Big Ten Wonk
Thursday, December 30, 2004
 
BONUS final abnormal edition
Wonk is climbing in the car tomorrow with the Wonk Family and returning home. There will be no post tomorrow.

COMING Monday....
Special return-of-full-strength-Wonk edition, featuring:

A chat with Jeff Shelman. The indefatigable Shelman not only posts frequently and insightfully on college hoops for espn.com, he also covers the Minnesota Golden Gophers for the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Updated PPWS numbers for the best and worst of 60-odd Big Ten starters and key reserves. Will Dee Brown still be number 1? Will David Teague still be anchor man? Tune in Monday!

The season's last match up of undefeateds?
Wonk has long admired indefatigable Illini beat writer Mark Tupper of the Decatur Herald & Review. In April 2003, for example, I learned 48 hours in advance of the fact that Bill Self would be leaving Illinois from the inferences and ellipses imparted deftly yet unmistakably by a classic Tupper column.

So it's good news to find that Tupper has a blog (more precisely, a blog-themed running post hosted within the Herald & Review site). Regarding tomorrow's clash in Vegas between Illinois and Cincinnati, Tupper says the backstory for the game goes beyond the fact that the Illini bounced the Bearcats out of the NCAA's last year:

I think Bob Huggins was embarrassed--and ticked off--after last season’s NCAA Tournament rout. He didn’t like the way his team played and he hated it that Illinois said trash talking prior to the game got them riled up. You can bet Huggins will create some kind of motivation beyond mere revenge.

Should be a good game.

In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
Wisconsin beat Alabama 76-62 in Madison last night. (Links here and here.) Tom Oates of the Wisconsin State Journal says last night's victory suggests the Badgers' bigs are ready for Big Ten play. Wonk says the Bo Ryan template may at last be returning, even in the absence of Devin Harris. The Crimson Tide shot .444 on the road and outrebounded the Badgers--and lost by 14. Wisconsin turned the ball over just five times.

Michigan State beat North Carolina-Asheville 92-63 in East Lansing last night. (Links here, here, and here.)

Michigan beat Delaware State 66-48 in Ann Arbor last night. (Links here and here.)

Minnesota beat North Carolina-Greensboro 94-59 in Minneapolis last night. (Link here.)

Penn State beat Long Island 80-56 last night in the consolation game of the ASU/azcentral.com Hoops Classic in Tempe, Arizona. (Link here.)

Illinois plays Northwestern State at Valley High School in Las Vegas tonight in the Vegas Holiday Classic. (Links here, here, and here.)

Purdue hosts Baylor tonight. (Links here and here.)

Wonk back!
Don't just mutter ineffectually; email me!
  3:23 PM
Wednesday, December 29, 2004
 
Still more proof of the Wonk dictum: whining works
For weeks your intrepid blogger has been bemoaning the curious lack of blogs devoted to individual conference teams. Aside from the excellent Hawkeye Hoops site, Wonk has searched in vain for a blog that covers a Big Ten team, any team....

Until now! Wonk is delighted to herald the arrival of the tastefully named Illini Wonk blog, devoted exclusively to a certain #1 team that's been playing like a #19 the last couple games. Illini Wonk, Wonk salutes you!

That now brings the total number of Big Ten team-dedicated blogs up to two--and Wonk defines a blog as something in the first-person that's regularly updated. There is, granted, a handy Penn State blog that Wonk uses to find good stuff but it chooses to restrict itself to links only. And there is a Michigan blog that may yet achieve regularly-scheduled posting. (BONUS pre-emptive strike: Wonk is aware of the irony of mentioning "regularly-scheduled posting" when he himself has been posting sporadically of late. Hey, it's the holidays.)

But by and large the field is clear. Readers to your keyboards! Close thy Wonk and open thy Emerson: start blogging!

Gonzaga Bulldogs, Wonk salutes you!
Your intrepid blogger is late to this particular bandwagon, granted, but last night furnished the latest piece of proof that something extraordinary has taken place in the space of six seasons in Spokane, Washington. Gonzaga beat #3 Oklahoma State 78-75 in Oklahoma City. (Link here.) If this doesn't put the Zags in the top five (which of course it won't) then all polls are useless: Gonzaga's defeated Washington, Georgia Tech and now the Cowboys, losing only to Illinois. For a WCC team located on the border between Idaho and Washington to have this kind of resume--not to mention their record of success in March--is nothing less than a (beautiful) refutation of the college hoops givens that are supposed to hold sway everywhere and at all times. The Zags have somehow achieved escape velocity and put themselves into a one-team category of their own invention. Wonk salutes not only the players and coach Mark Few but also the until recently beleaguered Minnesota coach Dan Monson, who started this ball in motion. Well done, gentlemen.

In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
Indiana beat Ball State 71-59 at Conseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis last night. (Link here.) The win snapped a six-game losing streak for the Hoosiers but was overshadowed by rumors of an alleged impending demise for coach Mike Davis. The perhaps aptly named Indianapolis TV station WISH reported before last night's game that Davis may be fired in the event of a loss. IU Athletic Director Rick Greenspan termed the report groundless.

Iowa beat Air Force 73-63 in Iowa City last night. (Links here, here, and here.) The Hawkeyes shot an I-guess-that's-acceptable .675 from the field.

Penn State continued its dogged one-team effort to bring down an entire conference's RPI, losing to previously 2-6 Valparaiso 69-56 last night at the ASU/azcentral.com Hoops Classic in Tempe, Arizona. (Link here.) The Hoops Classic continues tonight with the Nittany Lions facing Long Island University.

Ohio State beat New Hampshire 77-59 in Columbus last night. (Link here.) Terence Dials posted 24 points and 14 boards.

Wisconsin hosts Alabama in Madison tonight. (Links here and here.)

Michigan State hosts North Carolina-Asheville tonight. (Link here.)

Minnesota hosts North Carolina-Greensboro tonight. (Link here.)

Trust Wonk: Michigan hosts Delaware State tonight but links are hard to come by with the Rose Bowl fast approaching. BONUS Wonk analysis: this is when you know you have a true football school on your hands.

Wonk back!
Don't just mutter ineffectually; email me!
  1:15 PM
Tuesday, December 28, 2004
 
BONUS borrowed-computer edition!
Wonk interrupts his holiday leisure to come to you LIVE from the in-laws! Um, so we'll keep this short and sweet....

COMING January 3
Special return-of-full-strength-Wonk edition, featuring a chat with Jeff Shelman. The indefatigable Shelman not only posts frequently and insightfully on college hoops for espn.com, he also covers the Minnesota Golden Gophers for the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
Carrying over the lackluster play they displayed against Missouri, Illinois allowed Longwood (yes, Longwood) to hang around within single digits as late as ten minutes into the second half before finally putting away the Lancers 105-79 in Champaign last night. (Links here, here, and here.) When is breaking 100 and winning by 26 a bad thing? When your opponent calls a timeout 28 seconds into the game (Wonk is not making this up) specifically so they can take a picture of the scoreboard which at the time displayed a 2-2 game. The Lancers shot .533 from the field, including 8-of-19 on their three's.

Wisconsin beat Western Carolina 89-49 in Madison last night. (Links here and here.) EXCLUSIVE Wonk analysis of why the Badgers won: they put up (not a typo) 76 field goal attempts. EXCLUSIVE Wonk analysis of how the Badgers got off 76 FGA's: they beat the Catamounts senseless on the boards, 53-33.

Northwestern beat Delaware State in Evanston last night, 50-43. (Latest in a series of archetypal Welsh-Ryan Arena scores; links here and here.) The unexpectedly close score left NU coach Bill Carmody grumbling of possible lineup shuffles.

Indiana hosts Ball State tonight. (Link here.)

Iowa hosts Air Force tonight, a game coach Steve Alford is calling "scary" because of the notably deliberate style employed by the Falcons. (Links here and here.)

Penn State faces Valparaiso tonight in the first round of the ASU/azcentral.com Hoops Classic at Wells Fargo Arena in Tempe, Arizona. (Link here.)

Ohio State hosts New Hampshire tonight. (Link here.)

Wonk back!
Don't just mutter ineffectually; email me!
  2:25 PM
Thursday, December 23, 2004
 
BONUS out-the-door edition!
Your intrepid blogger's getting in the car this morning with the Wonk Family and heading to the Wonk Boyhood Home for the holidays. Posting will be non-existent the rest of this week and intermittent next week.

COMING January 3
Special return-of-full-strength-Wonk edition, featuring an interview with Jeff Shelman. The indefatigable Shelman not only covers college hoops for espn.com, he also covers the Minnesota Golden Gophers for the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
Missouri played by far its best game of the year and Illinois played by far its worst game of the year and the result was a 70-64 Illinois victory in the annual Braggin' Rights game at the Savvis Center in St. Louis last night. (Links here, here, here, and here. Meanwhile there's wall-to-wall Braggin' Rights coverage this morning from the columnists of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Jeff Gordon, Bryan Burwell, and Bernie Miklasz chip in their thoughts here, here, and here.) James Augustine was nonexistent (two points, four boards, fouled out), the Illini shooting was cold (.423), and the vaunted assist makers mostly took the night off (just 13 for the game). Ken Pomeroy got his wish: they're human!

Charlotte beat Indiana 74-73 in Bloomington last night on a last-second half-court shot by Brendan Plavich. (Link here.) The refs on the court initially ruled the shot had come after the buzzer but reversed their call after reviewing the tape, giving Charlotte the win. The Hoosiers were left muttering angrily about their home-court clock, which gave an opponent time to catch, dribble, and shoot all in just seven-tenths of a second. Indiana's lost six in a row.

Northwestern beat Robert Morris 72-58 in Evanston last night. (Link here.)

Minnesota beat St. Francis (PA) 85-67 in Minneapolis last night. (Link here.)

Ohio State beat Mercer 102-77 in Columbus last night. (Link here.) All-Wonk selection Terence Dials posted 29 points and 13 boards.

