Hoops Opponent Watch: Jinx Time

Hey guys. This isn't on Monday because of obvious reasons, and then a bunch of teams played important games because of similarly obvious reasons. We soldier on.

The Status

Okay you guys. Okay. With Florida's loss to a team Michigan already beat fairly easily and Indiana looking mortal, I am moving M above the Gators—who will be hurt by the lack of basketball teams of note they play in the SEC—and thus it is happy snake of #1 seed time, at least temporarily.

Yeah, RPI forecast, RPI, Kenpom, and Sagarin all stayed about static, but if Michigan and Florida are in the same conversation that Kansas State matchup is going to be a trump card.

Projected ones: Michigan, Indiana, Duke, and one of Kansas/Louisville/Syracuse.

The Nonconference Folk

why u no score second half points, Pitt?

We will further compress this section into teams whose individual performance may help or hurt Michigan when seeding time comes around (ie, potential "quality wins" considered by the committee) and those who will only matter insofar as their performance pushes Michigan's RPI hither and thither.

RPI-effect-only Teams

IUPUI and Binghamton continued losing to everyone. Unfortunately, Cleveland State is quickly dropping to their level after a 30-point blowout at the hands of Akron on the 23rd. WMU blew out Mount St. Mary's and lost to NC State. EMU lost to Oakland by two and beat something called Siena Heights. Central has not played.

On the somewhat good side of the ledger, Bradley beat a couple of low-majors, lost to VT by one in OT, blew those good feelings by losing to Portland, and then beat Drake. Kenpom projects them a .500 MVC team.

Big sorts of teams

Pitt (12-2)

Delaware State, Kennesaw State: diabolical annihlation Ws. Cincinnati: L, 70-61.

Pitt finished out its ritual pounding of minor teams, then entered Big East play on New Year's Eve against top-ten Cincinnati. They led by eight at halftime, and then decided they had enough points. They were not correct in this assertion. Cincinnati could match them huge guy for huge guy and freshman seven-footer Steven Adams got beat up on the boards when he wasn't on the bench with foul trouble.

That's a loss to a good team, but at home. Pitt should still get to 12 or 13 Big East wins, but they're probably not the top ten team Kenpom currently thinks they are thanks to the ritual poundings.

Kansas State (11-2)

Texas Southern: W 78-69. Florida: W 67-61. UMKC: W 52-44. South Dakota: W 70-50.

Though Kenpom isn't particularly impressed after the Wildcats sorta struggled with a couple of bad teams—UMKC is a 300 Club member—the win over Florida is a huge boost for them and a nice indirect bump for Michigan. Hopefully that's more of an indication of how they'll play in the Big 12 than the meh wins over minor opposition.

The Florida win was mostly offensive rebounding. Neither team shot well; Kansas State got to the line 29 times to Florida's 15 and rebounded almost 40% of their misses.

North Carolina State (11-2)

Stanford: W 88-79. St. Bonaventure: W 92-73. WMU: W 84-68. NC-Greensboro: W 89-68.

The Wolfhuskers have established themselves as a mini-me version of Michigan: lightning on offense and iffy on defense. The win over Stanford is good stuff to Kenpom, but defensive struggles against minor teams are keeping them down over there. They're on pace for a 5-7 seed, or thereabouts, and are the proverbial Team No One Wants To Play in the tournament because they're going to score in bunches against anybody.

Arkansas (8-4)

Robert Morris: W 79-74. Alabama A&M: W 95-68. Northwestern St: W 79-61.

The Hogs avoided an upset bid by fringe KP100 team Robert Morris and beat up on some bad teams. They've got one more before SEC play starts; they're still projected as an NIT team.

West Virginia (7-5)

Oakland: W 76-71. Radford: W 72-62. EKU: W 74-67.

WVU actually dropped from 73 to 90 on Kenpom after three uninspiring victories against meh teams. They're moving backwards as conference play approaches, and things could get ugly. At some point we might move them into the RPI miscellanea category. They bad.

CONFERENCE OF POWER RANKING POWER POWER

1. Indiana (13-1)

LAST WEEKs Blew out some minor teams. In Big Ten opener, edged Iowa by four on the road.

THING File under "happens to everyone sometimes": Jordan Hulls was 0-10 from the floor against Iowa. That's not going to happen again this season, I don't think.

OTHER THING I would normally go all rapture on Victor Oladipo's defense but Indiana went to zones for big chunks of the game because Iowa just couldn't hit a shot. Oladipo did have a double-double, snatching a tenth rebound on the offensive end for a key putback late.

