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Big Ten Legends Division Race Heats Up Saturday

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The Big Ten Legends Division will see its race kick off in earnest on Saturday. Contenders like Nebraska and Northwestern have played significant conference games, but none within the division. Michigan’s only important tests have come outside the league entirely. Iowa won an opening salvo over Michigan State in overtime last week. But on Saturday there are two head-to-head battles and tough cross-divisional game that will help give early shape to the Legends race.

Nebraska visits Northwestern, hoping to get some revenge for a Wildcats upset in Lincoln a year ago. Each team has lost on the road in Big Ten play, to Ohio State and Penn State respectively. Nebraska also has a win over Wisconsin.

One thing we don’t know if Nebraska has is a defense. After a shutdown effort in a second-half rally over the Badgers, the Huskers were positively torched two weeks ago by Ohio State. There will be a difference in that Wildcat quarterback Kain Colter won’t test the defense to the degree Braxton Miller did in Columbus. But Colter is versatile and can create problems. Just not as many as Taylor Martinez creates for opposing defenses, and I believe he’s enough to get Nebraska a win.

Michigan has revenge on its mind, as well as homefield when they host Michigan State. The Wolverines have torn apart Illinois and Purdue in league play, but I consider this misleading. When Michigan can spread a slow, bad defense out, Denard Robinson runs and throws at will. Michigan State has its problems, but the defense is good and Robinson won’t be able to do what he wants. Nor will Michigan run the ball in the conventional way.

The problem is that so long as Robinson doesn’t make mistakes, he’s still enough to put 21-24 points on the board, and I don’t see any reason to believe Michigan State is ready to match that. They can run the ball with Le’Veon Bell, but the passing game hasn’t improved enough to merit confidence, especially on the road in a rivalry game where revenge is working against you.

Iowa doesn’t play a divisional game, but the Hawkeyes do follow up their win over the Spartans by traveling to Penn State. The Lions are a better team—quite a bit better—and are coming off a bye week.

They also have the motivation of playing for a PSU season-ticket holding friend of mine who got married last week (a stunning coincidence his wedding fell on a bye week) and had a reception marked by a cake shaped like Beaver Stadium. If that’s not enough to stir Bill O’Brien’s troops to get a road win in a place that’s caused Penn state problems over the years I don’t know what is.

The team in the Legends Division that really needs to win is Nebraska. They’re the ones who already have a conference loss, and the schedule-makers did them no favors. The Cornhuskers also have to play Penn State, meaning they’ll play the three best teams on the other side of the conference, while Michigan only plays one.

We’ll take a look at Saturday’s biggest games in our regular Friday college football feature here at TheSportsNotebook. For now, here’s a look at the landscape in the other major conferences…

SEC: LSU can’t get too busy celebrating its win over South Carolina. The Tigers travel to Texas A&M for an early kick at noon EST, and the Aggies can put up points in a hurry. The rapid-paced offenses like the one run by new A&M coach Kevin Sumlin often struggle against real defenses, but that assumes said real defenses are ready to play. LSU needs to be fully engaged, because they’re a still a game back of Alabama.

The Tide travels to Tennessee, a team that has enough explosiveness to tease, but not enough in the way of fundamentals and toughness to compete in a game like this. And this conference’s big game—indeed the nation’s big game—is South Carolina-Florida, one that gets our attention tomorrow.

Pac-12: Oregon and Arizona State are the early leaders in each division, one of them being a surprise and the other less so (I’m going to assume if you’ve visiting a site like this you know which is which). The Ducks and Sun Devils meet on Thursday night in Tempe.

ASU coach Todd Graham and his staff have to find a way to slow Oregon down—dramatically so, because it’s asking too much of sophomore quarterback Taylor Kelly to put 35-40 points on the board against an opponent with this kind of team speed. I have no sense of an upset in the making and Arizona State’s biggest games against divisional foes USC & UCLA are still ahead.

Oregon State came out 8th in the BCS rankings and is in position to make a major bowl game, even if they don’t beat Oregon in the season finale. What the Beavers can’t do is lose games like the one they have coming up at home with Utah. Another North Division rival, Stanford, plays archrival Cal in a must-win game, given the Cardinal already dropped a game to Washington.

The biggest question I have regarding this week’s Pac-12 card is this—why did Stanford and Cal move up their usual Rivalry Saturday game in late November to mid-October?

Big 12: Texas Tech quarterback Seth Doege outgunned Heisman frontrunner Geno Smith last week as the Red Raiders blasted West Virginia. Now Doege takes the show on the road to TCU, a team not nearly as defensive as they’ve been in recent seasons. The winner keeps their conference losses to one and their title hopes alive.

Baylor travels to Texas in a game where the Over/Under is posted at 80.5, and given the way both teams play defense (or don’t play it, as the case may be) I might take one team to cover that number themselves. And the league’s biggest game is Kansas State-West Virginia, which gets covered tomorrow.

