Scores from last week (home team listed second):

• Rutgers 51, Nebraska 72
• Illinois 76, Michigan 53
• Wisconsin 69, Purdue 73
• Indiana 58, MSU 64
• Minnesota 65, PSU 84
• Northwestern 60, Maryland 55
• MSU 50, Michigan 69
• Nebraska 64, Iowa 102
• Illinois 73, OSU 68
• Indiana 58, Purdue 67
• Rutgers 77, Minnesota 70 (OT)
• Michigan 64, MSU 70
• Wisconsin 73, Iowa 77
• Nebraska 78, Northwestern 79
• PSU 66, Maryland 61

As you're probably aware, Illinois closed strong enough to whinge about Michigan ducking, uh, Northwestern, Penn State, and Indiana. Purdue, meanwhile, took advantage of Ohio State's tough late-season schedule to slip past them for the #4 seed in the Big Ten Tournament. On the other end, Maryland stumbled to the finish line, though they're still in good shape for an NCAA bid.

The Final Regular Season Standings

	Record			NET				Rankings			OFFENSE			DEFENSE
Team	OVR	B1G		RK	Q1	Q2		KenPom	Torvik		KP	BT		KP	BT
U-M	19-3	14-3		3rd	7-2	6-1		3rd	4th		6th	8th		4th	10th
ILL	20-6	16-4		4th	9-5	5-1		5th	6th		8th	11th		6th	14th
IOWA	20-7	14-6		6th	7-5	5-2		4th	5th		2nd	1st		61st	71st
PUR	18-8	13-6		20th	6-6	7-1		13th	21st		22nd	28th		18th	21st
OSU	18-8	12-8		9th	7-6	5-2		7th	8th		4th	4th		80th	79th
WIS	16-11	10-10		26th	4-9	5-2		11th	11th		29th	36th		13th	11th
RUT	14-10	10-10		37th	4-8	5-2		33rd	41st		73rd	86th		16th	18th
MD	15-12	9-11		34th	4-9	2-3		29th	34th		43rd	49th		26th	29th
MSU	15-11	9-11		67th	5-9	4-2		56th	58th		88th	94th		34th	39th
IND	12-14	7-12		61st	2-11	6-2		39th	51st		53rd	54th		39th	49th
PSU	10-13	7-12		40th	3-11	4-1		34th	42nd		33rd	39th		45th	56th
NW	9-14	6-13		88th	2-11	3-2		69th	75th		105th	104th		44th	58th
MIN	13-14	6-14		79th	4-10	2-3		62nd	68th		50th	52nd		79th	82nd
NEB	7-19	3-16		128th	1-12	1-6		92nd	84th		166th	179th		40th	38th

Indiana and Minnesota are missing the tournament barring miracle BTT runs. Incidentally, there are rumors that both Archie Miller and Richard Pitino will be looking for new jobs this offseason.

The Actual All-Conference Awards

Are a debacle. They will be discussed in a separate post.

[Hit THE JUMP for awards that make sense.]

All-Conference Teams

Some notes about my selection process:

• I value how well a player functions with a team setting a little more for these teams than some of the individual awards. You'll see where I'm going with this when you get to the centers.
• That said, offensive production in basketball matters more than defensive acumen—it's a scorer's game—especially at the non-center positions. This is reflected in the point guard choices/order. While defense is more than a tiebreaker, to be sure, a player can overcome poor defense with great offense at every spot other than center (and, if you're historically productive, even at center).
• I'm willing to be a little flexible with positions to get the most deserving players onto these teams so long as they could plausibly function where I put them. These lineups are all quite playable. With apologies to several excellent centers, I'm not jamming three big men into one lineup. This isn't 1994.
• Especially this year, I'm heavily weighting how players performed in conference games over non-conference games, though I'll still take marquee games in the latter category into account if Big Ten performance is close.
• What with the whole pandemic along with the nature of my job, I've watched a borderline unhealthy amount of Big Ten basketball this year. While I utilized both traditional and advanced stats, they weren't the be-all-end-all.

Now that I've totally failed to head off most of the comments, let's do this.