Wonk back!
Don't just mutter ineffectually; email me!

Guards: Illinois vs. Iowa
Yesterday Wonk discussed an article by Gregg Doyel of cbs.sportline that had asked whether or not Iowa's three guards were better than Illinois' more well-known trio. Wonk's readers respond!

Wonk,

I took part in that message board at cbs.sportsline yesterday, but I'm sure my posts were gone by mid-afternoon.

I'll summarize a few of my points from that discussion board:

Free throws - You were right about the Illini's passing taking away from their FTs. But also consider that teams tend to rack up FTs at the end of close games they are leading. The other team is willing to concede a pair of FTs in order to stop the clock. Illinois hasn't played a game yet where that's been a factor. Iowa, on the other hand, has played a few of those. It should be no surprise that Iowa's guards have more FTs.

Rebounds - Illinois and Iowa have roughly the same number of offensive rebounds (thru 10 games), but Illinois is shooting 5% better than Iowa. This means the Illini are more efficient on the offensive glass. The reason Iowa outrebounds Illinois overall is because their opponents take more shots. Both teams' opponents are shooting roughly the same (40% - IL, 42%- IA), but Iowa's opponents have put up an average of 3 more shots per game. When you look at defensive rebounding efficiency, Iowa is grabbing 75% of their opponents' missed shots, and Illinois is getting 73%.

If anything, I'd rather have the Illini's rebounding numbers because it means their opponents aren't putting up as many shots, which leads to fewer scoring opportunities. I see the rebounding differential between the teams as more of a testament to Illinois's defense than Iowa's superiority on the glass.

As far as the guards go, Illinois plays for the fast break. Their guards are looking to get the outlet pass, not give it. As you said, it's a matter of who plays which role.

Drew S.

Thanks, Drew!

Meanwhile, Ryan, who runs the excellent Hawkeye Hoops blog, has some thoughts on the same topic....

Wonk,

Excellent discussion of the Doyel column today. Your point about Deron Williams is a good one - if you add this year's Luther Head to the expected versions of Williams and Brown, I doubt this whole question is even posed.

The thoughts on the interaction of free throws and assists are interesting too. I'm not basing it on anything concrete, but I would expect teams that shoot a lot of free throws to have fewer assists simply because getting fouled takes away a shooter's field goal attempt, and thus the corresponding passer's chance at an assist (which I think is about the same as you said about the Kings).

Individual players shooting a lot of free throws have fewer assists...because...they're shooting more, and thus passing less? Sounds simple, but it makes sense to me at least.

Take it easy,
Ryan

Thanks, Ryan!

Can box scores be trusted?
Yesterday Wonk noted the euphoria that Drew Neitzel can seemingly trigger in the Michigan State press by merely scoring eight points and recording one assist. Wonk's readers respond!

Hey, Wonk,

I know I saw Neitzel get at least two assists last night, he hit brown (could have been Ager) on the fast break for an alley-oop lay-up, and then hit Ager in the left corner for a 3 on the fast break. Neither player dribbled or hesitated before shooting, gotta be assists right?

Marcus S.
MSU class of '99

Thanks for the keen eye, Marcus! Man, if Neitzel can't get credit for his assists at the Breslin Center, imagine what his numbers on the road will look like.

In defense of Paul Davis
Hi there, Wonk,

As a result of your recent discussions of the All-Head Case Team, and of Paul Davis in particular, I began to suspect something altogether terrifying: that perhaps everyone, including myself, is wrong about Paul Davis. That perhaps the all-encompassing meta-narrative that has crystallized around Paul, the one that leads to endless "Trying to Figure Out Paul Davis" stories in the media and perhaps even his inclusion on your own AHC team, is at its core misguided.

Taken aback, I ran for the stats. On the year, Davis is averaging 13 points a game. Not superb, but certainly a respectable number considering the amount of offensive weapons State currently has (Mo Ager, a member of the All-Wonk 2.0 team, leads the team with an average of 14.3). What's more, the 13 a game isn't a result of wild fluctuations in productivity: Davis has scored in single digits only twice this year (GW and Delaware State), the same as Ager and Alan Anderson.

Furthermore, while Davis is prone to taking a play off now an then, he certainly isn't known for acting in a particularly odd manner on the court, fouling out, or otherwise leaving his teammates in the lurch.

So if we're dealing with a player that scores well consistently, often has good games against good competition (see Duke), and acts in an extremely consistent and predictable manner, why is he on everyone's All Head Case Team? Some may say expectations, or perhaps his sleepy/gloomy on-court visage, but I believe the true answer lies in Paul's unrelenting willingness to eviscerate himself in the press on a weekly basis. In effect, Paul has allowed himself to be crowned King of the Head Cases (apologies to St. Crispin), and this has legitimized the living, breathing narrative that informs each Spartan fan's every waking hour during basketball season. Or at least mine.

Thoughts?

Regards,
Shawn M.

Good food for thought, Shawn! Class, read Shawn's email and be ready to discuss when we get back.

Happy Holidays, everyone!
  7:58 AM
Wednesday, December 22, 2004
 
The debate
Yesterday Gregg Doyel of cbs.sportsline posted what he said was "a question, not a declarative statement." Without going to the trouble of hacking into Doyel's Outlook, Wonk can guarantee that such minute distinctions were lost on the writers of the many irate emails that Doyel has no doubt received. (The mini "discussion board" at the bottom of cbs.sportsline articles tops out at 200 posts. As this is written there have been 200 posts just since 7pm last night. BONUS actual quote from the discussion board that Wonk swears he is not making up: "You guys are a bunch of retards." And your intrepid blogger doesn't even want to think of what Illiniboard must look like right now.)

But Doyel's right: his question merits discussion. His question is this: "Is Illinois' three-guard lineup of Dee Brown, Deron Williams and Luther Head clearly, unmistakably better than Iowa's trio of Jeff Horner, Pierre Pierce and Adam Haluska?" For his part, Doyel, an apparent Oasis fan, ends up with a "definitely maybe," after having made the following points:

Iowa's guards average more points (45.8), rebounds (14.6), and steals (5.7) than Illinois' guards (43.1, 9.9, and 3.7).

Illinois' guards average more assists (17.6) than Iowa's guards (12.6).

Iowa's guards are bigger: average 6'4", 197, vs. 6'2", 187 for Illinois.

Illinois' guards don't shoot as many free throws (55) as Iowa's (129).

So much for Doyel's post. What of his question? Who's better? Only you, the informed Big Ten fan, can settle this question! Doubtless you'll do so by meeting and deliberating in the public sphere like the good Habermas types you are and exercising your own civic hoops responsibility. To help you make this terribly weighty decision, Wonk offers the following walk-around of the matter. (BONUS full disclosure: your intrepid blogger is an Illinois fan.) Call it Wonk's voter information guide....

This entire discussion is brought to you by Deron Williams. Ironically, the preseason Big Ten Player of the Year is perhaps the least discussed player of the six so far this year. Simply put, if Williams had the kind of numbers thus far this year that he had last season in scoring efficiency, this question of whose guards are better would never have come up. If Williams were shooting .394 on his three's (last year's number) instead of .308 (this year's), Illinois would be beating opponents by an average of 23 points a game instead of by an average of 22--um, which itself is pretty good. Which is Wonk's way of saying: while it's true that Williams' shooting has dropped noticeably (and his turnovers have increased from 2.5 to 3.1), he is also, lest we forget, the leading assist man on the leading assist team in the nation.

Dee Brown and Jeff Horner are both having years rivaled only by Arizona State's (strangely under-hyped) Ike Diogu and very few others nationally. (Or they were until an impostor wearing Horner's jersey snuck onto the floor of the United Center last night and coughed up this line: 3-of-14 from the field, 1-of-6 on three's, seven points.) Wonk was impressed with Horner's year as early as November 26 and with Brown's by December 2. Brown reminds Wonk a little of Wayne Gretzky (albeit on a much smaller scale) in the sense that both guys comfortably excel in what are usually two mutually contradictory categories: value as a brand name and statistical excellence. The University of Illinois, the Big Ten, ESPN--they all love Brown, his jets, and his smile. Even to an Illinois fan it sometimes feels like you can't swing a cat without knocking down a poster or two of Brown. But so far this year Brown is walking the walk: first in the conference in points per weighted shot (PPWS), averaging 14 points and 5 assists a game, and shooting .520 on his three's. And as for Horner, again, his numbers speak for themselves: this side of Oscar Robertson, Wonk can't remember anyone putting up such stellar marks for scoring (16.5), assists (6.7), and rebounds (5.4).

Different teams, different roles. Iowa's guards score and rebound more, yes, but then again, Iowa's other two starters score and rebound less (22.4 points, 10.3 rebounds) than Illinois' other two (23.2, 12.2). (Strong rebounding by guards can make one say "Wow!" as indeed Wonk does above. It can also, however, make one say "Wow! How in the world can Erek Hansen only be getting three boards a game?")

Follow the ball. Illinois leads the nation in assists. The assists are coming from the three guards (Roger Powell has five all year). Assists are definitive of and dispositive for the 2004-05 Illini. If Illinois is going anywhere it's going to be with assists and defense, period. In both categories they're superior to Iowa's guards--Luther Head is a notch above any of the other five on D; Adam Haluska is, right now, a notch below the others.