ACC: There aren’t any big divisional rivalries on tap, but two games that cross Coastal-Atlantic lines loom very large. Florida State gave away its margin for error in the Atlantic when they lost at N.C. State two weeks ago. Now the Seminoles visit Miami in a prime-time affair, where the Hurricanes are off a loss to North Carolina that’s put them under the gun.

Virginia Tech saved its season with a rally from 20-0 down to beat Duke and now goes to Clemson, who is tied with Florida State.

The Atlantic Division times—FSU & Clemson—are the ones under the most pressure. They are the better teams, meaning neither can count on its rivals to lose again. My guess is the Miami-Virginia Tech race might be a backpedal to the finish line, with Duke possibly still getting back into the picture (North Carolian is on probation), so if either the Hurricanes or Hokies slip a game back it’s not the end of the world.

Big East: It’s a light schedule, as is often the case for a league with only eight teams where the seven conference games are spread out from September to December. The big one of this week is Louisville hosting South Florida. The Cardinals are still undefeated, but the Bulls and B.J. Daniels have been a big disappointment thus far. The USF we’ve seen the last few weeks isn’t ready to win this game on the road.

Rutgers takes its show on the road to Temple, but while the Owls are rebuilding nicely in the wake of large graduation losses and an upgrade from the MAC to the Big East, they are a long way from being in the class of the Scarlet Knights and their swarming defense.

The Best Of The Rest: We’re actually going to wait for the Friday marquee feature to shower some love on the Sun Belt, with its big UL-Monroe-Western Kentucky showdown. The rest of the card in the midmajors is pretty bland, with Western Michigan’s visit to Kent State noteworthy, as the Broncos are good enough to hand the Golden Flashes their first league loss.

And the Notre Dame-BYU game, which had such promise when the schedule came out, doesn’t look so hot anymore. BYU is 4-3, with quarterback Riley Nelson and the defense seeming to regress a little each week.

We can’t rule out a letdown from the Irish after the dramatic goal-line stand in overtime against Stanford. Nor can we ignore the fact that Notre Dame’s lower-scoring physical style is something BYU will be comfortable matching up with.

But I consider that analgous to the Thursday night NFL game between the Seahawks and 49ers—if a team is going to pull a road upset they need to take the home team out of their comfort zone, not play into it. I don’t know how good Notre Dame will look on Saturday, but I’d expect a win.

The Big Ten Middle: Michigan, Wisconsin & Indiana

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In the Big Ten’s race for the NCAA Tournament, three times fall in the Forgotten Middle Class. At the top you have likely conference champ Michigan State and Ohio State, still with an outside shot at a co-championship. On the bubble, you have Purdue and Northwestern, and if you’re feeling generous, Illinois and Minnesota. But situated in the middle are solid basketball teams in Michigan, Wisconsin and Indiana, all currently projected as top 16 teams nationally by ESPN.com bracketologist Joe Lunardi. Just as TheSportsNotebook looked at the Big East’s forgotten middle yesterday, we continue our election-year pitch to the middle class by examining the Big Ten’s Middle Three.

Michigan (21-8, 11-5, projected #3 seed): The Wolverines suffered a disappointing home loss to Purdue over the weekend that ended their dark horse bid for the Big Ten title, but that’s the only loss they’ve taken since February 5 when they fell at Michigan State. John Beilein’s team has been ruthless on its home floor, beating all the contenders—Michigan State, Ohio State, Wisconsin and Indiana—in the friendly confines of Ann Arbor. UM has a non-conference win over Memphis, and it’s only losses outside the conference are to Duke and Virginia.

Michigan does it with a lot of finesse, as no player in its top six goes over 6’9” and none average more than six rebounds a game. But the backcourt trio of Trey Burke, Zack Novak and Tim Hardaway Jr. combines for 38 ppg. Novak can hit the three-ball, as can sophomore forward Evan Smotrycz. In the games ahead in the conference tournament at Indianapolis and then in the NCAA Tournament, shot selection will be at a premium. Hardaway is not a good three-point shooter (though he is effective inside the arc) and Burke is mediocre. The Wolverines cannot have shooters other than Novak and Smotrycz getting carried away from long range, particularly given they’re not likely to be rebounding the misses. Given the importance of Novak’s playmaking to the offense, it’s also going to be important for other scorers to step up—Hardaway off the dribble and Smotrycz stepping out are the best guesses.

Beilein deserves a lot of credit for what he’s done with this group. It’s got the talent to be a decent team, but not one that would be a legitimate contender in a league that grades out as America’s best in the RPI. When TheSportsNotebook hands out conference Player and Coach of the Year honors next week, Beilein will certainly be a part of that discussion.

