Big Ten Country

Florida On Top Again

Congratulations to the Florida Gators, who captured their second national champion in the last three years. And if we throw their basketball success into the mix, that's four national crowns in the last six tries. Not much doubt who the most dominant program in the country is.

I was pulling for Oklahoma last night, mainly because Bob Stoops is a good friend of Barry Alvarez's, so my Badger roots came out in a roundabout way. Stoops has also become the kind of coach who deserves more support--a consistent winner, who's been on a rough stretch in the biggest games. He made some decisions last night that will be talk-show fodder, mainly going for it on 4th-and-goal from the 1 in the fourth quarter, and aggressively throwing into the end zone at the end of the first half and the resultant interception. But in both cases, he did the right thing. The biggest problem with the goal line stand was the play on third down. Sam Bradford came to the line, and the Sooners were obviously confused or audibiling, because Bradford seemed to stop and chat with about every offensive player before returning to take the snap. That the play would blow up was predictable by that point. And the subsequent interception was just a bad break where the ball was batted around a few times. In the end, it just wasn't Oklahoma's night.

The BCS is again under fire, because Utah is frozen out at 12-0. And with OU's loss, combined with Texas' narrow escape, and bad losses by Texas Tech and Oklahoma State, everyone now has to wonder if the Big 12 was really "all that" to begin with. The only non-conference wins the league had were Oklahoma's wins over Cincinnati and TCU. The only argument for a one-loss team entering a title game over an undefeated one is if their league is vastly superior--not just a little bit, but vastly. The results of the bowls suggest we cannot say that of the Big 12.

But that is no reason to upset the applecart in college football. We just need to wait until after the bowls are over to pick the title-game participants. By then, we'll have a truly good read on which leagues can play, and there will be one more filter to narrow down the choices. And face it, that off-week before the Super Bowl is just begging to have a football game slotted there.

Congrats again to Florida. I'll be back later tonight with the recaps of this week's Big Ten basketball action.

Near Miss In The Desert

The Big Ten football season came to a close last night in the Fiesta Bowl. And while Ohio State gave Texas a better run than anyone in the country was expecting in a 24-21 battle, it was another loss for the conference in a miserable bowl season.

A contrast of styles was the story of the game, with the Buckeyes doing the damage on the ground. Chris Wells rushed for 106 yards before having to leave the game in the second half due to a concussion. Meanwhile, Colt McCoy lit it up for the Longhorns. He threw for 414 yards on 41/59 passing, and directed the final game-winning drive when he hit Quan Cosby for the winning score in the final thirty seconds. Cosby was all over the place, with 14 catches and two scores. On the Buckeye side, Brian Robiskie was clutch, with 116 yards and an outstanding running catch down the sideline on third down that started the OSU rally from a 17-6 deficit.

No one can hold Jim Tressel's team responsible for the Big Ten's poor bowl showing, but that context cast the game in a different light. Had Michigan State and Penn State won, this near-miss might have been seen as a sign of the conference's true strength. But with a wipeout already well under way, it was just one noble effort in an otherwise forgettable December/January.

Over the past couple seasons, the lack of respect for both the Big Ten and Ohio State have been inextricably linked. I suspect they may have been de-linked last night. While the conference's bowl record is a matter of...well, record, I think (and would hope) that national observers took note of how well the Buckeyes played against a team many consider the best in the country. While the loss was a bitter pill for the state of Ohio, the competitive nature of the game may mark this as the first step to OSU's revival outside the confines of the Midwest.

Weekend Hoops Recap

As we recap weekend basketball, I'm going to introduce a new wrinkle into Big Ten Country's basketball coverage. A "Player of the Sequence" will be honored, going to the top individual performance of either the weekend or the midweek game sequence. Since it won't cover the entire week, Player of the Week doesn't work, but the admittedly awkward title of "Player of the Sequence" does. Here we go with the recaps:

Michigan 74 Illinois 64
A key game between two teams who've shown signs of making real noise in the conference race. It was much bigger for the Wolverines, who were at home, having already dropped a home game to Wisconsin. Meanwhile, Illinois already had a key road scalp in Purdue. But home cooking mattered on Sunday. In a balanced game that had nine players overall hit double figures, Michigan was able to win it at the free throw line, getting 14 attempts to Illinois' three.