Doyel has simply missed, badly, on Pierce. And how appropriate! For Pierce himself is a guy who misses badly and often. I don't know if Doyel's read is a simple case of seeing stats and not actual games or perhaps a result of seeing only the Texas game in Maui, capped off by Pierce's thrilling game-winning three. Certainly for Doyel, as for most of us, a guy who averages 16 points with almost six boards and four assists is, say no more, a stud. But the truth here is more interesting: Doyel's high opinion of Pierce is not widely shared even among Iowa fans, one of whom wrote in last week to commend Wonk on including Pierce on the All-Head-Case Team:

Pierce is also a great selection, for things that "don't show up on the scoreboard." For instance, his turnover margin doesn't reflect the 5 or 6 times per game when he flies out of control to the basket in front of 3-4 defenders and puts up a circus shot, or tries to take a 26 footer with 15 seconds left on the shot clock during a close game. The best examples of the former was against Iowa State with a couple minutes left in the game, and of the latter was against Texas (which he actually made). This also doesn't take into account the fact that in the last two games he has been involved in shoving matches with Northern Iowa's John Little (during the game) and Iowa State's Curtis Stinson (post-game). He's no Jacob Jaacks, but he's easily the Hawkeye's biggest head case since Luke Recker.

And then there's the consistently outstanding Ryan at the Hawkeye Hoops blog, who recently ranked players "who miss a lot of shots, stay in the lineup for one reason or another, and continue to miss a lot more shots." To evaluate these players Ryan came up with what he calls the Pierre Pierce Rating "in deference to his willingness to lead his team in shots while trailing at least five teammates in shooting effectiveness." And, as it happens, the "top" players according to the Pierre Pierce Ratings will be familiar to readers of this blog and fans of PPWS: David Teague, Dion Harris, Brandon McKnight, Pierce--the usual suspects, as it were.

Speaking of the latest PPWS numbers, let us not forget the following:

Give any player the same number of shots--FGA's and FTA's--that Pierce shoots and 54 Big Ten players would score more points.

That includes who-dat's like Marlon Smith, Warren Carter, and Rico Tucker. That includes offensively-challenged bigs like Matt Kiefer, Brent Petway, and Zach Morley. And that includes every player on the Iowa roster currently averaging more than 15 minutes a game: Mike Henderson, Doug Thomas...even Erek Hansen for goodness sake--all would score more points than Pierce with the same shots. (Pierce had a characteristically Piercian line last night: 15 points on 6-of-14 shooting from the field and 3-of-6 from the line.)

BONUS Wonk hunch. Doyel's point about the free throw attempts--or lack of them by Illinois--actually echoes some thoughts Wonk's been having for a while. My working assumption has been that FTA's are undervalued simply because, until the last minute, they're boring to watch. (Free throws are important the other 39 minutes, too. This is not unlike sabremetrician Bill James's point about "closers" in baseball: why in the world would you wait to bring in Mariano Rivera in the ninth inning if the game is about to be decided in the sixth?) Still, Bo Ryan has been doing weird and wonderful if little noticed things in Madison for a few years now by maximizing his own FTA's and minimizing those of his opponent. So Wonk is predisposed to look kindly on Doyel's FTA's = "aggressive" premise. And yet....

The 2004-05 Illini may give the lie to Wonk's cherished little theory. The question to Doyel would be this: why is it any more "aggressive" to drive to the basket than to execute a six-pass series where you get a back-door or open three? Wonk's hunch would be that assists may even be inversely correlated to FTA's. Teams with lots of assists (think 2002 Kings) don't go to the line very much because the primary mode of ball movement is the pass rather than the dribble.

BONUS Wonk note on steals. As a stat it needs to be taken out behind the shed and put out of its misery. Today if we can. It's almost as subjective as an error in baseball but much more numerous, meaning its squishyness is compounded. Plus, as Ken Pomeroy's pointed out, Connecticut won a national championship last year despite being the fifth worst team in the nation at forcing turnovers. Abolish this stat.

So much for Wonk's voter information guide. The decision is now in your hands! Whose guards are better? Send in those votes today!

The wonderful game with the annoying name
Illinois plays Missouri tonight at the Savvis Center in St. Louis in the annual Braggin' Rights game. (Links here, here, here, and here. Count the number of times "wary" appears in the headline on these links.) This will be the 24th game in the series (Illinois leads 15-8) and it's a great tradition: the Savvis Center (superb venue for a college game) is split 50-50, Santa hats are everywhere, two bands are competing, and there's a constant loud roar such as Wonk hears in no other game or arena. (Beer sales, rare at college games, may have something to do with this last item.)

True, Missouri is "down" this year--for anyone who's missed the last two years of soap opera in Columbia, Skip Myslenski of the Chicago Tribune connects the dots here. Missouri's average attendance is 8,710 in the new 15,061-seat Mizzou Arena. Meantime, Mizzou fans have been known to shop for a new coach in their chat rooms. For a while UAB's Mike Anderson was drawing particular interest from the Tiger faithful.

But Wonk still eagerly anticipates tonight's game. It says December and the holidays to many fans of the two schools, particularly in the St. Louis area.

In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
Erek Hansen blocked six shots as Iowa smoked Texas Tech 83-53 at the United Center in Chicago last night. (Links here, here, and here.) The "game flow" graphic on the espn.com write up illustrates how the Hawkeyes bolted out to a lead in the first half that was never seriously threatened for the remainder of the game. Bobby Knight, to-the-point as always, said simply, "We're just a team that isn't very good right now. Iowa had something to do with the way we played tonight, but I'm not sure anybody could be forced into playing as poorly as we did in the first half."

Michigan State beat UCLA 76-64 in East Lansing last night. (Links here, here, here, here, and here.) The palpable hunger for Drew Neitzel to do well can be gauged by the fact that eight points, one assist and no turnovers netted him this headline in the Detroit Free Press: "Reserves Trannon, Neitzel add extra energy." Todd Schulz of the Lansing State Journal echoes the "Trannon" part of the headline here.

All good news for the Big Ten, right? Back-to-back lopsided wins on ESPN2 over major-conference competition. What could possibly spoil the evening....

Buffalo beat Penn State 72-70 in State College last night. (Links here and here.) There was a mini Nittany-Lion-boomlet just waiting to boom in the wake of their surprisingly stout performance against Pittsburgh. Not after last night: 19 turnovers, 4-of-20 on their three's. Ye gods....

Indiana hosts Charlotte tonight (Link here.) Bracey Wright had his nose surgically repaired on Monday and will wear a Rip Hamilton-esque protective mask tonight. Wright's nose was broken in Sunday's game against Missouri when Spencer Laurie delivered an elbow to the Hoosier guard.

Minnesota hosts St. Francis (PA) tonight. (Links here and here.) St. Francis boasts both a gaudy no. 33 in the RPI and one of the five coolest nicknames in college sports: the Red Flash.

Ohio State hosts Mercer tonight. (Link here.)

Also tonight: Northwestern hosts Robert Morris.

Frank Burlison of the Sporting News offers up "five surprising Wooden Award candidates," including Luther Head of Illinois.

Wisconsin freshman Greg Steimsma has returned to practice after suffering an injured right foot five weeks ago but is not expected to see game action any time soon.

Jeff Washburn of the Lafayette Journal and Courier says Carl Landry has been a bright spot in an otherwise dark year for Purdue. What, no mention of Landry's inclusion on the All-Wonk team? That does it. Washburn doesn't get a Wonk Holiday Greetings card this year.

BONUS coverage of Michigan State transfers: in his first game since transferring to Detroit from Michigan State, Brandon Cotton scored 27 points to lead his team over Eastern Michigan Monday night.

Wonk back!
Don't just mutter ineffectually; email me!

Wonk,

Thanks for the explanation and tracking of PPWS. It'll help me win dinner! Why? Because, as a big fan of all things Illini, I made a comment to a fellow alum that watching Nick Smith play was frustrating. Now it's more than just some "dumb chick" shooting her mouth off.

Read up, Petey-boy. The PPWS says more than I can say. Stats really do speak louder than words! Nick's "great perimeter shot" just won't seal the deal for me (or for the stat books).

Beth R.

Yeah, Petey-boy, read up!

Thanks, Beth!
  7:51 AM
Tuesday, December 21, 2004
 
BONUS Rick Majerus-inspired change-in-plans edition!
Yesterday Wonk alerted readers to the fact that he would be traveling today and that there would be no Tuesday post. Wonk is traveling--off to the airport in a bit here--but my admiration for Rick Majerus is such that I've decided to do a 180 just to keep the folks guessing. (One scoop ESPN didn't get!) Plus I'm up early....

Are head-cases really easier to predict than gamers?
Last week Wonk updated the All-Wonk and All-Head-Case teams, each of which had its inception in those bygone days of early November 2004. In the case of the All-Wonk Team, only Ohio State's Terence Dials kept his spot. Elsewhere, Mike Wilkinson, T.J. Parker, Greg Brunner, and Lester Abram were replaced by Jeff Horner, Aaron Johnson, Maurice Ager, and Carl Landry.

But in the case of the All-Head-Case Team, Wonk stood pat: Bracey Wright, Pierre Pierce, Paul Davis, Nick Smith, and Daniel Horton looked like head-case locks to Wonk seven weeks ago and they still do.

This leads to an intriguing question: are head-cases actually more stable by virtue of their very instability than the proverbial team player? To address this question, Wonk herewith offers the Crispin Glover Hypothesis: head-cases don't change. With talented shooting guards as with family members, we yearn for them to change and hail the slightest token adult gesture as a sign of maturation. But they don't truly change.

Wonk emphasizes the word "hypothesis." Surely there are instances of one-time head-cases who turned it around. Clue wonk in!

(All about Crispin Glover here.)

In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
Arizona State beat Northwestern last night in Tempe by the notably lopsided score of 90-55. (Links here and here.) The Wildcats were outscored 55-23 in the second half and the Sun Devils drained 13 of 20 three's for the game.

Iowa faces Texas Tech tonight at the United Center in Chicago. (Links here, here, and here.) "We're playing a team that we try to mimic," says coach Steve Alford. "Our defensive rules are right from coach Knight's book. Our screening, how we cut, how we move the ball offensively - that's straight from coach Knight's program." Meanwhile Susan Harman of the Iowa City Press-Citizen says a game in the United Center is in effect a "home" game for the Hawkeyes. She's right: there are similarities to Carver-Hawkeye. For one thing, as of a couple weeks ago, only 4,500 to 5,000 tickets had been sold. (Hi-yo!)