Wisconsin (21-8, 10-6, projected #4 seed): Bo Ryan is always part of the discussion when it comes to Big Ten Coach Of The Year, or at least he should be. In what was supposed to be a rebuilding year, the Badgers got big non-conference wins over UNLV & BYU, both of whom look NCAA bound. The only December losses were to Marquette, and a competitive one at North Carolina that was probably more impressive than any of the wins. Big Ten play started slowly at 1-3, but Wisconsin has won nine of its last twelve, including road wins at Purdue, Minnesota, Illinois and most recently at Ohio State on Sunday.

Jordan Taylor is easily this team’s best player, although his 14 points/4 rebounds/4 assists stat line does have to be considered somewhat of a disappointment, as does his mediocre 34 percent shooting from behind the arc. The positive is that Wisconsin fans—a group that includes this writer—can hope that means Taylor can lift his game in the big moments ahead. Ryan Evans is averaging 11 ppg at small forward, although no player in American has a greater capacity to first make a brilliant drive to the hoop and then slam the shot off the backboard with velocity this state normally only sees from Aaron Rodgers or Yovani Gallardo. The top post player is Jared Berggen, only the 6’10” junior is at his best when he circles out to shoot the three-ball. Josh Gasser’s point totals don’t blow you away, but he is the best Ryan has from behind the arc.

As is the case with Ryan’s teams, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts and defense is a core part of Wisconsin’s success. The conference tournament has been a disappointment for UW since they won it in 2008 and the head coach is hungry to make his first Final Four. If a run in Indy or in the NCAAs is going to happen, Taylor needs to have a couple “hop on my back and I’ll carry you” kind of games.

Indiana (22-7, 9-7, projected #4 seed): IU is the one team of this group that might have already peaked. They went 12-0 in December, including being the only team to beat Kentucky, plus knocking off Notre Dame, N.C. State and Butler. Since a 3-1 start to Big Ten play, they’ve split their last twelve, including losses at Nebraska and Iowa. A home win at Illinois came after the Illini meltdown of February, but they do have solid road wins at Purdue and a big 69-50 win at Minnesota this past weekend was one of the best showings Tom Crean has seen from his team lately.

If Indiana rediscovers its mojo, they have the most balanced lineup of the three teams under review here today. Cody Zeller, the 6’11” freshman is perhaps the third-best pure post player in the entire conference, trailing only Ohio State’s Jared Sullinger and Michigan State’s Draymond Green. Jordan Hulls, the little 6’0” guard scores 11 ppg and hits 48 percent from behind the arc. Christian Watford and Victor Oladipo provide reliable scoring at the forward spots and Watford can hit the three-ball—the buzzer-beater he hit to nail Kentucky was no fluke, but a regular part of his offensive repertoire. Off the bench Will Sheehy can drain the trey.

Therefore Crean has a nice combination of an inside post presence coupled with good three-point shooting that can keep you competitive with anyone, with the Kentucky game—along with a win over Ohio State—to back it up. What the coach needs to do is ban Oladipo or guard Verdell Jones from even considering shooting the trey. Both are under 30 percent and both attempt too many. If Indiana plays to its significant strengths they can close the season strong, starting with a home game against Michigan State tonight (7 PM ET, ESPN), continuing with a home game against Purdue and onto postseason play.

For all three of these teams, winning the conference tournament next week should be seen as an important goal. None are going to win the Big Ten title. While all three are decent darkhorses to make the Final Four, it would undeniably take a few doses of luck for that to happen. The best chance for Michigan, Wisconsin or Indiana to punctuate solid seasons with some real championship hardware is next week at Indianapolis’ Conseco Field House.

Tom Izzo Does It Again: Michigan State Leads Big Ten

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The Michigan State Spartans were supposed to be in rebuilding mode when they helped tip off the college basketball season back on the aircraft carrier in San Diego on November 11. A loss that night to North Carolina and four nights later to Duke at Madison Square Garden, were nothing to be ashamed of, but nor was there anything to suggest Tom Izzo’s team would become a Big Ten leader and national title contender—particularly when conference favorite Ohio State smoked Duke by 22 points in the Big Ten-ACC Challenge. But then things changed.

Izzo’s tough non-conference opening helped his young team mature quickly and his own coaching savvy began to piece together a lineup rotation. Michigan State has only one clear star, power forward Draymond Green, who averages 15 points/11 rebounds/4 assists per game. And the team has only one other double-digit scorer, in sophomore guard Keith Appling, at 12 ppg. But depth and the classic Michigan State formula of attacking the glass has this team sitting on an 11-3 conference record, sole possession of first place and a projected #2 seed in the NCAA Tournament by ESPN.com bracketologist Joe Lunardi.