ALL-CONFERENCE

Pos.	First Team	Second Team	Third Team
PG	Marcus Carr, MN	Jordan Bohannon, IA	D'Mitrik Trice, UW
G	Ayo Dosunmu, IL	Duane Washington Jr., OSU	Eli Brooks, U-M
W	Franz Wagner, U-M	Isaiah Livers, U-M	Joe Wieskamp, IA
F	EJ Liddell, OSU	Trayce Jackson-Davis, IU	Aaron Henry, MSU
C	Kofi Cockburn, IL	Luka Garza, IA	Hunter Dickinson, U-M

The toughest choices:

• Center was so, so stacked. I chose Cockburn over Garza because he facilitates winning in a way Garza can't; even with the best offensive player in the country, there's a hard cap on any team whose center can't protect the rim, and we saw that come into play as Iowa dropped six conference games despite having one of the best offenses in KenPom history. Cockburn is an excellent offensive player in his own right and his impact there goes beyond the numbers because of the way he draws in defenses and opens up lanes for the Illini guards; he's also in the conversation for most impactful defender in the conference.
• Meanwhile, Dickinson edged out Trevion Williams and Trayce Jackson-Davis (who I shoehorned in as a forward, which actually bumped him up a team, because he played in so many two-big lineups and has the athleticism for it) as the last center. While TJD put up bigger numbers, he was the focal point of a significantly worse team; I thought Dickinson was a more consistently good defender and overall mismatch problem for opponents. The same goes for Williams except the scoring numbers are closer and the defensive edge for Dickinson isn't debatable, though what Williams brought as a passer this year deserves a glowing mention.
• Aaron Henry's great finish to the season got him the last spot. I could've chosen a wing or a power forward-type there. Since Trevion Williams is exclusively a center and isn't a good fit as a power forward, the others under serious consideration were stretch forwards Micah Potter and Donta Scott, both of whom played a lot of center this season—again, just a ridiculous year for big men. I thought Wagner, Livers, Wieskamp, and Henry were clearly the top four wings in the conference this year.

I feel safe in saying these teams would kick the official teams' asses.

ALL-DEFENSE

let's find a better matchup [Campredon]

PG: Trent Frazier, Illinois
G: Eli Brooks, Michigan
W: Aaron Henry, Michigan State
F: Franz Wagner, Michigan
C: Kofi Cockburn, Illinois

In general, the best defenders play on the best defenses. The Big Ten voters whiffed on this concept and not for the first time.

Much will be (rightly) made about Franz being left off, but it goes even deeper than that: this is the 5th time in the last 7 years the all-defense team contained 0 players from the league's top defense https://t.co/NYNGY2TmMI

— David Lectka (@davidlectka) March 9, 2021

That's absurd and embarrassing.

I also think they messed up evaluating centers, looking at blocks over everything. Cockburn averaged only 3.1 fouls per 40 minutes, which allowed him to stay on the floor and also didn't send opponents to the line for easy points; he still protected the rim and dominated the glass. Myles Johnson, the official choice, averaged 4.1 fouls per 40 minutes and his foul trouble was the turning point in more than a couple Rutgers losses. Illinois was the best defensive rebounding team in the conference; Rutgers was the second-worst, in large part because Johnson chased blocks.

Incidentally, Illinois was nearly five points per 100 possessions better on defense in Big Ten play than Rutgers. Again, the best defenders play on the best defenses.

ALL-FRESHMAN

Jaden Ivey is developing into a bucket problem [Campredon]

PG: Andre Curbelo, Illinois
G: Jaden Ivey, Purdue
W: Brandon Newman, Purdue
F: Keegan Murray, Iowa
C: Hunter Dickinson, Michigan

Curbelo, Ivey, Murray, and Dickinson were easy selections. This was another situation where fielding a plausible team had a significant impact on the final choice. Dickinson was by far the best freshman in the conference; two other players who would've merited consideration, Purdue's Zach Edey and Ohio State's Zed Key, also play center.

Yet another Purdue freshman, wing Mason Gillis, was the other player I considered including over Newman; I liked the latter's aggressive three-point shooting at 37% and overall scoring production more than the former's good efficiency on very few shots.

