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It's the last week of the regular season and below is a concise breakdown of who's playing for what--
Ohio State--as mentioned in the post immediately below, the Buckeyes are in absolute command of this race. Wednesday night they visit Northwestern. If they come out with a win, Sunday's home finale against Purdue will be a day-long coronation party for Thad Matta's team.
Illinois/Iowa/Wisconsin--all three of these teams are comfortably in the NCAA and at one game back, are hoping for an Ohio State slip. Iowa's schedule is the most favorable, with home games against Penn State & Wisconsin. The Illini go on the road against Minnesota and again this weekend at Michigan State. Wisconsin has a Thursday night visit to East Lansing, along with the aforementioned game at Iowa City. Given that any of these three teams need to win out to have a shot at even a piece of the title--and given the difficulty everyone's had on the road--it looks like Iowa's the one with a realistic shot.
Michigan/Michigan State--both are probably in the NCAA no matter what, but one more win would help their fans breathe a bit easier on Selection Sunday. The Wolverines (18-8, 8-7) host Indiana on Saturday. The Spartans (19-9, 7-7) host Wisconsin and Illinois.
Indiana--This is the team all eyes are on, the one school whose NCAA possibilites are genuinely on the bubble. The Hoosiers are 15-10, and a non-conference schedule that included Duke and UConn will help. This past weekend, they kept themselves alive with an emotional win over Michigan State in Mike Davis' last game at Assembly Hall. This week they play at Purdue on Wednesday, before the weekend date in Ann Arbor. Including the conference tournament, this team probably needs to win two more games.
Penn State/Minnesota/Northwestern--barring winning the Big Ten tournament, this trio is out of the NCAA, but in command for an NIT bid. The Gophers are 14-11, and need only avoid a three-game sweep of this week, plus the first round of the conference tourney. Their game against Illinois is the ESPN telecast this Tuesday (6 CST), and they go to Northwestern on Saturday.
Penn State is 14-12 and needs one more win. They only play once this week, at Iowa. So the conference tournament is probably going to be big for this program. Northwestern is at 13-13 and needs two more wins, including the tourney. They host Ohio State and Minnesota, so getting a split to stay alive is possible.
Purdue--ironic that the one school with nothing left to play for is positioned to be the league's spoiler. Nothing could sweeten Matt Painter's first season more then to wreck Indiana's dreams when the Hoosiers visit. And they will be the last team standing between Ohio State and a championship on Sunday.
If basketball were as popular as football in Columbus, Terrence Dials could give Ohio State quarterback Troy Smith a run for athlete least likely to need to pay for his own dinner in the Buckeye state. Dials registered his fifth straight double-double yesterday and led his team past Michigan 64-54. The win concluded OSU's sweep of Michigan--not only the two basketball games, put last fall's more storied football showdown as well. Domination of a rival can't get much sweeter then this.
Later in the evening, Ohio State got more good news. Iowa fell at Illinois, and the Buckeyes have sole possesion of first place. With just a road date at Northwestern and a home game against Purdue remaining, it would take a major collapse for the Bucks not to get at least a share of their first title since 1992, and even denying them an outright crown looks unlikely.
Iowa fell into a second-place tie with Illinois, and Wisconsin will have a chance to stay a game back today against Minnesota. The Hawkeyes hopes for a conference title in what may be Steve Alford's farewell campaign look dim, but don't blame Greg Brunner, writes Pat Harty at Hawk Central. The senior forward scored 27 points and got a good-natured "good riddance" from Illini coach Bruce Weber afterward.
When the season started they were the team that looked like they were still a year away. But as the season prepares to hit the final week, the Ohio State Buckeyes are the ones with all the pieces falling into place. Their win at East Lansing this past week was their second clutch win on the road this month (Michigan being the other), and they all but eliminated the Spartans from title consideration. Heading into the weekend the contenders stack up thusly--
Iowa 9-4
Ohio State 9-4
Wisconsin 8-5
Illinois 8-5
Ohio State and Iowa will not play each other. The Buckeyes only road game the rest of the way is at Northwestern. While the 'Cats have dumped Iowa and Wisconsin and this isn't a gimme, you certainly can't complain when Evanston is your toughest trip left. Ohio State's two home games are against Michigan and Purdue.
Consider that schedule against what the other contenders face. Iowa travels to Illinois tomorrow night. Illinois also has a home date with Michigan State, and a road trip to Minnesota that is at least as tough as Ohio State's date with Northwestern. Wisconsin has the hardest slate--road trips to Michigan State and Iowa next week, on top of already being a game back seem to all but eliminate the Badgers.
The weekend's lineup is as follows
Michigan @ Ohio State (Sat, 1:30)
Minnesota @ Wisconsin (Sun, 2:00)
Iowa @ Illinois (Sat, 6 PM)
The Iowa-Illinois game will be telecast by ESPN. If the Illini win, it puts Ohio State in control of their own destiny next week, with only Northwestern and Purdue to stop them from an outright crown.
