justin ahrens

EJ Liddell was hard to handle even for the league's best defenders [Marc-Grégor Campredon]

Previously: The Usual Categories, The Official Big Ten Awards Roundtable

Alright, let's get weird.

Regular Season Awards: The Unusual Categories

BEST SURPRISE: EJ LIDDELL, OHIO STATE

For the player who's most exceeded preseason expectations, which isn't quite the same thing as most improved player.

Not much has changed since I gave this same award to him midway through the conference season:

We barely mentioned Liddell in our season preview roundtable, and while I had a chance to look smart when I finally brought him up, I blew it by only bringing him up in the context of being undersized for his position. The 6'7" post player has improved in nearly every meaningful statistical category despite getting most of his minutes at center instead of his more natural fit at power forward. ...

Instead of Liddell being a reason OSU is held back, he's the best player on what's once again one of the country's more surprisingly successful teams. He can function as the only interior presence in a five-out attack or play next to Kyle Young, who's often planted in the dunker spot waiting for dumpoffs and offensive rebounds.

A true three-level scorer, Liddell opened up OSU's top-five offense with his ability to score at all three levels, especially with fellow big Kyle Young adding the corner three-pointer to his arsenal. While both are undersized, they still did big man stuff—other than protect the rim—at a high level, giving Chris Holtmann the unusual luxury of playing two bigs in a five-out system.

Liddell scored well into the double figures most every game because his versatile offensive game gave him a route to attack pretty much any defender. He could bully smaller players or drag slower-footed centers into the deep water with both his spot-up shooting and his face-up game:

Liddell found a way to either mitigate his weaknesses or turn them into strengths. I'd love to see him next to more of a traditional center who still can stretch the floor, though I realize those aren't exactly easy to find, so OSU could construct a title-caliber defense. (In theory. In practice, OSU being bad at defense is actually good, in my opinion.) Instead, they merely built a championship-level offense around a 6'7, 240-pound big man.

Other contenders: Donta Scott, Jacob Young, Hunter Dickinson

[Hit THE JUMP for worst surprise, most extreme JAS™, the JJJ award, disaster factory, and more.]

DOTY? [Marc-Gregor Campredon]

Click here for Part One. The midseason-ish awards thus far:

Player of the Year: Luka Garza, Iowa

Coach of the Year: Juwan Howard, Michigan

Newcomer of the Year: Hunter Dickinson, Michigan

Defensive Player of the Year: Franz Wagner, Michigan

Sixth Man of the Year: Justin Ahrens, Ohio State

Most Improved Player: Pete Nance, Northwestern

The most-contested choice in the comments was my late switch from Chaundee Brown to Justin Ahrens for best sixth man, so evidently I'm not a homer. (The comments section, also homers? Never.)

All-Conference Teams



close to cracking the first team [Campredon]

Before I hand out more awards, here's my stab at midseason all-conference teams. For position designations, a player had to get at least some of their minutes playing the spot listed. This mostly applies to Ohio State C/F EJ Liddell, who plays a little bit of power forward while being able to stretch the floor and therefore ends up on my first team, while poor dang Trevion Williams has been phenomenal this season but doesn't even make third team because he exclusively plays center for Purdue.

Pos. First Team Second Team Third Team
PG D'Mitrik Trice, UW Jordan Bohannon, IA Marcus Carr, MN
G Ayo Dosunmu, IL Myreon Jones, PSU Eli Brooks, U-M
W Franz Wagner, U-M Isaiah Livers, U-M Joe Wieskamp, IA
F EJ Liddell, OSU Donta Scott, MD Ron Harper Jr., RU
C Luka Garza, IA Trayce Jackson-Davis, IU Kofi Cockburn, IL

The toughest choices:

  • TJD, Cockburn, Williams, and Hunter Dickinson vying for two spots at center
  • Bohannon (lower output, amazing efficiency, secondary role, better team) against Carr (higher output, worse efficiency, lead role, worse team)
  • Wagner or Livers for first-team wing, Michigan might be good
  • Wieskamp over a number of viable candidates for the last spot on the wing

The easiest picks were Garza, Trice, and Dosunmu.

[Hit THE JUMP for the rest of the midseason awards.]

Hunter Dickinson is a cut above the rest of the B1G freshman class [Marc-Gregor Campredon]

The scores from last week (home team listed second):

  • Maryland 63, Michigan 87
  • Purdue 67, OSU 65
  • PSU 65, Illinois 79
  • Northwestern 52, Wisconsin 68
  • Indiana 81, Iowa 69
  • Rutgers 67, PSU 75
  • Michigan 70, Purdue 53
  • OSU 74, Wisconsin 62
  • Maryland 63, Minnesota 49
  • Northwestern 78, PSU 81
  • Rutgers 74, Indiana 70

Your big winner of this week was (sigh) Michigan, the only team to play two games and get through unscathed—and they did so with two blowouts, one over a surging Purdue squad. They'll hang onto first place in the conference through the department-wide pause because Iowa's shooters went cold while their defense gave up 1.18 points per possession to Indiana.

