trent frazier
While Michigan's 2021-22 roster is mostly set, the same can't be said for much of the Big Ten—or, really, most programs in the country between a packed transfer portal, the pandemic year option for seniors to return without counting against the scholarship cap, and up-in-the-air NBA Draft decisions.
There's been a lot of movement over the last few days, including this morning's announcement that Northwestern shooter Miller Kopp is transferring within the conference to Indiana. This week, I'll be going over where each Big Ten program's roster stands in alphabetical order, and I'll rank each team's current outlook at the end. Here are some important dates to keep in mind as players make decisions about their future:
- May 30: Last day to apply for NBA Draft as an early entry
- June 21-27: NBA Draft Combine
- July 19: Last day for early entry to withdraw from NBA Draft
I made sure to note which players intend to sign with an agent, making them ineligible to withdraw, and which have left the door open to come back to school. I've also noted which players are in the transfer portal—which, as Indiana has displayed, doesn't prevent a return—and which have chosen another school. Returning seniors able to use the COVID waiver for an extra year are referred to as "super seniors."
Illinois
Key departures: G Ayo Dosunmu (draft w/ agent), F Giorgi Bezhanishvili (draft or overseas), W Adam Miller (transfer)
Key additions/super seniors: G Trent Frazier (super senior), C Omar Payne (Florida transfer), G Alfonso Plummer (Utah transfer)
Up in the air: C Kofi Cockburn (draft w/o agent), W Da'Monte Williams (possible super senior)
The Illini are going to look very different next season. Ayo Dosunmu is hiring an agent for the draft and won't be back. Kofi Cockburn also isn't expected to return after declaring over the weekend—it's rare for a player to return when they test the draft waters a second time, which is the case with Cockburn. Giorgi Bezhanishvili is going to the professional ranks too, though his role diminished in conjunction with Cockburn's emergence.
In a surprise move, former top-50 recruit Adam Miller entered the transfer portal despite starting all 31 games as a freshman. He hasn't said much since entering the portal and has been connected with Arizona, DePaul, Kentucky, and Michigan, though that seems largely based on his recruitment out of high school. He showed promise as a spot-up shooter and defender.
Brad Underwood added another former top-50 recruit in Florida transfer Omar Payne, who's mostly come off the bench in his first two seasons and was passed by Michigan transfer Colin Castleton in 2020-21. Payne blocks a lot of shots but is still quite raw; not that this is a fair comparison, but he won't come close to replicating Cockburn's production. (He may, however, try to take someone's head off.) Illinois needs big leaps from sophomores Coleman Hawkins and Jacob Grandison to have an above-average frontcourt as things stand; they're a strong candidate to hit the transfer portal for another big.
Getting Trent Frazier back for a fifth year helped shore up a backcourt that'll dearly miss Dosunmu, as did this weekend's addition of Utah grad transfer Alfonso Plummer, a 6'1 guard who's a career 40% three-point shooter on high volume and a teammate of Illini guard Andre Curbelo on the Puerto Rico national team. That helps offset the loss of Miller on offense and then some, though the undersized Plummer is unlikely to match him as a defender—his defensive metrics from Utah aren't good.
The Illini don't have much in the way of instant-impact freshmen unless someone plays above their ranking. The three-player 2021 class is headlined by a pair of 6'7 small forwards who both slipped just inside the top 100 on the 247 Composite, though recent three-star SG signee Brandon Podziemski has significantly differing opinions on his talent after posting huge numbers against underwhelming Wisconsin high school competition.
It's hard not to see this team taking a significant step back in 2022. There isn't another Dosunmu or Cockburn coming in, or even an Adam Miller. The next couple years of Underwood's tenure may make or break his time in Champaign.
[Hit THE JUMP for Indiana's wild offseason, Iowa's rough one, MSU's impact transfer, and more.]
3/2/2021 – Michigan 53, Illinois 76 – 18-2, 13-2 Big Ten
It does a body good to snap back to reality after a pleasant daydream. A splash of water; a bracing winter wind; a playful pinch from a person you love. All of these are ways to return to a full, unblinkered view of your surroundings. There are also other ways. Ways that are less good. Ways like being shoved out of a plane by a bear, and then having that bear jump out of the plane and plummet into you, flipping you off the whole time. This is guaranteed to make you hyper-aware of your surroundings for upwards of ten seconds.
Anyway, a basketball game. Technically. Yesterday's… uh… event felt less like a sporting contest and more like one of those nightmares where you show up to an exam with no knowledge of the subject matter, wearing only your underwear and maybe an unflattering hat. A fever dream of how Michigan bombs out of the NCAA tournament. So bad it felt unreal.
I don't really know what conclusions to draw. It started off as an ugly slugfest where Hunter Dickinson and Kofi Cockburn took turns demonstrating that the other guy was pretty good on defense, too, and then Andre Curbelo came in and broke the game open. Curbelo got to the basket almost at will; he went 6/7 there. Michigan—the whole team—had a total of 7 makes at the basket, period. Three of those came from Austin Davis, who occasionally bamboozled Cockburn with sheer persistence.