Michigan State hosts UCLA in East Lansing tonight. (Links here and here. More from the Waiting for Neitzel beat here.) BONUS note on Wonk's vast influence. Fresh off being hailed by your intrepid blogger as having the conference's fifth-best numbers in PPWS, State's Alan Anderson gets some too-long-delayed print love.

Penn State hosts Buffalo tonight in State College. The Nittany Lions will play without senior Jamaal Tate, who has decided to quit the team in order to focus on his recovery from alcoholism.

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  4:53 AM
Monday, December 20, 2004
 
No, Virginia, there is no Wonk. Tomorrow.
Note to readers: Wonk will be traveling tomorrow and thus will not post. (Back Wednesday.) Hope you enjoy today's special double-issue, designed to carry you through this singular ordeal. Meantime be advised that Wonk is in negotiations with a major television production company for a holiday season clay-mation children's special entitled, A Day Without Wonk, featuring very special (i.e, very posthumous) performances by Burl Ives, Fred Astaire, and Boris Karloff.

Loch Ness Monster photographers of the Detroit News, Wonk salutes you!
Michigan State beat Delaware State in East Lansing Saturday by the surprisingly diminutive and non-lopsided score of 63-45. (Links here, here and here. More from the Waiting for Neitzel beat here.) Wonk All-Head-Case first-teamer Paul Davis attempted two field goals all game, one of which was actually captured for posterity (here) by a Detroit News photographer. All of which moves Wonk, who never makes predictions, to make a prediction: in the wake of a two-FGA performance by Davis in a home game against Delaware State, watch for a fresh spate of Trying to Figure Out Paul Davis stories, possibly soon enough for the run-up to State's next game (tomorrow against UCLA).

As much a part of Mondays as MNF: PPWS
It's back! The handy stat that captures more than just points from the field (e.g., points per shot or PPS), it takes in FGA's and FTA's. It's points per weighted shot (PPWS), developed by John Hollinger and brazenly renamed by Wonk. As promised, here are the very latest Big Ten PPWS numbers, including all games played through yesterday.

Team PPWS
1. Illinois (1.26)
2. Michigan State (1.24)
3. Iowa (1.18)
4. Ohio State (1.16)
5. Minnesota (1.16)
6. Wisconsin (1.10)
7. Penn State (1.09)
8. Michigan (1.04)
9. Northwestern (1.02)
10. Purdue (0.94)
11. Indiana (0.93)

What it means. Give Illinois a game with 55 FGA's and 20 FTA's and they'll likely score about 80 points. Give Indiana the same number of shots and they'll likely score about 59.

Highest individual PPWS
1. Dee Brown, Illinois (1.58)
2. Roger Powell, Illinois (1.47)
3. Jeff Horner, Iowa (1.45)
4. J.J. Sullinger, Ohio State (1.42)
5. Alan Anderson, Michigan State (1.41)
6. Brent Lawson, Minnesota (1.41)
7. Kelvin Torbert, Michigan State (1.38)
8. Luther Head, Illinois (1.37)
9. James Augustine, Illinois (1.37)
10. Maurice Ager, Michigan State (1.34)

Lowest individual PPWS
1. David Teague, Purdue (0.74)
2. Nick Smith, Illinois (0.75)
3. Drew Neitzel, Michigan State (0.79)
4. Brandon McKnight, Purdue (0.88)
5. Dion Harris, Michigan (0.89)
6. Ron Coleman, Michigan (0.91)
7. Davor Duvancic, Northwestern (0.92)
8. Robert Vaden, Indiana (0.93)
9. Marshall Strickland, Indiana (0.94)
10. Mohamed Hachad, Northwestern (0.95)

Give Dee Brown 12 FGA's and six FTA's and he'll likely give you about 23 points. Give David Teague the same shots and he'll likely give you about 11.

In yesterday's less Wonk-ish venues....
UCLA beat Michigan 81-79 Saturday in Pauley Pavilion. (Link here.) Coming off a home loss to Boston University, the Wolverines got their offense in order--four players in double figures for an injury-riddled team playing at UCLA is no small thing. But they also allowed the Bruins to shoot .587 from the field, including 12-of-14 for leading scorer Dijon Thompson.

Northwestern beat Seton Hall 53-44 Saturday in Evanston. (Latest in a series of archetypal Welsh-Ryan Arena scores; links here and here.) The Pirates shot just .286 from the field. Ye gods. Maybe that explains how you can lose a game by nine points even when you get 21 offensive boards.

Despite coughing up 20 turnovers (granted, four less than their opponent), Iowa beat Western Carolina 88-75 Saturday in Iowa City. (Excellent you-are-there recap at the Hawkeye Hoops blog. Mainstream links here, here, and here.) Wonder why Jeff Horner made the All-Wonk Team (2.0)? Look at his line: 20 points on 7-of-10 shooting (4-of-5 on his three's) and ten assists. And he got yanked from the game with three minutes left in the first half and was chewed out by Steve Alford! Do it every game, coach. Wonder why Pierre Pierce made the All-Head-Case Team even though he too shot lights-out (8-of-11) from the field? Look at his line from the line: 4-of-10. Meanwhile, the Chicago Tribune says local-area native Pierce is older and wiser.

Purdue's luck may just be getting better. The Boilermakers won their second consecutive one-point game Saturday, beating Evansville 62-61 at Conseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis. (Links here, here, and here.) The thin personnel with which Gene Keady is facing his last season in West Lafayette can perhaps best be illustrated by the fact that Carl Landry's game-winning tip-in actually came on a play which Keady had drawn up specifically for Brandon McKnight--whose struggles thus far this year have been amply documented by Wonk and who at the moment was 4-for-15 on the night (about to go 4-for-16). BONUS bad omen: Purdue was outrebounded by the Aces to the tune of 33 to 24.

Amid growing speculation over whether or not Illinois can go undefeated through the regular season, Bruce Weber reacts with predictable and fatherly we-haven't-done-anything-yet pooh-poohing here.

In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
The aforementioned Illinois team beat Valparaiso in Champaign yesterday 93-56, in what was actually the first of four games that the Illini will play as part of the Las Vegas Holiday Classic. (Links here, here, and here.) Reserves Richard McBride and Shaun Pruitt both suffered sprained right ankles during the game. Both are expected to return in time for Missouri on Wednesday. James Augustine says bring on the Tigers!

Why is the Las Vegas Holiday Classic (a five-team round-robin?) such a confusing mess? Link here. Illinois is "considering" allowing ESPN two weeks of access for an "In the Life" episode.

The aforementioned Missouri team beat Indiana in Columbia yesterday 56-53. (Links here and here.) The Tigers overcame a 17-point second-half deficit and won despite scoring only 16 first-half points. Bracey Wright had his nose broken in two places by a Spencer Laurie elbow with a little more than a minute remaining in the first half. He returned in the second half but scored only four points after the play. The thin personnel with which Mike Davis is facing his latest season in Bloomington can perhaps best be illustrated by the fact that with 18 seconds left in the game Davis specifically drew up a play for Robert Vaden--whose struggles thus far this year have been amply documented by Wonk and who at the moment was 4-for-12 on the day. BONUS bad omen: The Hoosiers have been outrebounded in every game they've played this season.

Ohio State beat Morehead State (official motto: not affiliated with Agnes) 74-48 in Columbus last night. (Links here and here.) Thad "glass half-empty" Matta fretted nonetheless about Buckeye turnovers. They had 11. BONUS note to Thad Matta: 11 turnovers is bad for a player, Thad, not for a team. Enjoy the journey, OK guy?

Also: Northwestern plays at Arizona State tonight.

Gregg Doyel of cbs.sportsline says Indiana's loss to Missouri had to be the most painful of the current five-game slide because the Tigers, even in Columbia, were the most beatable team in that brutal stretch. BONUS proof that Doyel is furtively reading Big Ten Wonk: he, like Wonk, is appalled that Florida State would lose at home to Florida International. He, like Wonk, is appalled that Michigan would lose at home to Boston University.

While Wonk is away: UCLA visits Michigan State and Texas Tech plays Iowa in the United Center in Chicago tomorrow night. Also tomorrow: Buffalo visits Penn State.

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When Wonk makes a mistake he'll let you know, thank you!
Odd how little press was given to Gonzaga's very impressive 85-73 win over Georgia Tech in Las Vegas Saturday night--lost in the Rick Majerus kerfuffle, perhaps. But Wonk's readers keep their eye on the ball! When your intrepid blogger padded downstairs to his computer Sunday morning he found the following waiting for him:

Wonk,

Your blog, November 29th: "How good is Illinois? No one knows. Yet. One thing we do know is that Gonzaga had no business being in the top 25."

You wanna take this back? BTW, I like your site. You should do predictions for the Big Ten games.

Awais B.

Egad! Readers delving into Wonk's archives! The crack professionals on the Wonk Archives Desk told me that only I could do that! And I only dredge up old posts when I'm right! MEMO TO ARCHIVES DESK: Now I want a concerted effort to find out how this happened! I've got know: who goofed!...

Actually, Wonk is going to lobby for a charging foul here: your intrepid blogger thinks maybe he beat Awais to the spot on this one. My blog, December 3:

On Monday Wonk made the fatal error of starting a sentence with "One thing we do know is...." Wonk warning: never start a sentence with "One thing we do know is." It will prove only there is one thing you don't know. You could write, "One thing we do know is that John Madden will not win the swimsuit competition at the Miss World pageant," and then, lo and behold, he'd run out and get some liposuction and implants in the right places and eke out a victory over both Miss Sweden and Michael Moore. Just don't do it.