The Hoosiers, naturally, turned around and lost at home to Rutgers. Wisconsin, meanwhile, fell another game behind the Wolverines with a home loss to Ohio State. The Buckeyes were nipped at home earlier in the week by the same Purdue team that Michigan hammered a few days later. Maryland got similarly smashed by the Wolverines, then dominated Minnesota on the road.

If you're having a tough time making sense of this conference, you're not alone.

The Standings

I've added NET rankings and records versus quartile 1 and 2 opponents.

  Record   NET   KP/Torvik Avg   OFFENSE   DEFENSE
Team OVR B1G RK Q1 Q2 Nat Rk (chg) Proj. B1G

Rec.
KP BT KP BT
U-M 13-1 8-1 3rd 3-1 5-0 3.0 (up 2) 15.5-4 7th 7th 6th 8th
IOWA 12-3 6-2 5th 4-2 3-1 4.5 (down 1) 13-6 1st 1st 98th 119th
WIS 12-4 6-3 18th 2-2 6-2 9.0 (--) 12.5-7.5 24th 21st 7th 7th
ILL 10-5 6-3 7th 3-4 4-1 9.0 (up 4) 11.5-7.5 8th 10th 25th 27th
OSU 12-4 6-4 17th 4-4 3-0 13.0 (up 3.5) 11.5-8 5th 4th 60th 75th
PUR 11-6 6-4 29th 3-4 4-2 31.5 (down 4) 11.5-8 53rd 62nd 26th 26th
MIN 11-5 4-5 41st 4-4 0-1 30.5 (down 6.5) 9.5-10 43rd 51st 29th 30th
IND 9-7 4-5 37th 1-5 4-1 26.0 (up 6) 9-10.5 39th 49th 27th 24th
RUT 8-6 4-6 56th 3-5 1-1 40.0 (down 1.5) 9-11 55th 42nd 39th 46th
UMD 9-7 3-6 34th 3-6 0-1 45.5 (up 6) 8-11.5 30th 27th 68th 102nd
MSU 8-4 2-4 87th 0-4 2-0 48.0 (down 2) 6.5-12 46th 64th 50th 57th
NW 6-8 3-7 74th 2-7 0-1 63.5 (down 2) 7-13 69th 53rd 80th 76th
PSU 5-6 2-5 40th 1-5 3-1 40.5 (up 2) 7.5-11 29th 20th 76th 71st
NEB 4-8 0-5 163rd 0-4 0-2 108.5 (up 5) 3-14 135th 126th 121st 83rd

*Torvik includes projections for games that have been postponed, KenPom only includes those that have been rescheduled.

Movement in both the standings and in the advanced rankings is becoming less drastic from week to week as teams settle in and we get more data on them. There's less divergence between KenPom and Torvik in their team and unit rankings. We also had a couple programs on pause because of COVID, which added to the static nature of the week.

Midseason-ish Awards: The Usual Categories



a Bucket™ [Campredon]

With Michigan forced into a pause, this is as good an opportunity as I'll have to hand out some midseason Big Ten awards. While these take into account play over the full course of the season, I'm putting a heavy emphasis on performance in conference games, though given the shape of the schedule this year that was probably gonna happen regardless.

Today, I'll cover the usual award categories. Later this week, I'll have another post with some less traditional fare, like Most Glorious Disaster Factory and Extreme Just A Shooter™, as well as all-conference selections. This one is dominated by the team in first place.

PLAYER OF THE YEAR: LUKA GARZA

Garza is the engine of the league's top offense by some distance. He's averaging 25 points, nine boards, and two assists in Big Ten games. He's by far the leader in the KenPom Player of the Year standings and is expected to clean up the voter-determined national player of the year awards as well.

This isn't ignoring Garza's below-average defense at the most important defensive position on the court, either. His offense is so overwhelming that he's still the easy choice. He bears one of the biggest offensive loads in the country and is still one of its most efficient players.

Unlike a lot of centers, Garza's essentially never in foul trouble, and that's not at all the case for his counterpart—he draws 6.9 fouls per 40 minutes, often swinging games by forcing opponents to defend him with their backup bigs. By avoiding foul trouble himself, Garza is able to play over 80% of the team's minutes in conference games, and that even undersells his availability because of Iowa's frequent blowout wins. His presence also opens up the arc for his sharpshooting teammates, who are making 40% of their three-pointers. He's the toughest player to gameplan against in the country.

Other contenders: Trace Jackson-Davis, Ayo Dosunmu, Trevion Williams, Hunter Dickinson, Kofi Cockburn, but this really wasn't close

[Hit THE JUMP for a lot of Michigan, I swear I wasn't trying to be a homer. Also, new tiers and this week's schedule.]