THING THEY ARE LIKE a momentarily discombobulated Ogre with a big spiked club

2. Michigan(13-0)

LAST WEEK Blew out Eastern and Central to complete domination tour of Directional Michigans. That this is even a little bit cathartic is all you need to know about Michigan basketball.

THING With Tim Hardaway Jr sidelined with an ankle injury, freshman Caris LeVert got his first extended playing time against Central and looked like he could be a functional backup for big ten play—important since Michigan's wing depth has been minimal to date.

OTHER THING Nik Stauskas has pushed his three-point shooting up to 57% boggle boggle boggle

OTHER OTHER THING Trey Burke has the #1 ORTG for any player using at least 24% of his team's possessions.

He is less than a percentage point away from cracking 28% that represents the highest-volume ORTG leaderboard on Kenpom. If he was eligible, he would be eleven points(!!!) clear of Doug McDermott.

THING THEY ARE LIKE Five Datas playing basketball. They do not understand love or cats; they do understand ruthless efficiency.

3. Minnesota (13-1)

MOVEMENT up from 4

LAST WEEKs Beat KP100 team NDSU by 13, blew out Lafayette, fooled around with MSU before blowing the doors off late to establish themselves a true Big Ten contender.

THING Minnesota alternates between pure intimidation and dumb play. Like, why does Rodney Williams ever take a jumper, let alone an off-balance 15-footer? You are a pogo stick man. Go pogo stick it.

OTHER THING Great grobbly gravy, here's the intimidation part: against Michigan State (Michigan State!) the Gophers shot 60% from 2 and rebounded 47% of their misses. Mbakwe and Williams had 9 of Minnesota's 14 OREBs.

They turn the ball over a lot and eschew threes—Michigan may pull out the 1-3-1 against them if it seems necessary.

THING THEY ARE LIKE thousands of superballs assembled into a basketball team

4. Ohio State (10-2)

LAST WEEKs celebration of perfection against Chicago State. Not so much Kansas in an eight-point loss at home.

THING Do not extrapolate OSU's horrible shooting against Kansas to future Michigan games. Jayhawk center Jeff Withey has lead his team to the #1 two-point D and #2 block rate in the country. Michigan has nothing approximating him. That performance is just not relevant, sadly.

OTHER THING Aaron Craft is decidedly not stepping up as a scoring option. He's hitting just 41% of his twos and his three point accuracy is slightly down. He's turning it over a lot less, though.

THING THEY ARE LIKE a Big Ten football team except competent

5. Michigan State (11-3)

LAST WEEKs struggled at Bowling Green before pulling away late; beat Texas rather solidly; trailed by about 6 points for most of game at Minnesota, tied it up, got doors blown off late.

THING Jordan Morgan complainers, take heed: Michigan State's two-headed center not only allowed the boggling numbers listed above for Minnesota's offense but turned in a 7 of 21 line themselves, with only one FTA. Derrick Nix picked up a shot clock violation when he missed everything but the backboard from four feet. Jordan Morgan is in the conversation for best center in the league, non-Zeller/Mbakwe division. Srs.

Does this say more about a relative paucity of centers in college basketball than Jordan Morgan? Ah yup. But like he's okay man.

OTHER THING Keith Appling had six steals against Minnesota. Beware lazy perimeter passes against this man.

THING THEY ARE LIKE a poor man's Jordan Morgan

6. Illinois (13-1)

LAST WEEKs lost to Missouri not-that-competitively, scraped by a terrible Auburn team by two.

THING NNANNA EGWU WATCH: DREB rate has dropped(!!!) from 11.3 to 10.2. Illinois DREB rate is now in the 200s. Every Illinois player save Sam McLaurin is beating him out. Spike Albrecht now full point ahead of him. There are literally no pictures on GIS of Egwu bringing in a rebound in college. IlliniHQ does bring us the shot at right of the dude nearly decapitating some other dude, though.

The only possible explanation for this is that a secret CIA experiment is ongoing in which Jeremy Gallon and Egwu switch bodies without anyone knowing.

THING THEY ARE LIKE what if pogo stick gazelle men could not find basketballs

7. Iowa (11-3)

LAST WEEKs clubbed a couple of KP300-ish teams, narrowly fell to Indiana.

THING I'm actually tempted to move them above the Illini after they gave Indiana a game despite Roy Devyn Marble going 1-14 from the floor. He did acquire 15 FTA, so… not the worst thing ever. Still, comparisons to previous Beilein teams where too often games come down to one shot creator putting up tough shots over and over remain accurate.

