picked to be near the bottom of the conference standings in their first year in the Big Ten. Instead, the Terrapins are 11-1 with non-conference wins over Iowa State and at Oklahoma State. Only the Badgers can also say they’ve beaten a ranked team and beaten a major conference opponent on the road in the non-conference in the Big Ten (Iowa did beat No.12 North Carolina on the road in one game, so they get credit there, I guess).
As a whole, the Big Ten has played or is still scheduled to play a grand total of 21 true road games in the non-conference among its 14 teams. Of those games, seven of them were road games the teams were mandated to play by the conference as part of the Big Ten/ACC Challenge. For those playing at home, that’s a total of 14, or one for each team, true road games played by the conference as a whole that they willingly played and were not forced to play in.
While some of the teams in the conference (Indiana, Minnesota and Ohio State) go out of their way to not play true road games before conference play, Wisconsin and Rutgers have willingly gone on the road to play games to test themselves.
What do these teams have in common? Indiana, Minnesota and Ohio State have a combined 30-6 record and each ranks in the top 20 in points per game offensively. This is due to the fact that it’s easier to score points when a) you’re constantly playing teams beneath your talent level and b) you play at home. Any player can tell you that they’re more comfortable playing at home, which allows them to fall into a groove offensively which makes scoring easier.
Big Ten teams have done all they can to make life a little bit easier on themselves. However, it hasn’t worked out in their favor for the most part. The demise of the conference has been well documented, especially looking at the teams that have handed these supposedly high-powered programs losses, whether it be at home, on the road or on neutral locations.
Nebraska lost to Rhode Island, Creighton and Hawaii. Michigan dropped back-to-back home contests against the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Michigan State dropped to Texas Southern (their second win of the season, mind you). Purdue has lost to North Florida and Gardner-Webb. Indiana fell to Eastern Washington.
The mighty Big Ten doesn’t look so mighty anymore, and there’s a number of reasons for these types of losses.
Nebraska had a lot of pub going into this season after the great turnaround last year, but it would appear that opponents won’t be sleeping on them anymore. The Cornhuskers benefitted last year by being the upstart team nobody saw coming. This time around, everybody sees them coming and Nebraska doesn’t have the pure talent to overcome that extra exposure.
Michigan has zero impact in the paint. They shoot far too many threes and, despite the impressive numbers, Caris LeVert, Zac Irvin and Derrick Walton Jr. can’t be the entire team like they are now. There’s far too much one-on-one from LeVert and Irvin and there isn’t a post that can make a difference for the Wolverines.
Michigan State has the talent to be good and the coach to make them a contender, but they haven’t been able to get that talent to click, which is what can happen when you lose two senior leaders and your top offensive weapon all in one summer.
Indiana has benefitted from a soft schedule, almost all being home games other than two neutral court games. There’s some good talent for the Hoosiers and Yogi Ferrell has taken a great step forward to where many expected him to be two years ago. Tom Crean’s got a good team, but scheduling weak opponents can make you complacent.
One team that’s benefitted the most from their weak non-conference schedule has been Ohio State. I’ve mentioned this before, but unlike most, I am not on the Buckeyes bandwagon. While their overall resume “feels” like it’s impressive, it’s not. The only good team they chose to play was a neutral court game against North Carolina, where they got manhandled until they put up a small rally to narrow the gap when the game was already decided. It’s the same method they used to make the Louisville road disaster look a bit less like a disaster and more like a “decent loss.”
After Carolina and Louisville, Ohio State hasn’t left the comfort of Columbus, where they are 9-0. Their best win? Against Marquette, who has a home loss to Nebraska-Omaha. So is that really a good win? Ohio State would like you to think that, because without it they have nothing to show for their non-conference schedule other than dominating opponents they should dominate.
Overall, the Big Ten is a mess because they’ve put themselves in this situation. As a major conference, you’re expected to be good, but when you fill your schedule with cupcakes in an effort make your NCAA Tournament resume look better at the end of the season, you should be on track for a good win-loss record. After all, how can the selection committee say no to a Big Ten team with 20+ wins? That’s where we’re at in this process. You schedule the games you know you can win, sprinkle in one, maybe two, tough games and call it a day. From there, you let your conference unfold as it will and see where you land.
It’s all about that tournament bid. Do just enough to get it and say you had a successful season. It’s what Minnesota set out to do before the season, it’s what Ohio State has been doing the last two years and it’s what’s making these teams in this once dominant conference a major non-factor. Even Penn State is falling suit, trying to get to 20 wins and say, “There’s no way they can keep us out this time, right?”
Really, this is incredibly depressing. As someone who prefers college basketball to the NBA, I look for teams that go out of their way to challenge themselves, to put themselves out there and give me a reason to care about your 20-win seasons while finishing in the middle of your conference.
This is one of the sad things about college basketball: if you’re in a major conference, regardless of who you’ve played in the non-conference, you have an inside edge to get an NCAA Tournament at-large bid. You could be a mid-major, have a much better record than those in a major conference with better wins in the non-conference and not get in because of not winning your conference’s tournament. It’s wrong, and a travesty, but that’s college basketball. People will pay to see an 18-12 Indiana team with an 8-9 Big Ten record with no good wins play rather than a 27-2 Stephen F. Austin team.
College sports are all about name recognition and money. Being a recognizable name gives the NCAA a reason to favor you over someone who might deserve it more than you. That’s why the Big Ten’s lack of overall success and lack of good non-conference opponents is so troubling. Where’s the challenge? Where’s the reason to care? It’s just not there right now, and it has been dwindling for a few years now.
Though this seems like just an overreaction or a bump in the road for the Big Ten, this has been a long time coming and it’s finally catching up to them. They might wanna think about shaking things up or risk losing that near guarantee of six teams in the NCAA Tournament.
But they will get at least six teams in the Big Dance, and that is almost a given. Their dominance is gone, and so is their respect for willingness to challenge themselves, but that’s life. The Big Ten, as we used to know it, is over.
The Big Ten: embrace mediocrity.