Minnesota 68 Ohio State 59
The Gophers were another team who couldn't afford to put themselves in an 0-2 hole with both losses on their home floor. They played like it on Saturday, with a 35-27 rebounding advantage, with most of the edge accrued on the offensive glass. It was enough to overcome 21 points and 8 rebounds by Evan Turner.

Wisconsin 65 Penn State 61
The Nittany Lions gave the Badgers everything they could handle on their home floor. But the efforts to cheer Happy Valley up after the Rose Bowl came up a bit short. It was no fault of Jamelle Cornley and Stanley Pringle who combined for 46 points. But UW got an outstanding effort by Marcus Landry, who got 23 of his own. And Landry got the help the PSU duo didn't. Wisconsin got double-digit outings from Trevon Hughes and Jason Bohannon and Joe Krabbenhoft  put up a double-double.

Michigan State 77 Northwestern 66
The Wildcats hung tough on their home floor, but the Spartans broke it open in the second half. Raymar Morgan put up 22 points and 13 rebounds. Chris Allen kicked in 17 off the bench, a shot in the arm for a team that had three starters do next to nothing.

Iowa 65 Indiana 60
Cyrus Tate scored 22 points and grabbed 11 rebounds, and Jeff Peterson added 16 to lead the Hawkeyes in a tougher-then-expected battle on their home floor.

Player of the Sequence: Raymar Morgan. His outing helped the Spartans avoid a road upset and on a night when most of the starting lineup was unproductive.

Rose Bowl Wipeout

USC continued its dominance of the Big Ten in Pasadena with a 38-24 win over Penn State that was nowhere near as close as the score makes it sound. Early on, there was hope in Happy Valley. When Darryl Clark took a quarterback draw up the middle at the close of the first quarter, it was 7-7. Then the roof fell in during the second quarter, as SC quarterback Matt Sanchez exploded in the Lions' face. Sanchez would end up 28/35 for 413 yards and four touchdowns. Two of the the TDs would be in the second quarter, as USC rolled out to a 31-7 lead. No one scored in the third quarter, and then the points started rolling in the fourth quarter when everyone relaxed.

Kudos to Clark for a gutty performance as he was under constant pressure the entire game and hung in there, throwing for 273 yards. Pressure was the one thing the Lions never got on Matt Sanchez, and while I respect PSU defensive coordinator Tom Bradley enormously, I don't understand why he stayed with a four-man rush even when it was apparent that Sanchez could have eaten lunch before finding a receiver. Would bringing pressure have worked? To be frank, I doubt it. The Trojan offense seemed locked into one of those zones that you can't stop, but by the time it was 21-7, some sort of adjustment was worth trying.

One point made by Brent Musbegrer during the game has to be addressed. The ABC play-by-play man noted how the Pac-10 was undefeated in bowl play, and used it as a rebuke to "all you voters out there who didn't think the Pac-10 was strong enough and didn't let USC back into the national championship picture." Well, Musberger needs to look more closely at the bowl records. We can throw out this game, since we're judging the conference beyond USC, not the Trojans themselves.

Four other Pac-10 teams went to bowl games, and all four have won. But only one of those games came against a team from either the Big 12 or SEC (Oregon over Oklahoma State). The other wins came against the Mountain West (Arizona over BYU), the ACC (Cal over Miami) and the Big East (Oregon State over Pitt). By contrast, four of the Big Ten's five losses have come to Big 12 or SEC teams. And the Big Ten has not played a single game against the Big East, Mountain West or lower.

It reminds me of a line used by Lloyd Bentsen in the 1988 vice-presidential debate, on the budget deficit, when he said "let me write $200 billion of hot checks and I'll show you an illusion of prosperity too." Well, give me a bowl schedule mostly against the weakest conferences in the country, and I'll show you an illusion of dominance.

USC remains a team capable of playing extraordinary football, but their league is such that is entirely reasonable to demand they go undefeated if they are going to play for the top prize (as was the case with the Big Ten this year as well).

A Split With The SEC

In the one positive development for the Big Ten's bowl season, the conference earned a split with the SEC in the annual Outback-Capital One wars. Iowa hammered South Carolina 31-10 to kick off the New Year's proceedings, while Michigan State dropped a tough 24-12 decision to Georgia.

Iowa rolled out to a 31-0 lead after three quarters before the Gamecocks scored ten points at garbage time. Shonn Greene capped off an extraordinary year by rushing for 121 yards and then declaring for the NFL draft right after the game. The Hawks won the turnover battle 5-3 and South Carolina shot themselves in the foot with ten penalties.