OTHER THING The best thing is always calling Roy Devyn Marble by his full name. More people should do this.

OTHER OTHER THING. Basabe watch: 9 minutes, one shot, one TO, one block against Indiana. What happened to that guy?

THING THEY ARE LIKE Dion Harris-era Michigan teams except with Aaron White.

8. Wisconsin (9-4)

LAST WEEKs Blew KP300s out.

THING I HOPE YOU DISINTEGRATE INTO ATOMS

THING THEY ARE LIKE something that has not yet disintegrated into atoms like they should, what are you Vincent Smith or something

HENRI LINE OF ENNUI

9. Northwestern (9-4)

LAST WEEKs scraped by near-KP300 Texas State by six; lost to Stanford by 2; blew out near-KP300 Brown.

THING Hard to see how this team keeps pace in the Big Ten minus Crawford unless Reggie Hearn and Dave Sobolewksi keep up their 43 and 48 percent shooting on threes, respectively. Those are lower sample sizes than Stauskas, FWIW. Sobocop is yet more evidence that Beilein should try to pick off the best kid in any particular NW class.

THING THEY ARE LIKE Northwestern basketball minus its best player.

10. Purdue (6-6)

LAST WEEKs Iffy wins versus Ball State by 10, William & Mary by 7.

THING Ronnie Johnson has stopped flinging up threes with a less than ten percent chance of going in, unfortunately. I am disappoint, Ronnie.

OTHER THING Actually, the whole team has quit shooting it from deep. In the two games since last we visited with the Boilers they've put up a total of 20 threes, hitting six. That's 18% of their shots; extrapolated to a season, that would put them 346th, ahead of only Lamar. That is a recipe for death in the Big Ten.

THING THEY ARE LIKE blindfolded men asking for a cigarette.

11. Nebraska (9-4)

LAST WEEKs Scraped it out against Jacksonville State, handily beat CMU, handily beaten by UTEP, beat KP300 Nicholls State by 9.

THING Things are about to get uuuuuugly for the Huskers. Next four games: @ OSU, UW, @ Michigan, @ MSU.

OTHER THING Guard Ray Gallegos is a black hole. He has a post-like 6.4 assist rate and manages to get classified a "role player" despite taking more shots than any Husker save Dylan Talley. He mostly puts up threes at a 34% clip.

THING THEY ARE LIKE Vincent Smith

12. Penn State (8-4)

LAST WEEK whipped New Hampshire, took out Duquesne by ten.

THING Joining Ronnie Johnson in the Jan Jagla club is Ross Travis, who is 2 for 21 from three this year. He hit four of 24 last year, and has decided that what Penn State needs is more threes from him.

OTHER THING Travis shrunk two inches last year according to Kenpom.

THING THEY ARE LIKE also Vincent Smith

Tourney locks sans Illinois-2011-style implosion

projected seeds included

#1 Indiana, #1 MICHIGAN, #3 Ohio State, #3 Minnesota, #6 Illinois

Probably In

#8 Michigan State

Bubble

#11 Iowa

Northwestern Memorial wrong side of the bubble award

Wisconsin

Rutgers Memorial what's a bubble award

Northwestern, Penn State, Nebraska, Purdue

Viewing Guide

Games relevant to your interest that are on the TV and may be worth watching after the first ten minutes. Bolded teams are suggested teams to root for, calibrated for …

1) helping M win conference title
2) greatest number of tourney teams from league/best chance for quality-win pile-up to help M seeding
3) eff Michigan State
4) also Wisconsin

Tuesday

was yesterday

Wednesday

Nebraska at Ohio State, 6:30 PM, BTN
Illinois at Purdue, 8:30 PM, BTN

Thursday

Northwestern at MICHIGAN, 7 PM, ESPN2
Penn State at Wisconsin, 8:30 PM, BTN

Friday

nyet

Saturday

Pitt at Rutgers, 11 AM, ESPN2
Purdue at Michigan State, noon, BTN
Oklahoma State at KState, 1:30, nonexistent Big 12 Network (streaming only, I think)
Oklahoma at West Virginia, 4 PM, ditto
NC State at BC, 4 PM, ESPN2

Sunday

Northwestern at Minnesota, 7PM, BTN
Wisconsin at Nebraska, 4:30 PM, BTN
Iowa at MICHIGAN, noon, BTN