With the usual polarities afoot as to the dire health of the conference it is incumbent upon those observing from less distant vistas to provide either more nuanced concurrence or as is more often necessary, measured rebuttal. While spirited differences in opinion are part of the appeal of the sports journalism fray, the year-to-year consistency by which Big Ten basketball is pronounced down, out, weak, top-heavy, fly-over, anachronistic, or simply boring is as tiresome as it is often poorly reasoned.
Who Needs Enemies
Whether the slurs and arrows come from the bird-bath depth of USA Today-style media, the ADHD realm of ESPN, or putative Big Ten experts such as the one quoted below, the conference receives the same dismissals about both its slow-ball aesthetic and its lack of competitiveness with the other power conferences, especially the ACC.
On low-possession per game Big Ten basketball:
“It’s just that, Hoya exceptions notwithstanding, this particular symptom more often than not coincides with the disease: really boring basketball. Indeed, unnecessarily boring basketball. The Big Ten has to divest itself of a mistaken belief in its cognitive DNA: that going faster means you’re not playing defense. It’s not true, it never has been true, and until a new coach or two comes into the league and proves it’s not true (by playing a Roy Williams style and reaping the rewards in recruiting), we may be doomed to more 60-possession games.” – Big Ten Wonk, March 2007
While Hoopraker isn’t one to begrudge another’s basketball preferences (we prefer to privately ridicule them), it does seem tragic (wink) that someone self-anointed as a Big Ten Wonk would’ve chosen allegiance and thereby be doomed to suffer a conference whose slow-ball identity has prevailed for decades.
And with the additions of Lickliter and Beilein this aesthetic does not appear to be undergoing any kind of swift reformation. Perhaps this explains why the Wonk left the Big Ten beat. We at Hoopraker, firmly against doom and suffering, wish him quick recovery from the post-trauma of his years blogging the conference.
Fighting Through Boredom
Embedded in the erstwhile Wonk’s critique, however, is a possible explanation for the conference’s lack of favor from the national media. With the sports event cycle and its media coverage being pushed into a Ritalin-driven pace where style trumps substance, top ten lists, sound bytes and the highlight reel stand-in for the full story, where the games of December and January, indeed the whole conference season’s significance is defined as little more than a barely sufferable warm-up for the NCAA tournament, perhaps in such a hyper climate of low attention span and rushing to the endgame, the Big Ten’s relatively glacial mode of play has become even more incongruous.
In other words, who wants to suffer the sight of Wisconsin and Purdue scoring 116 points between them on January 26 with great defense and patient, high percentage offense when you can watch Duke and Maryland sprint up and down the floor the next night and put up 177? What’s more, the Duke game has the added bonus of featuring a half-dozen or more McDonald’s All-Americans while the fans at Mackey must somehow maintain interest in a contest that includes only one who goes by the less than hype-inspiring sobriquet The Polar Bear.
The Wonk Prescriptive
To correct the conference’s perception problem and taking the lead from the Wonk, the solution is clear. Bo Ryan, Matt Painter, John Beilein, and last year’s National Coach of the Year Todd Lickliter, among others, need to deprogram their decades of basketball study and gain some much needed clarity about how to coach a faster, more entertaining brand of basketball.
If they would just surrender their delusions about good defense requiring slow offense, they could speed things up, increase the conference’s entertainment value, and be able to attract McDonald’s All-Americans and one-and-doners by the bushel-load. Then, at last, the Big Ten would emerge from its cobwebs and arthritic, foolhardy notions about the game, see the light of high possession basketball, and begin to enjoy the juicy apples of the modern age. Finally, then, the conference would be relevant again.
Indeed, the Big Ten would be less unsightly if the conference’s coaches wised up and began to emulate the approach of their colleague Thad Matta. Matta’s basketball product hues closest to the ACC/Wonk’s preference for faster offense coupled with good defense. And Matta’s much lauded recruiting classes provide clear proof that this is the kind of basketball favored by the preponderance of blue-chip athletes. Speed up the offense, recruit and prosper!
Purdue For Beginners
With the USA Today article as representative, the journalists assigned to the national college basketball beat are often handicapped by a distant relationship to the teams and conferences they are evaluating. To wit, Mr. Garcia mounts his argument around the premise that because a relatively young Purdue team is at the top of the conference standings, the Big Ten is down. Overlooking signs to the contrary, he also suggests that the lower half of the conference is no more than an impotent mash of patsies.
Obvious to those close to the conference, the Purdue that lost to Wofford on December 19 is a cheap replica of today’s league-leading Boilermakers. Anyone who has watched the team’s evolution under Painter the last three years realizes this team is no mere fluke. And though Painter’s frosh are still fighting for recognition amidst the Gordon, Beasley, Kevin Love, OJ Mayo frenzy, taken as a whole they are arguably the best recruiting class in the country.
It’s unfortunate it hasn’t dawned on Mr. Garcia, but Purdue is a very good basketball team. Fortunately, there will be several years ahead for him to catch up to the truth of this program.
More Than The Frontrunner
Joining the Boilers at the upper ledger of the conference are three more ballclubs that can play with anyone in the country. This year’s Wisconsin club is not far from the standard of the nationally 4th-ranked Badger team of last season. And given the way Bo has brought his deep, balanced roster along, his team this year may be a more complete and dangerous team than last year’s where much of the offense ran through two players, Alando Tucker and Kammron Taylor.
Indiana, depending on its ability to rally around each other and interim Dan Dakich, has the talent to make the last weeks of the season special for the IU program that is in much need of basketball uplift.
And though many have prematurely relegated Izzo’s Spartans to discount status, they are a team that when playing at the peak of their powers has the highest upside in the league. Like last year’s Purdue team that finished fourth in the league at 9-7 but played the best March basketball of any conference team, one should not overlook Izzo’s touch for the stretch run.
The Usual Traps
Looking at RPIs, won-loss records, individual games, and the ACC-Big Ten challenge in isolation is a trap that fails to account for the season as a five-month growing medium. The best coaches, of which the Big Ten has a deep roster, can take roster shake-ups, Wofford losses, and 36-point offensive nights and turn them, via months of good teaching, into basketball gold. The Big Ten’s NCAA performances, placing nine teams in the Final Four the past nine seasons, are just one reminder of this fact.