Oblivious to his own warning, Wonk, in the aftermath of the surprisingly easy victory posted by Illinois over Gonzaga, proclaimed smugly: "One thing we do know is that Gonzaga had no business being in the top 25." No doubt enraged by this post (and, perhaps, by an earlier one which lashed into the Bulldogs' hometown paper, the Spokane Spokesman-Review, for having the temerity to be a paid site), the Zags took to the court Wednesday night--while Wonk and every other person east of Coeur d' Alene was fixated on Wake Forest-Illinois--and thumped 14th-ranked Washington, 99-87.

Wonk's Senior Spokane Bureau Chief reports that the Bulldogs took the floor in a cold fury, chanting "We'll show Wonk!"

In Wonk's defense your intrepid blogger did say that Adam Morrison (game-high 26 points against the Illini and, monotonously enough, game-high 26 points against the Huskies) had game and that the Bulldogs would get better as the season went along. Just didn't know it would be this fast.

In sum: Gonzaga has double-digit victories over both Georgia Tech and Washington. Forget about top-25; they're clearly top-15.

And as for Wonk starting to offer predictions: (with a tip of the cap to Garry Trudeau) are you mad? Wonk only does post-mortems. Find I look smarter that way.

From the crack staff on Wonk's Wholly Extraneous Material Desk
Wonk doesn't usually plug consumer goods in his blog unless he gets a cut, but the inspiration and indeed exact wording for your intrepid blogger's irate "memo" (above) comes from the must-listen "Celebrity Rants" CD, featuring genuine hissy fits thrown by an eclectic mix of celebs past and present. The Britney Spears backstage meltdown Wonk had heard. The Bobby Knight obscenity-laced halftime tirade is old, if still harrowingly appalling, stuff. But newly unearthed gems from Orson Welles, Casey Kasem, Barry White, William Shatner, and, for you old geezers, Howard Cosell make this a valuable addition to any CD library. Trust Wonk on this one. Best/worst moment: a drug-addled Elvis stumbles into a press conference and insists to an audience of fawning sycophantic Elvis fans that he is not drug-addled. As he rambles on in an increasingly violent, if incoherent, rage, the audience never fails to applaud enthusiastically at every pause, including: "You (expletive deleted), I'll rip your (expletive deleted) tongue out by the roots!" (Applause.) You will never listen to the King's version of "I'll Have a Blue Christmas" quite the same way again.

Indiana: who vs. whom
On Friday Wonk posted on Indiana and its brutal schedule. Your intrepid blogger opined that the traditional get-Bracey-Wright-more-touches battle cry is perhaps less persuasive after Wright scores 31 and your team still scores just 58. And loses by 15. (See the Kentucky game.) Wonk's readers respond!

Wonk,

I have a friend who's a big Hoosier fan and his issue isn't whom they play but rather who they play. He is convinced Wright is a team cancer along the lines of Kobe (Bryant, not beef) and that IU will only win after he leaves for the green, green pastures reserved for NBA journeyman. I agree.

Jason H.

Thanks, Jason. Having termed Wright "locker-room Nyquil" himself, Wonk is hardly in a position to dissent too strenuously.

Wonk made it 47 days without any abstruse RPI deconstruction
Hi, Wonk,

I'm a recent new reader--from Big 12 country but enjoy your site very much. I'm actually planning on going to the IU-Missouri game Sunday.

My question that I was hoping someone would address so that I could understand: What to make of the decision to add a home/road component to RPI? I read where it would count 1.4 for a road win and .6 for a home win and neutral courts would be 1.0. I wonder how they will look at games that say Kansas plays in Kansas City when they are playing someone like Oregon? It's a little unfair to call that a true neutral court game. Much like Arkansas playing Illinois in Little Rock wasn't a neutral court game either. Beyond that though, I don't have a handle on how this will affect the RPI. Is this change going to make a small or major difference? Inquiring minds want to know!

Thanks
Andrew H.

Andrew, Wonk supports this in spirit and awaits only confirmation that the math works as intended but not too much. For this is an Empirical Question! Has someone run the numbers yet (i.e., seen what last year's RPI would have looked like with this new equation)? Clue Wonk in!

One last email then Wonk's gotta jet
Wonk,

I've recently been a convert to your site and, as a Big 10 grad (Iowa), I really dig it.

Scott Long
(Will Carroll Presents)

Thanks, Scott! Note to alert readers: Scott's always-correct (as seen here!) writings can be found on the very fine baseball blog to which he alludes in his signature.

  6:23 AM
Saturday, December 18, 2004
 
COMING Monday....
Updated points per weighted shot (PPWS) numbers for the best and worst of 60-odd starters and key reserves in the conference. Will Dee Brown still be number 1? Will David Teague still be anchor man? Tune in Monday!

In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
Northwestern hosts Seton Hall today in Evanston. (Link here.)

Michigan State hosts Delaware State in East Lansing today. (Link here.) Alert readers will recall Wonk's previous foray into wall-to-wall Delaware State coverage (here).

Michigan plays at UCLA today. The Detroit Free Press suggests Dion Harris's numbers have dipped (as noted by Wonk) because of his added ball-handling responsibilities in the absence of Daniel Horton. When Horton's numbers dipped last year, Tommy Amaker said it was because of his added ball-handling and defensive responsibilities. Funny how no one ever frets about the added ball-handling responsibilities for certain guards now excelling at, say, Illinois, Oklahoma State, Georgia Tech, Kansas, Washington, or Iowa.

Purdue hosts Evansville in the "Boiler Blockbuster" at Conseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis tonight. (Links here and here.) Matt Carroll had surgery on his right foot this week and will be out (you guessed it) four to six weeks. (BONUS Wonk invitation to inveterate iconoclasts. Why does everybody always say "four to six weeks"? Why not say "five" or "approximately five"? Somebody get us out of this rut, please.)

Iowa hosts Western Carolina in Iowa City tonight. (Good preview at the Hawkeye Hoops blog. Mainstream links here and here.)

Tomorrow: Indiana plays at Missouri, Illinois hosts Valparaiso, and Ohio State hosts Morehead State.

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  7:14 AM
Friday, December 17, 2004
 
Whither the Hoosiers?
Two things happened last night that got Wonk thinking about Indiana. One, my print copy of Sports Illustrated was waiting for me when I got home and it contained a short article on the Hoosiers. (BONUS ironic technology note: the same article's been available to me all week on the website--all I'd have to do is remember a password or type in my name and zip--but just seeing the "SI EXCLUSIVE" on the link makes me scurry away. Fellow subscribers are free to try this link that probably won't work.) Seth Davis says "the Hoosiers' biggest problem these days isn't how they're playing but whom."

Later in the evening I caught the halftime show during the Ohio State-Texas Tech game. Digger Phelps and Steve Lavin were yukking it up in the ESPN studios and handing out "grades" to the Big 12 and the Big Ten. Their lowest marks were given to Missouri in the former conference and to Indiana and Purdue in the latter. But if Seth Davis is correct, Indiana will be fine as soon as they get a non-top-25 opponent. And that would be Missouri, ironically enough, on Sunday.

Will Indiana be fine? The example they have to pin their hopes on, obviously, is Michigan State 2004. (Um, without the part where you lose in the first round to Nevada.) The Spartans woke up last January 11 with a 5-7 record, 0-1 in conference. Not only did they go on to make the tournament, they came within one Chris Hill free throw of winning the Big Ten.

But State had (and has) talent, depth, and multiple scoring options, none of which spring to mind when speaking of Indiana 2005. At the risk of stating the obvious: the Hoosiers need to find a way to score points. And the answer is most emphatically not more touches for Bracey Wright. In the loss to Kentucky, Wright scored 31 and Indiana still totaled only 58 points. The Hoosiers won't win many games with Wright scoring 53 percent of their points: the junior guard would need to put up 42 points for his team to hit 80.

Where will the help come from? Robert Vaden's played all of six games in his college career and could grow into a fine player but as of today his seemingly solid average of 11 points is deceiving. As Wonk noted on Monday, Vaden needs more shots to get those 11 points than almost anyone else in the conference. (Among regular Big Ten starters, only David Teague, Davor Duvancic, Dion Harris, and Brandon McKnight get less out of more.) D.J. White? Again, big upside, no question, but looking pretty raw right now. (And less than four boards a game? What's up with that?) Marshall Strickland? Your guess is as good as Wonk's....

BONUS: Wonk's REVISED Patrick Ewing, Jr. Paradox. The Ewing Paradox states that if he were on a better team, he'd be getting some minutes. (The original Pat Ewing Paradox, explained here, stated that if he were on a better team he'd be starting. He is starting now, but he's still getting just 20 minutes a game.) Ewing continues to play like a Tasmanian devil and to get rebounding numbers that suggest a player with half again as many minutes. But, alas, Ewing is adjudged as too offensively challenged to play for Indiana and that's saying something--a little like the fabled "sixth Rolling Stone" who was said to be too ugly for even the Stones.

Lavin will end up writing massive tomes on detente
Seeing Steve Lavin in the ESPN studio last night made Wonk realize that I like Lavin a lot more when he's calling a game than when I'm watching him pontificate directly into the camera. Lavin worked the Illinois-Oregon game, for example, and, much like the proverbial ref you don't notice, he must have done a good job because I don't remember much of his call. (Wait, that's not true: Wonk remembers liking how Lavin swatted away consummate company man Brent Musburger's invitation to flack for ESPN HD. Musburger, extolling the wonders of this product offered by his current employer, turned to his broadcast partner to ask which sport he liked best in HD. Lavin somehow got off on a Wonk-worthy riff on the potential benefits of televising spelling bee's in HD.)

But when I see him in the studio for some reason my skin crawls ever so slightly. Which moves Wonk to unveil his Nixonian Theory of Steve Lavin: just like the disgraced former president, Lavin comes across better when you don't have to watch him. In Nixon's case this was proven emphatically in his 1960 debates with John F. Kennedy: the then-youthful Republican did better among radio listeners than among TV viewers. Grad students take note! There's a dissertation in it for you if you simply set up one room showing ESPN to your money-hungry sophomore "volunteers" and another room with the same feed and the TV turned to the wall. Wonk can see the title page now: "'Sharing the Sugar': Disparate Audience Reponses to Steve Lavin--A Parsonian Approach."

