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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]

Uh, brace yourselves? The situation is just a tad different from the last time I did this in early December, when Ohio State was on top of the college basketball world and Purdue ranked 71 spots ahead of Rutgers on KenPom.

Current Standings (As of Feb. 3)

Michigan State being tied atop the standings is unsurprising; being tied with Illinois, on the other hand, was less anticipated.

Stock Up

As we're all too aware, Ayo Dosunmu has been great. [Campredon]

Illinois/Ayo Dosunmu. You probably don't need to be told this given recent events. Since the new year, they've been the #11 team in the country according to Bart Torvik's rankings, and they've done it on the strength of their stifling defense. That's not what anybody expected after watching the Illini last year, but Brad Underwood completely overhauled his defensive scheme to remarkable effect. They'd won seven straight—including road upsets of Wisconsin, Purdue, and Michigan—before dropping an intense game at Iowa yesterday. Their only Big Ten losses are on the road to Michigan State, Iowa, and Maryland, the three other teams most likely to win or share the regular season title.

As we saw in the game at Crisler, when Illinois has needed a bucket, they've put the ball in the hands of Ayo Dosunmu. He's been on a tear over the last eight games, averaging 17.1 points, 4.0 rebounds, and 4.6 assists per game while shooting 54/42/85 (2P%/3P%/FT%) and keeping his turnovers in check; over that stretch he has a 118 ORating on 25% usage. Dosumnu is starting to look like the player some thought was ticketed for the lottery when he arrived in Champaign. He's no longer mostly a transition threat, and while Illinois still needs more shooting, they're arguably the most complete team in the conference anyway. As Brian mentioned on the podcast, the pieces of this team fit together very well.

[Hit THE JUMP for Garza the POTY, Wisconsin's wild ride, OSU's fall back to earth, and more.]