Regular Season Awards: The Usual Categories

As I did with the midseason awards, I'm breaking these up into the traditional awards and the weird MGoAwards, the latter of which will run later this week.

PLAYER OF THE YEAR: AYO DOSUNMU, ILLINOIS

poty and hoty (hair of the year) [Campredon]

Yes, even though I take individual production into account more for player of the year than I do for the all-conference teams, this still isn't going to Luka Garza. It's very difficult for me to get past this when Iowa also finishes two full games behind Illinois:

To be honest, the harder choice for me was Dosunmu against Cockburn. In the end, Dosunmu's remarkable offensive production and efficiency gave him the edge for me, along with him doing so at a position of scarcity—while you can debate which Big Ten center you'd want to build around, there's no question which lead guard would go first in a Big Ten draft. It doesn't hurt that Dosunmu is a lanky, solid, switchable perimeter defender.

Nobody filled up the stat sheet quite like Dosunmu this year. He averaged 19-5-5, shot around 50% on two-pointers that carried a high degree of difficulty, and made 40% of his threes, often off the bounce. Even with Cockburn on the floor, he's the engine of a top-ten offense, which you can't quite say about any of Michigan's players in their more egalitarian offense, and he's also a key cog in a top-ten defense, which... I think I've made my point about Garza.

Other contenders: Kofi Cockburn, Luka Garza

COACH OF THE YEAR: JUWAN HOWARD, MICHIGAN

pretty sure you don't get confetti for seventh place [Campredon]

Remember the preseason?

Borzello picked Michigan to finish eighth!

Yeah, it does feel like a long, long time ago.

Juwan Howard took a squad that had to replace its longtime pick-and-roll combination that formed the backbone of both the team's offense and defense, added a couple transfers to a freshman class led by a center ranked below Mady Sissoko, and won the most difficult conference in the country.

Howard didn't do this simply by hoarding talent. His upperclassmen are John Beilein players or transfers who weren't necessarily expected to play as well as they did. He's still put his stamp on the team, running a more up-tempo offense with a variety of NBA-style sets and a matchup-attacking approach that's produced a top-ten unit. The defense is the best in the league by over a point per 100 possessions even though it has an undersized transfer at the point, a freshman starting at center, and a limited bench defensively beyond Chaundee Brown. They use a matchup zone as an effective changeup when most teams are throwing out a basic 2-3 if they're switching up defenses at all.

We've also seen in-season player development, solid in-game adjustments, great suits, enjoyable referee interactions that don't cross into exhausting Fran territory, and salsa dancing. It's hard to ask for much more from a coach.

Other contenders: Chris Holtmann, Steve Pikiell

NEWCOMER OF THE YEAR: HUNTER DICKINSON, MICHIGAN

oh, is this your poty? [Campredon]

This wasn't close from the start. Dickinson led Big Ten freshmen in points (14.3, next was Jaden Ivey at 10.0) and rebounds (7.7, second was Keegan Murray at 5.1), made 60% of his shots in a conference full of excellent big men, and anchored the paint for the best defense in the league. Despite being a paint-bound center in a game that's moving away from that direction at the next level, Dickinson is the only Big Ten freshman who's worked his way into some NBA Draft conversations.

Murray and Curbelo deserve mention here but both mostly came off the bench and neither showed the same sustained dominance or consistent high-level play as Dickinson. The player who drew newcomer of the year votes in the official ballot other than Dickinson was a transfer: Mike Smith.

Other contenders: Mike Smith, Keegan Murray, Andre Curbelo

DEFENSIVE PLAYER OF THE YEAR: FRANZ WAGNER, MICHIGAN

no-look disruption [Campredon]

I can see the argument for giving this to Cockburn. But Darryl Morsell? I'm heated. Leaving Wagner off the all-defense team entirely, meanwhile, is downright criminal. The primary reason for Wagner's rise from late first-/early second-round NBA prospect to a projected lottery pick seen as one of the safer players to select in the draft is his defense. Here's ESPN's DraftExpress squad a couple months ago:

Defensively is where Wagner has made the biggest strides, though, as he's shown the ability to contain guards, wings, forwards and even some big men thanks to his terrific size, high activity level, outstanding basketball awareness and textbook technique. While not all that fleet of foot and still lacking a degree of physicality, he's always in the right spots off the ball and is often one step ahead of his opponents defending one on one because of how quickly he anticipates and reacts to what's going on around him. He's a playmaker who gets in passing lanes frequently, blocks shots on the perimeter, and cleans the glass effectively from the power forward position.

