brad davison

It's basketball preview season everyone! With the dawn of a new Michigan hoops campaign upon us, we will be counting down the final 8 days before the season opener with the usual content you've come to expect, except with me taking over the role of author. This week we will be scouting the competition in the B1G, which will be done in a power ranking format instead of tiers like past years. Today we'll look at the bottom half (14-8) and tomorrow we'll cover the upper half of the conference (7-1). Our expedition begins with a team that has a chance to be one of the worst teams in the conference in a while: 

14. Minnesota 

Projected lineup:

- G, Payton Willis

- G, EJ Stephens

- F, Jamison Battle

- F, Eric Curry

- C, Treyton Thompson

This is extremely grim. Richard Pitino is gone from Minneapolis and left behind a roster that is the basketball equivalent of a smoldering nuclear bomb crater. Nearly everyone who didn’t graduate opted to transfer somewhere else, leaving only Eric Curry and Isaiah Ihnen as the two returners, a pair of players with <100 ORTGs who played <50% of minutes. Oh and Ihnen is out for the year. Grim.

The reconstructed roster was put together entirely of transfers and recruits by new head coach Ben Johnson, who has never been a head coach before in the NCAA. Freshman big man Treyton Thompson is the only player above 6’9” on the roster, and he is Freshman Caris LeVert skinny. Jamison Battle transferred in from GW and was at least a decent A-10 player, and the same could be said of Payton Willis at Charleston, who has power conference experience in his past amid a tumultuous career path (actually was on Minnesota before, prior to transferring away and now transferring back).

EJ Stephens and Luke Loewe were both good players at small schools, too, but there are real reasons to wonder whether they can adjust to the B1G. The rest of the bench are players who were not even starters at mid-majors (Charlie Daniels), DII players (Daniel Ogele), JUCO players (Abdoulaye Thiam), or America East players who haven’t played in two seasons due to injury (Sean Sutherlin). Grim.

Even if some of these transfers hit, not all will, and all have never played with each other before, nor have they played with this new coach before. It’s going to be immensely painful in Minneapolis and they are the worst B1G by a wide margin. A trip to The Barn may not even be threatening this year.

13. Northwestern

Projected lineup:

- Boo Buie, G

- Ty Berry, G

- Chase Audige, G

- Robbie Beran, F

- Pete Nance, F

A Canadian who doesn’t follow college basketball intensely but has general cognitive knowledge of the subject recently said to me about Northwestern hoops “I remember them from one of those March Madness runs” and I had to note that it was one (1) run and the “run” was one NCAA Tournament win, but the combination of it seeming like the biggest deal in the world and Julia Louis-Dreyfuss going ballistic has resonated with sports fans everywhere and in the process, has bought Chris Collins a lot of time in Evanston. That time may be running out.

Since the 2017 team was bounced from that NCAA tourney, Northwestern is 45-74. Last year’s team seemed good for a few weeks but Eli Brooks dunking on them broke their soul and the ship crashed down to earth. The Wildcats lost 13 straight games before a three-game win streak closed the regular season, which came just before they scored only 46 points in the BTT, mercifully ending the Cats’ season.

Northwestern enters 2021-22 with Chris Collins fighting for his life. He returns the stellar Pete Nance, a big and long stretch five who is one of the conference’s better players, but the rest of the roster does not look particularly great. Optimism probably has a lot to do with a returning backcourt of Chase Audige and Boo Buie.

Audige is a plus defender but was also a central problem with Northwestern last season: he was the Wildcats’ highest usage piece and he put up a 86.9 ORTG with one of the worst eFG clips in the conference among players who played at least 60% of minutes. Want to know who else ranked in that cellar among eFG%? Boo Buie himself, owner of the best name in the B1G. Buie’s saving grace is that he’s a great distributor of the basketball, but those two guards need to be better on the offensive end.

Robbie Beran returns as an efficient, low usage stretch big who fits the five-out scheme that NW is trying to run. Returners Ty Berry and Ryan Young add depth, as does transfer Elyjah Williams, but this team hinges on what those big pieces, Nance, Audige, and Buie, can do. Last season wasn’t good enough and with rather few new pieces compared to similar B1G teams, it’s a matter of how much improvement Chris Collins can get out of a largely identical roster. Color me skeptical.

[AFTER THE JUMP: your least favorite B1G player returns]

Previously: Part One (Illinois-Minnesota)

Today's post will cover the back half of the Big Ten and next week I'll post a part three that (finally) ranks the league by current roster outlook. Let's get this going before anyone else moves.

Nebraska

Key departures: W Teddy Allen (left team during season, transfer), F Yvan Ouedraogo (Grand Canyon transfer), G Elijah Wood (transfer), W Akol Arop (transfer)
Key additions/super seniors: G Kobe Webster (super senior), W Keon Edwards (DePaul transfer), W CJ Wilcher (Xavier transfer), G Keisei Tominaga (JuCo transfer), 5* W Bryce McGowens (2021 signee), 4* F Wilhelm Breidenbach (2021 signee), 3* C Oleg Kojenets (2021 signee)
Up in the air: F Thorir Thorbjarnarson (possible super senior), F Shameil Stevenson (considering pros)

Color me shocked, there's a lot of transfer action in a Fred Hoiberg program. While that reflected a poor Nebrasketball program the last couple years, however, this offseason shows some promise for the Huskers.