Pastry shelf
On December 27, when the students will all be home and the only people in the stands will be sedate locals, Illinois will take the court against Longwood University. With an enrollment of 3,700, Longwood is located in Farmville, VA, population 6,845, meaning that the students can and should take over the town. To the barricades, Lancers!

Longwood is in the process of moving up to Division I. According to Director of Athletics Rick Mazutto:

“One of the tremendous positives generated out of moving to Division I is the opportunity to use intercollegiate athletics as a vehicle to raise the public profile of the institution.”

EXCLUSIVE Wonk translation:

“In a naked act of calculated promotional self-immolation we’ve decided a program that went 5-22 with double-digit losses against the likes of Utah Valley State and Pfeiffer last season should play Illinois, Cincinnati, and Wake Forest this season.”

Wonk wishes Lou Henson were still at the helm in Champaign so we could all be treated to the following day-before-game sound bite: “Longwood is a super ball club and we’re going to have to play our best game to win.” The diligent researchers of winless teams at espn.com rate Longwood as one of the ten worst teams in the country.

BONUS Wonk Longwood note: Last season one of the Lancers’ five wins gave them bragging rights over archrival and cohort in debilitating rural obscurity Lenoir-Rhyne, which Wonk thinks sounds a lot like a good wine or a leggy French supermodel.

In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
Ohio State beat Texas Tech 77-71 in Dallas last night (links here and here) and let's get right to the important part:

THE STREAK IS OVER!

The Buckeyes' Ivan Harris attempted not one but two free throws last night, thus bringing a sad end to his thrilling quest to become the first starter in Big Ten history to go an entire season without an FTA. When Harris attempted his first free throw, the crowd erupted in a thunderous six-minute standing ovation and the game was temporarily stopped so that a special ceremony could be held at midcourt. As players from both teams cheered and hugged, Harris briefly addressed the crowd and his words echoed over the American Airlines Center's curiously antiquated PA:

"Tonight...[echo, echo]...I consider myself...[echo, echo]...the luckiest man...[echo, echo]...on the face of the earth...[echo, echo]...because my AD didn't hire Bob Knight."

Iowa's players are about to take finals and, in perhaps the latest example of defining academic success down, they say they're confident they'll remain eligible.

Michigan State will host Delaware State tomorrow and the Spartans are glad to be "home at last" says the Detroit News. Home at last? They've played exactly one game on an opponent's home floor. (OK, playing George Washington in the MCI Center was a near-home game for the Colonials--about like, say, Michigan State playing Stanford at The Palace in Auburn Hills.) Meanwhile, freshman Marquise Gray says he doesn't regret his decision to redshirt this season. And Spartan fans of WATN may appreciate this update on former State guard Brandon Cotton.

Marlen Garcia of the Chicago Tribune says the hot shooting recorded by Illinois this season can be traced to the old-school and virtually Norman Dale-esque shooting drills inflicted upon players in practice by Bruce Weber. (More Weber-during-finals-week coverage here.) Meanwhile the Jack Ingram coverage just keeps on coming--opening sentence: "Jack Ingram once worked as a roller-coaster operator at a theme park." Want to read more? In God's name, why? Link here if you feel you must.

Mike DeCourcy of the Sporting News surveys the national hoops scene and says seniors like Luther Head and Roger Powell are having a big impact this year.

Professional Dick Vitale whiners take note! The first "Power 16" of the season at espn.com is here! Inveterate iconoclast Vitale puts Kansas (official motto: Every game in Lawrence until March!) at #1. Each of espn.com's other hoops pundits (Andy Katz, Jay Bilas, Pat Forde, and Andy Glockner) has Illinois at the top. None of the others has the Jayhawks higher than fourth.

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  6:37 AM
Thursday, December 16, 2004
 
Presenting the All-Wonk Team (2.0)
The readers have spoken! And your intrepid blogger has listened carefully and at length to those readers who happened to echo Wonk's own arbitrary preconceived attitudes. So without further ado, I give you the revised All-Wonk Team: not necessarily the biggest talents or gaudiest stats, just guys you'd want in your foxhole.

First, a disclaimer. There are no Illinois players on the All-Wonk Team and, given that the Illini are the consensus number 1 team in the nation, this would seem to be something of a fatal flaw. But, as an Illinois fan himself, Wonk takes the attitude that the Illini as a whole are kind of on the entire hoops world's All-Wonk team right now. Dee Brown, Luther Head, Deron Williams, Roger Powell--these guys need no introduction. Consider each one of them an All-Wonk emeritus, alright? Now then....

Terence Dials, Ohio State. Lone holdover from the Preseason All-Wonk Team. Congratulations, Terence.

Jeff Horner, Iowa. A no-brainer. Just look at the guy's line: the 16 points and six assists per game you may expect. But almost six boards a game? He's the Hawkeyes' second-leading rebounder. Think of Horner this way: so far this season he's scored two more points than teammate Pierre Pierce. On 45 fewer shots from the field.

Aaron Johnson, Penn State. Your intrepid blogger has a continuous presumptive opening on the All-Wonk Team for the Big Ten's leading rebounder. (Note, however, that this procedural rule has a Kris Humphries Exception.) And right now that player would be Aaron Johnson--by a margin of more than 2.5 boards a game. Until his two-rebound performance against Pittsburgh on Saturday, Johnson was among the top five in the nation in rebounding. And even with that off game he's still averaging a notably robust 11 boards a game. Add in his 16 points a game and Johnson's the only player in the conference averaging a double-double. He's in.

Maurice Ager, Michigan State. Ager is putting up Horner-esque numbers (15.9 points a game, five boards, .531 on his three's, eighth in the conference in points per weighted shot (PPWS)) but no one notices because, unlike Horner, he's on an extremely talented team where expectations were already high.

Carl Landry, Purdue. The juco transfer leads the Boilermakers in points (15.3), rebounds (8.4), and blocks. True, a cynic might say praising someone who "leads the Boilermakers" is a little like hailing the "tallest midget in the circus." But Wonk likes Landry's fire and his upside.

Ivan Harris: Game 9 of "The Streak"
Tonight Ohio State's Ivan Harris will attempt to extend his astonishing no-free-throw streak, now in its ninth game, as he endeavors to become the first starter in Big Ten history to go an entire year without an FTA. Wonk's Senior Ivan Harris's Astonishing No-Free-Throw-Streak Bureau Chief reports that the pressure on Harris is "incredible, just as intense as that faced by DiMaggio in '41 from Game 40 on." Press credentials for tonight's game between the Buckeyes and Texas Tech in Dallas have reportedly been requested from as far away as Dayton and Zanesville.

Wonk knew Jay Bilas looked familiar....
ESPN's Jay Bilas dropped in on an Illinois chat room Tuesday night and say this for the man: though the occasion may have called for merely a five-question greet-and-go, Bilas really lingered and had a far-ranging discussion with the Illini fans.

Wonk won't bore you with Bilas's assessment of Illinois' chances to get to the Final Four or his take on Bruce Weber's motion offense. Let's get straight to the important stuff:

Q: Jay, what was it like working with Ken Howard during your cameo on "The White Shadow"?

Jay Bilas: "The White Shadow" was great. I was only 16 when I was on the show, and was a guy named Larsen. I was the best player on an all white team that a guy named Reese transferred to. All of the guys on the show seemed to be my age, but all were about 30, which seemed ancient at the time. I saw Ken Howard about two months ago, and he couldn't have been nicer. A great memory for me.

Wonk knew, of course, that Bilas appeared as "the Good Alien" in the 1990 movie, I Come in Peace (starring Dolph Lundgren). But who knew that Bilas had done a star turn on this TV favorite from the late '70s and early '80s? Having that on your resume just has to be interview ice-breaker gold.

In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
As noted above, Ohio State plays Texas Tech in Dallas tonight. (Links here, here, and here. The Sporting News puts tonight's game in the wrong city here.) Last night during the Northwestern-DePaul game the ESPN2 announcers were going on and on about Ohio State alum Bobby Knight, the fact that he was interested in the Buckeyes' job over the summer, etc., etc. Why does on-air talent so eagerly hype games as juicy coaching match ups in a tone of gossipy junior-high breathlessness? With the possible exception of a nifty sideline finger-pointing session in the second round of the 2000 tournament between Roy Williams and Mike Krzyzewski, Wonk has never once in his life seen a game that proceeded in a visually different way because the opposing coaches are former colleagues or hate each other passionately or whatever.

Northwestern beat DePaul in Evanston last night 56-52 (latest in a series of archetypal Welsh-Ryan Arena scores; links here, here, and here.) The game marked the NU debut of 6'10" Duke transfer Mike Thompson, who reminded Wonk of a guy who's just arrived from the football team: tremendous upside, needs work. Not surprising when you consider Thompson hasn't received quality minutes in a competitive setting in three years. The Blue Demons showed some zone looks in the first half, thus answering a question your intrepid blogger has sometimes pondered: what happens when a Princeton offense faces a zone? It suddenly looks much more normal.

Wisconsin beat UW-Milwaukee in Madison last night by the as-bad-as-it-sounds score of 66-37. (Links here, here and here.) No UWM player reached double figures. In the game's early minutes Brian Butch sank a three to make the score 9-2. As he came back up the court, the tall geeky white guy from Appleton, Wisconsin, bobbed his head in a would-be "that's-right" gesture of token woofing at the Panthers and for some reason Wonk's mind flashed to Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor arriving at the prison in Stir Crazy ("That's right, we bad!").

Minnesota beat Chicago State in Minneapolis last night 68-58. (Links here, here, and here.)

