nate reuvers

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.

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.]

At least until last night, this week was largely about the top end of the conference separating itself from the rest of the league. Notable scores from last week (home team listed second):

• Maryland 55, Indiana 63
• Rutgers 45, MSU 68
• Minnesota 57, Michigan 82
• Iowa 89, Maryland 67
• Indiana 73, Wisconsin 80 (2OT)
• Illinois 81, Northwestern 56
• Purdue 55, MSU 54
• OSU 79, Rutgers 68
• Minnesota 71, Iowa 86
• Maryland 66, Illinois 63

Iowa went an emphatic 2-0, Michigan blew out Minnesota, Illinois demolished Northwestern, and Wisconsin survived a scare from Indiana. Northwestern, Rutgers, and Indiana all had rough weeks; the only win among them was the Hoosiers righting the ship after blowing a big lead against last-place Nebraska.

Then Maryland went on the road to upset the Illini last night despite missing Eric Ayala, their only rotation player who somewhat resembles a point guard. The top four may be separating from the pack, but that pack is still dangerous.

We had more COVID-related postponements this week: Wisconsin at Penn State, Nebraska at Purdue, Penn State at OSU, and Michigan at Penn State did not happen as scheduled. PSU paused their program last week and their game against Rutgers originally slated for tomorrow night is postponed.

The Nittany Lions are going to have at least four games to make up when they're able to retake the court; they'll either face a brutally packed schedule to fit them in or the Big Ten is going to have an unbalanced final schedule unless the NCAA pushes the NCAA Tournament back, which they're considering—but more on a one-week-later timeline than a "May Madness" timeline.

The Standings

*Torvik includes projections for games that have been postponed, KenPom does not.

Teams are mostly settling into their spots in the advanced rankings pecking order, with the four top-ten squads, a couple tiers in the middle, and Nebraska hanging just below 100th. The exception is Rutgers, which has seen their offense plummet after a hideous loss to MSU and a less-hideous one to OSU. After looking like they might move into the top 15, they're now threatening to drop out of the top 40.

[Hit THE JUMP for trying to pin down Maryland, OSU's injury issues, the league's most indispensable players, and 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
Michigan

SCRABBLING FOR BID

Rutgers
Indiana
Purdue
Maryland
Minnesota

EATEN 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.

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.]