jacob young disaster artist no more?
Yesterday's Michigan-Penn State game served as the opener to the Big Ten season as a whole. Before the rest of the conference tips off tonight, let's check in on each of the teams and stick them in tiers. If you remember, we did a preseason roundtable that included some comically large tiers as we tried to make sense of a tightly packed conference:
TITLE FREE-FOR-ALL
Wisconsin
Illinois
Iowa
Michigan State
Ohio State
MichiganSCRABBLING FOR BID
Rutgers
Indiana
Purdue
Maryland
MinnesotaEATEN ALIVE
Penn State
Northwestern
Nebraska
There's been some movement since then despite a relative dearth of marquee games, especially outside of the ACC/B1G Challenge.
The Standings
Here's how KenPom's and Bart Torvik's rankings have the Big Ten stacking up so far, with the caveat that we're still early enough in the season that preseason projections remain a significant factor. Michigan and Penn State are the only teams to play a conference game so far (that changes tonight when Rutgers travels to Maryland) so you're not missing anything with B1G records omitted from the table. Yes, if you were checking the front page around 12:30 today, you may recognize this table.
| KP/Torvik Avg | OFFENSE | DEFENSE | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Team | Nat Rk | Rec (Proj) | KenPom | Torvik | KenPom | Torvik | ||
| WIS | 7th | 4-1 (12.5-7.5) | 19th | 16th | 8th | 13th | ||
| IOWA | 9th | 6-0 (12.5-7.5) | 1st | 1st | 77th | 123rd | ||
| IND | 13th | 4-2 (11.5-8.5) | 37th | 43th | 11th | 5th | ||
| ILL | 14th | 4-2 (12-8) | 10th | 7th | 32nd | 34th | ||
| U-M | 15th | 6-0 (12-8) | 7th | 12th | 35th | 36th | ||
| MSU | 21st | 6-0 (11-9) | 9th | 22th | 42nd | 32nd | ||
| OSU | 21st | 5-0 (11-9) | 12th | 8th | 39th | 57th | ||
| RUT | 30th | 4-0 (10-10) | 55th | 56th | 13th | 16th | ||
| PUR | 39th | 4-2 (9-11) | 30th | 59th | 38th | 29th | ||
| PSU | 45th | 3-2 (9-11) | 34th | 42nd | 53rd | 45th | ||
| UMD | 46th | 4-1 (9.5-10.5) | 18th | 38th | 57th | 77th | ||
| MIN | 51st | 6-0 (8.5-11.5) | 39th | 74th | 44th | 44th | ||
| NWern | 66th | 2-1 (6.5-13.5) | 86th | 70th | 54th | 51st | ||
| NEB | 104th | 3-3 (4.5-15.5) | 138th | 132nd | 100th | 62nd | ||
The conference somehow managed to group itself closer together. So much for clarity.
Onto the tiers, I guess. Please remember that, despite the size of these tiers, the order within each tier matters less than which tier a team falls into. The distinction between a lot of these teams, at least for the moment, is minimal.
[Hit THE JUMP.]
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