Must-read column this morning from Michael Rosenberg of the Detroit Free Press, who has this to say on Michigan's loss at home Tuesday night to Boston University: "This was one of the least exciting games I can remember at Crisler Arena and I watched the entire Brian Ellerbee era. At least back then, somebody might air-ball a three-pointer, then run back down the court and get arrested." (Also, Jim Carty's autopsy on the same game has at last risen to the surface at the perpetually and perhaps intentionally late-posting Ann Arbor News.)

Meramec beat Lewis and Clark 64-58 last night in St. Louis. No, Wonk is not trying to steal Mid-Majority's shtick. This game was played in the Edward Jones Dome specifically to serve as a Final Four dress rehearsal for proactive types from the NCAA and CBS.

BONUS Paige Laurie follow-up. Wonk's elderly readers will remember a long-ago time known as November 2004 when the University of Missouri suffered the humiliation of having to rename their new basketball arena after allegations surfaced that Paige Laurie cheated while a student at the University of Southern California. Now comes news that Elena Martinez, the woman who alleges that she was paid $20,000 over three years by Laurie to write term papers for the Wal-Mart heiress at USC, has secured the services of an agent who is shopping her story for a potential movie deal.

Grant Wahl of cnnsi.com indulges his "unholy fascination with undefeated teams" here and handicaps which of the 18 remaining D-I undefeateds have the best shot at running the table. Wahl's choice as worst undefeated team: Texas A&M. His take on 6-0 Cincinnati: "The Bearcats beat Purdue, but so does everybody these days." (BONUS Grant Wahl Cliffs Notes. One of this week's separated-at-birth entries: Paul Davis and...Josh Hartnett? Sorry. Not seeing it--though come to think of it both of them do tend to make Wonk kind of sleepy.)

Something called the College Basketball Partnership was announced at a press conference yesterday in Madison Square Garden and it's good to see this writer every bit as confused as Wonk as to what exactly this is and what precisely they intend to do.

This piece, on the daunting challenges (Wonk is not making this up) faced by Big Ten big men in finding clothes that fit, is either so post-ironic it's brilliant or is a pitiful mark of desperation from a harassed beat writer on a slow day. You make the call.

Wonk back!
Don't just mutter ineffectually; email me!
  7:15 AM
Wednesday, December 15, 2004
 
Preseason All-Wonk Team: WATN?
Enough games have now been played to take our first revisionist look at that continually changing socially-constructed palimpsest known as the All-Wonk Team. How are the All-Wonks doing? Do these five players still merit this prestigious honor? Most importantly, do they live up to the All-Wonk credo: not necessarily the biggest talents or gaudiest stats, just guys you'd want in your foxhole?

With that, your intrepid blogger re-introduces you to the five players selected a few weeks ago by the crack staff on the All-Wonk Desk....

Mike Wilkinson, Wisconsin. Wilkinson had a well-publicized horrible game at Pepperdine, where his turnovers (seven) actually exceeded his points (six) and the Badgers were pasted 75-61. For the year he's averaging 12 points and six boards a game--good numbers but not eye-popping. Moreover, for All-Wonk purposes, Wilkinson suffers from a little category trouble: a guy who's on the preseason All-Big-Ten team arguably adds little value to the All-Wonk team. Tough call, one we may revisit later this season, but for now Wilkinson goes and his spot is now open.

T.J. Parker, Northwestern. Another tough call. Parker's stats this year are nothing to write home about but with Parker you know that going in. Not to mention he's the heart and soul of his team and is logging a ridiculous amount of minutes (36+ per game). Even so, the All-Wonk honor is only for the elite of the elite. Wonk likes Parker and all decisions are un-final but for now Parker goes and his spot is now open.

Terence Dials, Ohio State. Under new coach Thad Matta, Dials is being asked to play a more traditional back-to-the-basket kind of post than he's used to and his numbers thus far have not matched the strong finish he posted last year. That being said, the big guy is still pulling down seven boards a game and, in a conference short on non-head-case bigs, that is a real mark of distinction. Dials stays.

Lester Abram, Michigan. Injured and out for the year. Abram goes and his spot is now open.

Greg Brunner, Iowa. The toughest call of the five. Brunner is having a very strong year: 13.3 points and 6.7 boards a game. Every time Wonk catches part of a Hawkeye game Brunner is hustling. (And Adam Haluska is bricking yet another three--yet Haluska has very nice numbers. How is this possible?) And yet...the criteria for this elite honor are not merely normative, they're also comparative. And Brunner is up against some stiff competition. (Hint: check out the names--admittedly few--above Brunner in Big Ten rebounding, the foundational All-Wonk stat.) Don't you go too far now, Greg, but as of today Brunner goes and his spot is now open.

Four openings on the All-Wonk Team. Your intrepid blogger's already received many perceptive nominations from many alert readers. Today is the official last day of lobbying: send in your nominee for the All-Wonk Team.

Wonk only reprints old posts when he's right
Yesterday your intrepid blogger had this to say in advance of last night's Michigan-Boston University game:

Michigan hosts Boston University in Ann Arbor tonight and the injury-riddled Wolverines have reduced UM beat writers to filing stories on a veritable murderer's row of who-dat's: John Andrews, Dani Wohl, Ashtyn Bell, and Sherrod Harrell. (Links here and here. This second link says the burden of leadership now falls on sophomore guard Dion Harris. That is likely bad news for Wolverine fans: see yesterday's post on points per weighted shot and especially the ten lowest players in the league in that category.)

The increased leadership burden placed upon Dion Harris was bad news for Wolverine fans. The sophomore guard scored just four points more than the little old lady alum in the front row on 1-for-11 shooting and BU beat Michigan 63-52. (Links here and here.)

Harris was the first Michigan high-school Mr. Basketball in a while who did not land at Michigan State and his arrival in Ann Arbor a year ago was widely viewed as one more encouraging sign that the Wolverines were turning the corner. (He even put up some nice numbers at the start of last year.) But his performance this season has been woeful. Among players with at least 100 points, Harris has the worst points per weighted shot (PPWS) number in the conference (0.89). And the company one keeps in this over 100 and under 1 club speaks for itself: Purdue's Brandon McKnight (0.95) and Iowa's Pierre Pierce (0.97)--poor shot selectors all.

Observers will moan and wail that the Wolverines lost this game because they didn't have Lester Abram and Daniel Horton and, true enough, Michigan shot just 3-of-17 on their three's. But remember this: Courtney Sims isn't injured and he has got to show up. We've all heard the story about how he bulked up back home in Boston over the off-season by eating his mom's cooking six or nine or however many times a day. Time to use those calories: six points and four boards won't cut it. (Backcourt, schmackcourt: the Wolverines were out-rebounded despite 11 boards from Brent Petway and despite the fact that the Terriers played a lot of zone.)

Boston University, meanwhile, is now an unofficial 12th member of the Big Ten, having defeated Michigan in Ann Arbor two years in a row.

In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
Northwestern hosts DePaul in Evanston tonight in a match up that's always had the potential to be a nice rivalry (two major-conference schools a few dozen city blocks apart) if both programs would just cooperate with simultaneous respectability. (Links here and here.) Tonight's game marks the NU debut of 6'10" Duke transfer Mike Thompson. Coach Bill Carmody is happy for the help but predicts nevertheless, "He's going to be in foul trouble right off, I just know it, because he hasn't played a game in so long."

Wisconsin hosts UW-Milwaukee in Madison tonight. (Links here and here.) Wisconsin-Milwaukee is 6-1, with wins over Air Force and St. Louis.

Minnesota hosts Chicago State in Minneapolis tonight. (Links here and here.) Chicago State is 0-5, yet lost by only 11 at UCLA.

Purdue's Matt Kiefer says he hopes to return to action in two weeks. Kiefer underwent surgery Friday to repair a torn meniscus in his right knee.

Sarah Skilling of the Lansing State Journal looks at the state of Michigan State and chips in with today's Trying to Figure Out Paul Davis piece here.

The Capital Times in Madison, WI, apparently thinks it's quaint and kind of charming to maintain a site that seems perpetually 36 hours old. So Wonk doesn't link to them much. However, Mike Lucas had a good quote-haul from Monday's Big Ten coaches' telecon and his post has at long last risen to the surface so here you go.

Ohio State plays Texas Tech tomorrow night in Dallas. (Day-before game preview here.) Tech is coached by a certain OSU alum.

Wonk back!
Don't just mutter ineffectually; email me!

  6:57 AM
Tuesday, December 14, 2004
 
Every game Minnesota plays is a "bad loss" for somebody
Florida State got beat on their home floor by something called Florida International 65-60 on Sunday, prompting Wonk to muse aloud once again: how in the world could Minnesota have lost at home to Florida State? The Seminoles are 4-4: their other losses have come to now-trendy Texas A&M Corpus Christi (TAMUCC to the cognoscenti), TCU, and Kent State. Yes, FSU also posted a win at Mississippi--woe be to the Rebels.

Since the Florida State debacle the Gophers have pledged their devotion to defense and have posted a road win at Nebraska (classified by Husker beat writers, rightly, as a "bad loss" for Nebraska) and a win at home over Central Michigan (who played Kent State tougher than Florida State did). And, for a juco transfer scoring-wing type, Vincent Grier is putting up some surprisingly nice numbers in columns like rebounds and FG pct.

But Wonk just keeps coming back to one irrevocable fact. They lost at home to Florida State.

Indefatigable hoops guy Jeff Shelman, Wonk salutes you!
Alert readers may have noted the presence of the first new denizen in a long while under Wonk's blog links on this page. Your intrepid blogger is pleased to spread the word that Jeff Shelman, who covers college hoops for both espn.com and for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, has a blog and it's a great read--and not just because he lists Big Ten Wonk as his first link under "hoops blogs I like." (How observant Jeff Shelman is!) For one thing he posts his own ballot from the AP poll. (And, since you asked, he's right: Oklahoma State clearly is the number 2 team in the nation, not Kansas or Georgia Tech.)

