Player of the Week:
Tyson Walker, Michigan State Spartans
In a huge Saturday slate for BIG10 basketball, easily the most impressive and shocking thing to happen was the absolute dismantling of number 6 Baylor that Michigan State unleashed in East Lansing. The Spartans didn’t trail once the entire game and blew the Bears out of the water. Baylor hadn’t scored less than 77 points in a game so far this season and had only two close wins the entire season, but the struggling Spartans and Walker ran laps around the Bears all day. It was quite a scene, when I was checking the comments on a NCAAM post about the win after the game, the top comment really struck me. “Tyson Walker doesn’t care about your number 6 ranking.” Walker came out firing, he scored 18 of his 25 points in the first half, the very first play of the game was a Baylor shot-clock violation and then a Walker 3-bomb, and after that the Spartans never let Baylor anywhere near their lead throughout the entire game. Last week, I mentioned how Izzo’s teams tend to get much better by the end of the season and it’s hard not to wonder if this win is indicative of how good they’ll be by the end of the season. Despite early season Spartan issues, Walker has been phenomenal this year, the most interesting part about his season is that all of his highest scoring games this season have been against ranked opponents. He’s a real gamer and if MSU can army-crawl into the big dance I wouldn’t be surprised if Walker becomes a headlining name and etches himself in the extensive lore of Michigan State hoops history.
Who’s Hot?
Purdue Boilermakers
Perhaps Northwestern truly is the only team capable of beating Purdue. Purdue once again beat a top 5 opponent and knocked off number one Arizona on Saturday in what was one of the best games you’ll watch all year. Some key takeaways from thi game are as follows: if Purdue can escape the trap games in the round of 64 and 32 in the tournament, they should win it all, Zach Edey is going to be a shoe-in for POTY once again, and Fletcher Loyer is the real deal and should be on the minds of every NBA team looking for a tough player with perimeter prowess and a lot of heart (probably the Miami Heat, if I had to guess). Purdue is going to probably jump to number two in the AP Poll with Kansas picking up a win against the Hoosiers on Saturday as well, but debates need to be had on which of these tams is truly better. Or is it another team? UConn’s ridiculously good this year too. It’ll be interesting to see discourse on these teams as conference play is ramping up, but I do know that my doubts about Purdue are starting to flow down the stream, I don’t think in the 4 or so years of Edey’s dominance at Purdue that they’ve had complimentary pieces as good as Fletcher Loyer and Braden Smith this season.
Ohio State Buckeyes
I really hope the Bucks are ranked in the next poll, assuming Northwestern drops out after a loss to Chicago State (I mean, come on man), The Buckeyes might hop into that 25 spot in the poll, if not they should be one of the first teams off the list. They have an amazing backcourt as we’ve talked about, and have only lost games this season to top 20 opponents. On Saturday’s gauntlet of games, The Buckeyes picked up a win over UCLA. Now, UCLA hasn’t been themselves this year, there’s no Johnny Juzang or Lonzo Ball on that team, but they’re still a good team and Ohio State was able to close them out late in the game with some huge baskets from Felix Okpara and Minnesota-transfer Jameson Battle. Those transfers have been huge for the Buckeyes this year and they’ve dogged out some great wins this year. They managed to win on Saturday despite being abysmal from beyond the arc, their only three came from Battle in the final minute of the game, and while losing a clipboard to the frustrated fist of head coach Chris Holtmann. That frustration seemed to get Ohio State rolling as they rallied by their coach anf found a way to win a game that a lot of teams would not have won, especially after blowing a near-20-point lead to Penn State just a few days ago.
Who’s Not?
Penn State’s Defense
Penn State has good defenders on their roster. Ace Baldwin made waves in his transfer to the school as one of the better two-way guards in the country, and while Penn State got their first good win of the season against the aforementioned Buckeyes in a come-from-behind win at home, their defense is way too shaky for any consistency to come this year. Penn State plays a gambling style of defense that becomes frustrating to watch. They’re essentially the antithesis of what Wisconsin has been this year, where the Badgers are solid all-around, Penn State has a few guys trying to do everything and not enough guys trying to do something. The Nittany Lions lead the conference in steals per game, they also lead the conference in fouls per game. They’re also bottom two in both rebounds and blocks per game as a unit. So when you have talented perimeter defenders who gamble, what happens? Easy blow-bys. And blow-bys against that defense are pretty much guaranteed points for the other team since there’s little-to-no interior protection from any Penn State big-men. If they want to win, they’ll need to be way more disciplined as a unit because the risk-reward system they’re banking on is giving results close to eating uncooked chicken than finding a pot of gold.
Indiana’s Offense
Indy held on tight against Kansas and almost knocked off the Jayhawks in a great game on Saturday. Kansas wasn’t able to take a lead until less than 5 minutes left, and just as a side note Hunter Dickinson looks way better there than he ever did at Michigan. Sorry Michigan fans, it must be tough. Anyways, Indiana has become so reliant on their bigmen dominating inside that it looks reminiscent of 70’s NBA basketball at points. They’ve won games this season when Reneau and Ware, their twin towers, have dominated in the paint. There was signs of perimeter life against Kansas, where Dickinson took good care of annulling the effectiveness of those bigs, perimeter guys like Mgbako and Galloway stepped up to combine for 43 points. Here’s the issue: Indiana can not shoot the ball. In modern day hoops it’s impossible to balance the effectiveness of dominant inside scoring without the dire need for a skip pass to a great shooter, or a simple kick-out to a movement shooter. Indiana is shooting 28.5% from three this year, and are only making about 4 threes every game. I’m not saying that Indiana needs to change their whole offense to win games, but any sort of consistency from deep would change everything. The balance last season between Jalen Hood-Schifino and TJD allowed for a lot of fun actions to be ran on offense, but this season we just haven’t seen anything like it. The offense just looks clunky and the spacing can be worse at times than a JV basketball game.
Power Rankings
5. Northwestern Wildcats
Tough loss to inner-city rival Chicago State that just shouldn’t happen to a team that’s as good as Northwestern, but they bounced back with a win over DePaul and are looking forward to a battle against Illinois in the wee hours of the new year. Buie versus Shannon will be cinema.
4. Ohio State Buckeyes
RANK THEM. They have everything needed to compete in March, except for ranked wins. But hey, like I said, they kept it close in those losses. Their backcourt is must-see-TV. They should walk into conference play with wins against both WVU and New Orleans.
3. Wisconsin Badgers
The most vanilla team here, just solid basketball being played by this group. But there’s a beauty in that. Some teams don’t know how to deal with a Swiss-army-knife style of play, and I think Wisconsin will continue to impress this season because of that balance.
2. Illinois Fighting Illini
As I’ve been writing this, Illinois has taken care of business against Colgate and improved to 8-2 on the year. Their two losses have both come by 7 points to ranked teams. Terrence Shannon Jr. and Marcus Domask are great, need I say more?
1. Purdue Boilermakers
4 ranked wins, 3 top-10 wins, 2 of the best players in the country, and a partridge in a pear tree.