Penn State's star linebacker and Butkus Award winner Paul Poluszny was carted off the field in the Orange Bowl last January 3. ESPN's Ivan Maisel caught up with him and reported that the road back has been a hard one for the player, both mentally and physically.
But Poluszny looks like he will ultimately make it back--sustained by a strong faith, a demanding workout program and a Lion-sized heart.
Michigan opened the door to the NCAA Tournament last night in Ann Arbor, writes Mark Snyder of The Detroit Free Press. The Wolverines got a career-high 39 points from Daniel Horton and knocked off Illinois to get their 18th win of the season. It was also Tommy Amaker's first win over Illinois in eleven tries since arriving in the land of maize-and-blue.
The loss dropped Illinois one game back of Iowa in the loss column, and the Illini must still go to Michigan State. The defending conference champs look to have a tough row to hoe, if they are to continue Bruce Weber's string of winning a title each year he has been in Champaign.
One of the subplots of last night's game was the suspension of Michigan's backup center Amadou Ba. He was suspended for an incident in East Lansing this weekend. During warmups, a drunken fan began harassing him on the sidelines. Ba pushed the fan, who fell straight back and bounced his head on the hardwood floor. The fan is okay, but was banned by MSU from attending any more games. Ba was suspended for a game and a half (50 percent of the remaining games, per league rules).
I believe Ba was treated too harshly. The fan was clearly looking for a fight, and the player did not go out of his way to beat him up. He simply pushed him, and had the fan not been plastered, would not have hurt himself. It is often argued that athletes should not get special treatment--and because I agree with this, I don't believe being an athlete means having to put up with an insufferable jackass when you're trying to get ready to play a big game.
If Tommy Amaker and the school want to suspend the player to make a teaching point about the need to rise above idiots sometimes, I can understand that. It's an important life skill. But in doing so, there should be no moral equivalence granted between fan and player. The fan was at fault. The player was "guilty" of nothing more then getting irritated. Any fan who's ever been irked by the presence of obnoxious jerks surrounding them at a game ought to send Ba a thank-you note.
Illinois was concerned that an embattled Indiana team would come out fighting, in an effort to win one for their coach. But one of the Illini's best all-around performances of the season put a stop to such thoughts quickly yesterday, writes Herb Gould of The Chicago Sun Times. The Illini won 70-58 and at 8-4 are tied in the loss column with Iowa.
Bruce Weber's team plays at Michigan in the weekly ESPN game at 6CST Tuesday. If they win there, it sets up a mammoth showdown with the Hawkeyes on Saturday.
The Red Raiders' NCAA hopes slipped away in December when they lost four winnable non-conference games, to San Francisco, Louisiana Tech, UNLV & Arkansas. Since conference play started, the team has stablized and after this weekend's win over Nebraska now show a respectable 6-6 record in the Big 12. While it is a different league, it's hard not to contrast a youthful Red Raider team breaking even in a power conference, while the more prestigious Indiana program--with a veteran roster--has lost more Big Ten games then it has won.
An NIT bid is still not guaranteed for this team. They must finish over .500, and have four games remaining in the regular season, plus at least one in the conference tournament. The next two will be very difficult. A home date with Oklahoma is tonight, followed by a road trip to face an Oklahoma State team that just finished dismantling Texas this weekend. The last two games are winnable--at Baylor, and home to play Texas A&M. If Tech wins these two, they would ensure a winning season, and Knight's stature should be enough to get them in the NIT.
My colleague Steve Rhoads, and no doubt a few hard-core fans in Indiana, think Knight may return to Indiana. But Tech has secured a contract that ensures Knight's son Patrick (currently the top assistant) will succeed his father as head coach. Which makes it all the more likely that the father will end his career in Lubbock. Coach Knight rebuilt the program quickly with an infusion of JUCO talent. The incoming class of seven freshmen and willingness to bite the bullet on a rough year in '06 may reflect the desire of the father to put the program on sound footing for the long term when the time comes to pass the torch. In either case, this writer assesses the prospect of Knight returning to IU the same way I assessed the prospect of Assembly Hall being named after him one day--there's a better chance of seeing Karl Rove keynote the next Democratic Convention then there is of Knight and IU getting back together.
Iowa's big men helped key their rise to the top of the Big Ten standings. But on Saturday, it was archrival Minnesota who rose to the occassion and controlled the glass. The Gopher big men were badly outplayed by the Hawks in a triple overtime loss a month ago. But, writes Marcus Fuller of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, Spencer Tollackson responded to his coaches' challenge to play better. And by day's end the sophomore big man pointed the way to another home upset for his team. Iowa slipped back into a four-way tie in the loss column for the conference lead.