Wagner has since risen to 12th on their latest big board, which was released this afternoon. According to Bart Torvik, Wagner is one of only 28 Big Ten players since 2008 to record a block rate over 3.0% and a steal rate over 2.5% in conference play, and the other names on that list include the likes of Draymond Green, Ethan Happ, Victor Oladipo, Juwan Morgan, and Mitch McGary. The only other B1G player to hit those benchmarks this year was Myles Johnson, whose deficiencies as a team defender were discussed earlier.

Wagner, meanwhile, is one of the best team defenders I can remember watching, and I'll once again point to Michigan's defensive ranking. He puts up great stats while also making a lot of plays that don't get in the box score.

This play won't make the highlights or the stat sheet... most probably didn't even notice it.

But in addition to the obvious stuff he does, this shows Franz Wagner's awesome instincts and defensive value: pic.twitter.com/SzGb2p3MoO

— Eric Shapiro (@eric_shap) February 27, 2021

His highlight plays are fun, too.

I swear this isn't homerism or even bias based on watching Wagner more than any other defender, or at least I'm sticking to that line. The advanced metrics love him. Wagner led the conference in defensive box plus-minus over Johnson by 1.3 points, which is equal to the gap between second and tenth; in fact, he led the nation in DBPM. He also led the league in defensive win shares and finished second in defensive rating.

If I keep writing more in this section I'm going to say very regrettable things about the people who voted on these awards. This is one of the worst snubs I can recall by the Big Ten and there have been some bad ones.

Other contenders: Kofi Cockburn, Myles Johnson

SIXTH MAN OF THE YEAR: CHAUNDEE BROWN, MICHIGAN

EXTREME ENERGY GUY [Campredon]

I almost went in another direction here again, this time with Keegan Murray, who grew into an excellent slasher off Iowa's bench. Murray shot okay enough from beyond the arc and played better defense than most of his teammates, at least.

But Chaundee Brown can't be denied. That's how he plays. The stats don't encapsulate the demoralizing brand of on-ball defense he plays. He made 57% of his twos and 39% of his threes while not at all shying away from putting up shots. He excelled in his role like he'd been at Michigan for four years instead of coming in this offseason as a grad transfer from Wake Forest.

Curbelo won this award officially. It's not an egregiously bad choice but I have a hard time overlooking his 26.8% turnover rate and 5/26 three-point shooting as a guard; he had games that looked a lot different from his Michigan performance.

Other contenders: Keegan Murray, Andre Curbelo

MOST IMPROVED PLAYER: ERIC AYALA, MARYLAND

Ayala significantly improved as a finisher [Campredon]

Eric Ayala had the proverbial sophomore slump, averaging 7.5 points while shooting 40% on twos and 25% on threes in Big Ten games last season, and it wasn't clear where the Terps would get scoring this year with Anthony Cowan and Jalen Smith gone.

Ayala made improvements across the board, boosting his average to 14.5 points on 55/34/84 shooting with a high free throw rate and great ball discipline. He added the strength and craft to finish or draw fouls when challenged by shot-blockers and the touch has returned to his outside shot enough to make him a multi-level threat. He's a decent defender on a good defensive team. This felt like a make-or-break year for Ayala and he made it.

This was a category in which a number of Terps fell under consideration. If Donta Scott hadn't come along pretty strong as a freshman, he might've taken this—he was my first thought before I dug into the numbers. Aaron Wiggins also did well taking on a bigger role in Cowan's absence. 

Other contenders: Donta Scott, Aaron Wiggins, Kyle Young, Jacob Young