Hoiberg did a good job of holding the roster together after leading scorer Teddy Allen left the program midway through the season. The only other rotation player to leave is backup big Yvan Ouedraogo, while the other players who've transferred or are considering their futures either didn't play significant minutes or are fringe Big Ten talents. Starting guard Kobe Webster, a good outside shooter, decided to use the COVID exemption for an extra senior year.

Meanwhile, the players coming in look like they'll move the program forward. Hoiberg isn't shying away from heaping expectations on freshman wing Bryce McGowens, the #22 overall player in the 2021 class—easily the highest-ranked signee in Huskers history—and younger brother of senior guard Trey McGowens:

"I believe that signing Bryce changes the whole trajectory of our program." Nebraska Coach Fred Hoiberg said. "He is the centerpiece of what I believe is the strongest class that Nebraska basketball has ever signed. Since I've been here, we have talked about building a program that can have sustained success, and adding a player of Bryce's caliber shows that we building something special here. It shows that Nebraska can compete for some of the top players in the country. It also says a lot about the type of person that Bryce is. He wanted to go to a place where he can create a legacy and help Nebraska basketball reach new heights.

He's on the skinny side and his outside shot is reportedly streaky but he has the look of a high-level scorer from day one. Top-100 big man Wilhelm Breidenbach is merely the third-highest ranked signee in program history; at 6'9, 200 pounds, his lack of bulk may matter more than McGowens' because of their respective positions.

DePaul transfer Keon Edwards is, in effect, another top-100 commit. The lanky 6'7 wing was ranked in the 40-80 range depending on the evaluator after he gave up his senior season of high school to reclassify to 2020 and enroll in December. Edwards played only a handful of minutes over five games as a freshman. The Huskers say he'll have four years of eligibility and he had some high-level programs after him as a transfer, including Alabama and Florida State.

Xavier transfer CJ Wilcher is in a similar position. The #113 prospect in the 2020 class rode the pine for most of the season before emerging as a useful rotation player and even a spot starter on the wing in its final month. He, too, will have four years of eligibility. While limited as an athlete, he was touted as one of the better shooters in his class.

Speaking of shooters, top-ten JuCo transfer Keisei Tominaga is touted as "the Japanese Steph Curry" after shooting 48% from downtown for Ranger (TX) College, which is coached by Billy Gillespie(!). His range and quick release are evident on film and he should at the very least be a fun player to track.

[Hit THE JUMP for teams with a bit less change except for... Wisconsin?]

The gap.

Biggest gap for a Michigan athlete between their potential and their reality during their time at Michigan?

— Matthew Cheney (@matthewdcheney) March 17, 2021

This is a fascinating question. I'm going to leave out guys who saw their careers derailed by injury (Antonio Bass, Tarik Black) and also guys who the recruiting industry airballed on (Kevin Grady, Derrick Green) and limit this folks who clearly had something to offer and did not get to display it for whatever reason:

1. Devin Gardner. Gardner looked like a Heisman contender at certain points (ND UTL II, the two point conversion game against OSU) and was battered to pulp by the worst pass protection of all time at all other points. Not too hard to see him in the NFL if he hadn't ascended to nirvana in the middle of an MSU game.
2. Ernest Shazor. Electric hitter, five star recruit, repeatedly ran the wrong way at incredible rates of speed. He must have had some personal issues because he went from a projected second-round pick to completely undraftable in a couple months in which no football was being played.
3. Donovan Peoples-Jones. Five star wide receiver with massive athletic talent who saw his QB exit the pocket repeatedly and avoid downfield shots even when they were blitheringly wide open. Might as well file Nico "60 targets" Collins in here too.
4. Denard Robinson. Had just established himself as the most electric player in college football when Brady Hoke came in and brought in a guy who wanted to put him under center. Nerve injury had a lot to do with his late-career fade, too, but seeing Denard run a waggle will remain a crime against man and panda forever.
5. Evan Smotrycz. Smotrycz was coming off a 53/44 shooting year and was a career 41% three point shooter on ~200 attempts when he decided to transfer to Maryland. A major reason for this was the fact that he got drafted into playing a bunch of center, which he openly loathed. He ended up being redundant with Jake Layman at Maryland and faded into being a bench player as a senior. There's an alternate Smotrycz history where he gets to be a stretch four under Beilein for four years and has an absurdly efficient statline as an upperclassman.

Protests?

Given the timing of #NotNCAAProperty do you think it's likely there will be an on court protest during the tournament?

— Mathew Puskar (@NoExtraT) March 18, 2021

That's impossible to project but I do feel like that day is coming closer every year. Getting garbage meals while quarantined in a hotel so that everyone except you gets paid buckets of cash does seem like a potential tipping point. At some point a team is going to realize that they have a considerable

I've advocated for teams to adopt a mini-boycott where they don't play for 15 minutes—and if the network cuts to commercial the counter starts over. That would be a wake-up call that could escalate if necessary.

[After THE JUMP: ravoli rebels]