Eventually it became clear that Michigan was getting Michigan'd.
lol so this is what other teams have been feeling like all season
— Noah Neidlinger (@candor_for_sale) March 3, 2021
The preview noted that Illinois was very similar to Michigan statistically: eFG kings on both ends, turnovers optional on defense, limit threes, limit assists, no post doubles. Illinois, unsurprisingly for a team that has a couple of lead-footed centers, is a drop coverage team that doesn't leave shooters. Jordan Sperber's diagnosis of what happened last night is almost word-for-word what Michigan did to teams like Wisconsin:
Then came the point in the game where UM handlers stopped trying to attack Cockburn/Bezhanishvili & started probing
— Jordan Sperber (@hoopvision68) March 3, 2021
Illinois did a GREAT job of still not helping off shooters. With the Illini staying home on players not involved in the screen, UM's probes led to late clock iso pic.twitter.com/z1EIVwZtXI
Michigan got up 7 threes, 15 shots at the rim, and had 27 midrange shots. Seven of the latter went down. That's a cool 0.52 points per possession.
You don't need any explanations other than that, which is unfortunate because you can weave other problems that are ephemeral. Their legs were shot, they had a bad shooting performance, Franz saw the wrong kind of dog that morning, etc. These are often thrown out when something inexplicable happens; what happened here was nothing of the sort. It followed from the actions Michigan could run and the shots they could get. Since those shots were largely garbage, Michigan scored 53.
In a way, this is a blessing. Illinois stuck a finger into a heretofore unknown weakness and started ripping out big chunks of wall. Minnesota did the same thing earlier in the year when their rampant doubling neutralized Dickinson and forced him into five turnovers. Michigan fixed that emphatically.
This one feels like a tougher fix, but at least the recipe to throw at Michigan is much tougher than "double the post." To replicate what Illinois did you have to be able to play Dickinson one-on-one, relentlessly stick to shooters, and overwhelm their guards athletically. A lot of teams might be able to do one or two of those things. Three is a tall order. And now Juwan Howard will go back to the lab and see what he can do.
[After THE JUMP: perimeter ball denial]
Let's preview some basketball
Ace: They even have a non-conference schedule of sorts now. With, uh, eight days to spare. This is my way of preparing people for a weird season.
Brian: For the record, that's home games against BGSU, Oakland, UCF, and NC State.
Ace: And Ball State.
Brian: All of which take on outsized importance because the NCAA tournament selection and seeding process is going to be running on very little intra-conference data.
Ace: Yes, this is a bad year to trip up early. The good news is Michigan has coaching continuity and a relatively experienced roster. The bad news is their turnover is at the two toughest positions to seamlessly replace. Realistically, though, they should go 5-0 or 4-1 against that slate.
Seth: So what do they do with the Big Ten teams that have a losing conference record this year? How many leagues aren't even participating?
Ace: I have no idea but it doesn’t seem like a good sign that the Ivy League has already bailed (though they’re an unusual case) and no conference appears to have a plan. A lot is going to depend on how many conferences can play and also how big a field they can safely host at the NCAA Tournament. It wouldn’t shock me if it was just the high majors and a 32- or 16-team field.
Seth: Those conferences are pinched pretty tightly between not having the resources to play a COVID season safely and relying on basketball revenue to fund their entire departments.
Ace: Indeed. I don’t have a good solution for that.
Brian: I think most mid-major conferences are going to try to get someone to the tourney because that's where much of their money comes from.
Seth: Right, and what shape they're in and who have they played is going to be hell to sort through. For our purposes this means Michigan really should make sure they're a top-25 team to guarantee a spot in whatever the postseason is.
Brian: Yeah there's going to be absolutely no way to sort through bubble teams.
Ace: Well, uh, the good news is the Big Ten doesn’t have an obvious favorite unless you’re one of the Iowa believers, which I don’t think applies to anyone here. The bad news is it’s an entire conference of tournament or bubble teams. Plus Nebraska and Northwestern.
Seth: I imagine if Luka Garza could become a functional defender he'd be in the NBA. Do we have tiers?
the top of the big ten
Ace: It’s difficult not to stick half the league in a tier. Michigan State, Ohio State, and Wisconsin have earned “gonna assume they’re good” status and the Badgers, in particular, aren’t dealing with much attrition at all. Iowa could have the best offense in the country and still finish outside the top 25, which is in fact what Bart Torvik projects. Illinois has a strong top four and a good coach. Rutgers is feisty. Purdue finds a way most years even if this looks like a down one. Indiana and Minnesota have talent if they can coach it. It’s a good league!
Seth: Purdue is a flat circle. Also they banished all the bricklayers.
Brian: Yeah I keep wanting to dump on certain teams because they were barely above .500 in the league and then I'm like oh that 11-9 Big Ten team finished 8th on Kenpom. That's OSU, for the record.
Ace: Every team is inside the top 75 on Torvik’s preseason projections except for Nebraska, which is 101st—not bad at all for the worst team in a conference.
Seth: Maryland didn't bring in any five-stars and lost Jalen Smith to the NBA so maybe one of the knives in MURDERCONFERENCE is less sharp?
Ace: They do look headed for a transition year.
But, like, Rutgers is good now!
Brian: I am going to hazard some tiers.
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
Ace: Those look fair to me.
Brian: Normally these would not be so broad but I don't think there's much separation.
Seth: My last act before the shutdown was making a third Rutgerschart for the BTT. It has an arrow pointing to Geo Baker's very large two-point jumper bar that says "3% of these were assisted." Just wanted to have that in the world.
Ace: Speaking of Rutgers, one factor I have no idea how to account for is the lack of fans for teams that tend to thrive off home-court advantage. Not to throw shade at the Crisler crowds or anything but that probably works in Michigan’s favor.
Seth: /Remembers Michigan beating them in a road and quasi-road game last year.
Brian: All right, let's lightning round these teams.
[After THE JUMP: running through our comically large first tier]
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