Michigan State only has two other players who average 20-plus minutes a game, forward Branden Dawson and guard Brandon Wood. The latter is a good shooter from the perimeter, but while his three-point range isn’t bad, nor is it a strength. Dawson chips in some rebounding help. Where the Spartans draw their strength is use of the entire lineup and they have four players who give Izzo 18-19 quality minutes a night. Derrick Nix at 6’9” and Adreian Payne at 6’10” provide the height that prevents teams from focusing exclusively on Green below, and the Nix/Payne combo is good for eight extra rebounds a night. In the backcourt Travis Trice and Austin Thornton only score five points apiece, but they both shoot better than 40 percent from behind the arc, making them a key X-factor in the one-game shots that are the NCAA Tournament.

The Spartans suffered all three of their conference losses in January, all were on the road, all were to good teams (Northwestern, Michigan, Illinois—before the Illini collapsed), and the latter two were by a combined three points. Since Super Bowl Sunday Michigan State has been a roll, and against the best the conference has to offer.

Michigan State beat Michigan by ten shortly before America watched the Patriots-Giants. The Spartans dominance of the glass was stunning, even by their standards, beating the Wolverines 39-15 on the boards, 16 of them by Green. A similar 41-22 edge keyed a pounding of Penn state. Then the game that really opened up eyes was a 58-48 win at Ohio State that moved Sparty into a tie for first, thanks to holding the Buckeyes to 26 percent shooting. The defense stayed in clampdown mode at home against Wisconsin, holding Jordan Taylor to 3-of-13 and the Badgers as a whole to 34 percent. Then on Sunday, Michigan State pulled away from a desperate Purdue team playing on its home floor, thanks to more tough defense—34 percent shooting for the Boilers and a 38-27 rebounding edge for the Spartans.

When you’re playing tough defense, forcing missed shots and rebounding the misses, it stands to reason you’ll win a lot of games. When you have depth it stands to reason you can survive the long haul-be it a 16-game conference schedule, or a 6-game NCAA Tournament. If you have a clear go-to player it stands to reason you can win a one-game shot.

So is this is an endorsement for Michigan State to win a national title? If this were an NBA playoff system, I’d probably lean their way, because I think in a best-of-seven situation their weaknesses behind the three-point line would be minimized and their strengths maximized. In a single-elimination format though, losing a three-point battle can kill you. I suspect if MSU is to win Izzo’s second national championship there will be at least one or two games where Trice or Thornton will have to contribute beyond what they’ve done so far this year, or somebody else will have to show an outside touch they haven’t yet shown. That’s why I’m not quite ready to go national championship. But viable contender? Absolutely. Big Ten champ? Why not. And that’s a heckuva lot more than any of us thought possible on that electric night on the San Diego carrier against North Carolina.

NEW MEXICO PULLS AWAY IN MOUNTAIN WEST

Another team no one expected to be at the top of the conference standings in late February is New Mexico. Yet Steve Alford’s team is not only leading the Mountain West, they’re in complete command, holding a two-game lead on UNLV and San Diego State.

The Lobos didn’t start strong, losing November games to New Mexico State and Santa Clara, and then barely escaping a terrible Arizona State squad. They got respectable wins over Missouri State and Oklahoma State and then a New Year’s Eve win over St. Louis, a victory that looks better with each day the Billikens push closer to the NCAA Tournament. But it’s in conference play that New Mexico has really stood out. They’ve split the four games with their two main rivals, but while Vegas and San Diego State have stumbled in bad spots, New Mexico has not. The Lobos are 3-0 against Colorado State and Wyoming, both still harboring hopes of the NCAAs themselves.

Senior power forward Drew Gordon is the star of this team with a 13/11 nightly average, while 6’7” Tony Snell is a tall perimeter player that can use his height to get his shot, and he hits 42 percent from three-point range. Kendall Williams is a good playmaker, at a solid shooter that teams can’t back off on defensively. There’s not a ton of depth, making the recent legal problems of senior forward A.J. Hardeman an even bigger concern. But if Hardeman is cleared to play after his recent arrest, New Mexico will be a threat in March.

A game tonight against a hungry Colorado State team that has to win is going to be tough, particularly coming off a week where New Mexico beat UNLV and San Diego State in succession. But even with a loss, that still leaves the Lobos with a one-game lead and three easy games to close the schedule.

New Mexico is currently projected as a #6 seed by Lunardi. If you compare them to projected #11s like UConn ,Long Beach State, Xavier and Washington, it’s certainly feasible to win a first-round game—I’d pick them over UConn or Xavier, not against Long Beach or Washington. Getting through the second round would be a war—it’s tough to see them beating 3-seeds like Marquette, Georgetown, Baylor or Michigan. Winning one game in the NCAA Tournament would be a significant deal for Alford’s team and two wins would likely require a big upset in a 3-14 game.

Whatever happens in March though, New Mexico is like Michigan State, in that they’re standing in a position where no one thought they’d be four months ago and for that they deserve all the credit.