I thought Javon Ringer would be able to have a big day against a Georgia defense that was often a sieve during the season, but I was wrong. Ringer was held to 47 yards on 20 carries. Meanwhile Matthew Stafford led a Bulldog passing attack with 250 yards through the air, and the Dawgs used two third quarter touchdowns to get control of a tight game.

While there's no whitewashing the Big Ten's bowl performance this season, it's worth noting that in this traditional New Year's showcase versus the SEC, it's 4-2 for the Big Ten over the last three years. The SEC's two national championship victories over Ohio State in that same timeframe only pull them even. Things aren't always as bad as they seem.

Insight: Kansas 42 Minnesota 21

The disaster that's been the Big Ten bowl showing continued last night in Tempe, when Kansas routed Minnesota 42-21. The Gophers were with the Jayhawks at the start, taking a 14-7 lead, and being tied 14-14 at the end of the first quarter. And Eric Decker turned in another sterling performance, catching 8 passes for 149 yards. But the Gophers had no running game and no defense. Todd Reesing lit up the desert sky with 313 yards passing and four touchdowns. And KU receiver Dezmon Briscoe netted 201 yards in receptions.

The loss drops the Big Ten to 0-3. The plus side is that plenty of opportunity is ahead today. In a few hours, Iowa kicks off against South Carolina, followed by Michigan State-Georgia. Winning these two games would be sweet revenge against the SEC. And from the standpoint of repairing the league's PR image, all that really matters is Penn State-USC at 5 EST today, and then Ohio State-Texas on Monday night. The media never cared about the Big Ten's strong performance in the bowl undercard games when the Buckeyes lost the national championship, so there's no reason to think they'll care about a weak undercard if the Lions & Bucks can win.

Happy New Year from Big Ten Country!

Upstarts Miss Early Chance

Michigan and Minnesota each registered impressive non-conference victories and were opening Big Ten play at home this past week. But in each case, the potential upstarts missed a chance to do some early damage to the league's perennial favorites...

Michigan State 70 Minnesota 58
Kalin Lucas led the Spartans with 24 points, and MSU enjoyed a big rebounding edge at 41-22. Goran Suton and Raymar Morgan each had a double-double and Chris Allen chipped in 13 off the bench. It seems safe to write off Michigan State's two rough December outings. The loss to Maryland was the consequence of playing without Suton. And the loss to North Carolina was...well, the consequence of playing North Carolina this year. But in beating a well-coached Gopher team that was fresh off a big win over Louisville clearly shows Tom Izzo still has the program to beat in this conference.

Wisconsin 73 Michigan 61
Badger fans might put up a little bit of a ruckus over who the program to beat is. Bo Ryan's team bounced back from a loss to Texas in their last game on the 23rd by going into Ann Arbor and taking out Michigan. UW got its inside-outside tandem of Trevon Hughes and Marcus Landry working, with each scoring 16. Jon Leurer came off the bench for 12 more. The Badgers shot 58 percent from the floor on two-point FGs, and shut down Michigan's Manny Harris. Zack Novak scored 20 to lead the Wolverines.

And in other action...

Illinois 71 Purdue 67 (OT)
The Boilermakers have lost their status as top contender for the conference championship. They did not play particularly well in December, and now fail to defend their home floor against the Illini, who were the third team to win on the road this week. Robbie Hummel rebounded well, getting 11 boards, but only scored 7 points, JaJuan Johnson's 16/15 line was the bright spot for the Boilers, Meanwhile, Illinois kept it rolling after an easy rout of Missouri capped non-conference play. The Illini had a balanced attack with five players in double figures and took good care of the basketball, sporting a spiffy 21-6 assist-to-turnover ratio that spelled the difference in the game.

Penn State 61 Northwestern 57
Talor Battle was the star of the entire conference this week. The Lion guard scored 26 points and grabbed 12 rebounds. PSU also got ten boards from Andrew Jones, keying a 40-23 rebounding advantage that led them to the win. Four NU players were in double figures, including the triumvirate of Kevin Coble, Craig Moore and Michael Thompson. But there was no help from the bench, as was the case last season.

Ohio State 68 Iowa 65
Jon Diebler was the top scorer in conference play, getting 27 points while playing all forty minutes for Thad Matta. Matt Gatens added 22 for the Hawks.