For a long while, Wonk has been convinced that "Jeff Shelman" is actually four people and that at any given moment "Jeff Shelman" is present in multiple places, kind of like Ronald McDonald or Santa or Kelly Ripa. How else to explain what Wonk lives: your intrepid blogger arises each day in Minneapolis and pads downstairs to find a copy of the Star Tribune waiting for him on the front step, complete with a pithy well-researched article by "Jeff Shelman" on some member or aspect of the otherwise oft-inscrutable Minnesota Golden Gophers. Then Wonk fires up the laptop, moseys over to espn.com and finds this very same "Jeff Shelman" has posted on Washington's Nate Robinson, or on Kent State, or on Marquette's Tom Crean.

And now he blogs, too! "Jeff Shelman," Wonk gets tired just watching you. Welcome to the wild wacky world of hoops blogging.

BONUS gratuitous reader-involvement gimmick. The crack staff on Wonk's Promotions and Marketing Desk have been hectoring your intrepid blogger with emails saying I need to come up with a readership-involvement "hook" along the lines of ESPN's "Send Dickie V. Packing" promotion. So it shall be! Wonk is delighted to announce that the coming days will bring with them this blog's first interview: a talk with Jeff Shelman--and you, the reader, get to pick Wonk's interview template!

Choose from:

A) Chris Matthews interviews Georgia Senator Zell Miller on MSNBC's "Hardball," 2004. ("I wish we lived in the day when you could challenge a person to a duel!" etc. Transcript here.)

B) Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala interview Jon Stewart on "Crossfire," 2004. (Transcript here. Stewart: "How old are you?" Carlson: "Thirty-five." Stewart: "And you wear a bow tie.")

C) Jon Stewart interviews Posh Spice on "The Daily Show," 2002. (Posh Spice (to audience): "Why are you laughing?! I don't think he's funny.")

D) Katie Couric interviews Bob Dole, 1996 (Dole blathered on about the equivalent dangers of tobacco and...milk. Wonk remembers a pained George Will sifting the rubble afterward and asking aloud how anyone could possibly get in an argument with Couric, "America's niece.")

Send in those votes today!

In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
Michigan hosts Boston University in Ann Arbor tonight and the injury-riddled Wolverines have reduced UM beat writers to filing stories on a veritable murderer's row of who-dat's: John Andrews, Dani Wohl, Ashtyn Bell, and Sherrod Harrell. (Links here and here. This second link says the burden of leadership now falls on sophomore guard Dion Harris. That is likely bad news for Wolverine fans: see yesterday's post on points per weighted shot and especially the ten lowest players in the league in that category.)

Big Ten coaches tout their league in their weekly telecon here and here.

Inveterate iconoclast Reid Hanley of the Chicago Tribune chirps happily on about the strength of the Big Ten, as reflected in the conference's robust RPI (second only to that of the ACC). Verily, Wonk says: that nice RPI is a product of a very small number of games: Illinois wins over Gonzaga, Wake Forest, and Oregon; Iowa wins over Louisville and Texas; a Wisconsin win over Maryland; and, maybe, a Michigan win over Notre Dame (which is already starting to tarnish since the Irish lost by 11 at home to DePaul on Saturday). Besides, using RPI in December is a bit like a drunk using a lamppost: it is done more for support than illumination.

Jeff Washburn of the Lafayette Journal and Courier says foul trouble will be big trouble for Purdue until Matt Kiefer returns from the injured list (and beyond, Wonk is tempted to add).

Indefatigable Indiana beat writer Terry Hutchens of the Indianapolis Star has posted the latest installment of his excellent Q&A forum here. (You'll be shocked--shocked--to find that angry IU fans are calling for Mike Davis's job. For his part, Hutchens is preaching [snicker] reason and patience. Sheeyeah, as if! Good luck with that, Terry!)

Illinois is ranked #1 in both major polls for the second consecutive week and coach Bruce Weber shocked Illini beat writers by inviting Georgia Senator Zell Miller to his Monday session with reporters and promptly erupting in a screaming fit of rage: "We should be the permanent number 1! Just abolish the damn polls! You fancy-pants writers all think you're so big! Get out of my face! I wish we lived in the day when you could challenge a person to a duel!" No, seriously, Weber reacts with predictable and fatherly we-haven't-done-anything-yet pooh-poohing here and here. (Illini-taking-finals coverage here.)

Matt Trannon, second on the Michigan State football team with 36 receptions this season, will start practicing with Tom Izzo's men this week. (Link here. Spartans-taking-finals coverage here.)

Jeff Rice of the Centre Daily Times gives a briskly efficient position-by-position report card to Penn State at the one-third point here. And David Jones of the Harrisburg Patriot-News says the Nittany Lions will have to keep the homegrown talent home if they want to compete in the Big Ten, instead of seeing recruits like Williamsport's Chevon Troutman flit away to far-off, um, Pittsburgh.

Juco transfers Vincent Grier of Minnesota, Carl Landry of Purdue, Je'Kel Foster of Ohio State, and Doug Thomas of Iowa get some too-long-delayed pixel love from Gregg Doyel of cbs.sportsline here.

Wonk back!
Don't just mutter ineffectually; email me!

Yesterday Wonk wondered aloud what's the deal with Wisconsin's Brian Butch: a 6'11" McDonald's All-American averaging just 12 minutes and five points a game. Wonk's readers respond!

Wonk,

As a Badger reader of yours, I feel compelled and somewhat qualified to answer your inquiry about what the deal is with Brian Butch. I still really like the guy as a player, as he brings an ability to shoot from the perimeter like few other 7-footers can, and an intensity and competitive spirit that can’t be taught. That being said, a few things are limiting him so far this year:

1) His 12 minutes per game are somewhat related to the fact that he’s playing behind Mike Wilkinson (as you know, a very solid option), and Zach Morley, who has looked outstanding in spurts. Add former starter Andreas Helmigk into the mix, and front court minutes are tough to come by in Madison. And that’s not even accounting for the fact that Alando Tucker used to play the 4. All are more proven than Butch, and are more likely to play in crunch time. This was never more evident than in the Wisconsin-Maryland game, where Butch had perhaps his best game to date, but rightfully sat down in the closing minutes in favor of Wilkinson and Morley.

2) Butch has some obvious physical limitations. As you likely know, his redshirt year came after a high school senior where he spent a portion of the year playing at 195 pounds. Not exactly a great playing weight for a 7-footer. He’s bulked up to around 240, and I think anytime someone changes their body that drastically, there’s bound to be some problems.

3) Completely unrelated to that second point (which I’m not sure I totally buy into, anyway), Butch is a slow guy. Sometimes it looks like he’s thinking too much, but other times it’s apparent that he’s just slow footed. I don’t really know what else to say about that.

4) The knock on Butch has traditionally been his defense (played lots of zone in high school), though he has looked generally sound when I’ve seen him play.

In the end, you could say that one should expect more from a McDonalds’ All-American, and first-team USA Today All-American? And if you were to say that, I’d tell you that you’re darn right. Butch was never a prototypical high school All-American, though. When you’re a 7-footer that can shoot 3-pointers,everyone these days gets a picture of Dirk Nowitzki, which Butch is definitely not. Butch isn’t a guy who should be handling the ball, but should in time become a guy who can bang a bit down low and become a dependable power-forward (after all, Mike Wilkinson came in as a skinny, perimeter oriented guy, as well). It’s a new skill set that he needs to pick up. His gaudy high school numbers were largely the product of him knowing how to take advantage of his height and shooting ability against smaller men.

The real guy to watch on the Badgers is Greg Stiemsma, their freshman center who’s out with a foot injury right now. I liked him better than Butch in high school, and I liked him better after the one exhibition game he played in. He’s the one with the star potential.

Chris W.

Question posed, answered, and settled. Thanks, Chris! (Note to alert readers: Chris has a nifty blog of his own.)

Butch definitely suffers from category trouble, as alert reader Chris indicates. The first time Wonk heard Butch's name the lanky Wisconsin phenom was being mentioned in sentences alongside fellow high-schoolers LeBron James and Luol Deng.

Meanwhile the lively discussion of Wonk's All-Head-Case Team continues....

Wonk,

Love your site. One stat clearly shows why Bracey Wright should be on your All-Head-Case team: eight assists. On the season. From a guard. For comparison, let's look at another off guard who is the team's only scoring threat: Vincent Grier. He had more assists (9) after two games. In fact, both Aaron Johnson and Carl Landry, power forwards for weak teams, had more assists after 6 games than Bracey.

Pierre Pierce is also a great selection, for things that "don't show up on the scoreboard." For instance, his turnover margin doesn't reflect the 5 or 6 times per game when he flies out of control to the basket in front of 3-4 defenders and puts up a circus shot, or tries to take a 26 footer with 15 seconds left on the shot clock during a close game. The best examples of the former was against ISU with a couple minutes left in the game, and of the latter was against Texas (which he actually made). This also doesn't take into account the fact that in the last two games he has been involved in shoving matches with UNI's John Little (during the game) and ISU's Curtis Stinson (post-game). He's no Jacob Jaacks, but he's easily the Hawkeye's biggest head case since Luke Recker.

Howard Z.
A wonk in training from Iowa City

Thanks, Howard!

BONUS Wonk preemptive strike. Before some smart-alecky reader emails me and points out that Wright's a regular Oscar Robertson compared to Wonk's own beloved Roger Powell, who has only four assists so far this season, let your intrepid blogger just state for the record:

Roger Powell has only four assists so far this season.

There.

Good day, Wonk,

I've noted recently that both my friends and the MSM have begun to seriously consider the possibility of your Illini going undefeated throughout the regular season (see Katz's Weekly Watch on espn.com). I imagine most people don't think this is very likely, but I'd go much further than that and be downright shocked if anyone made it through the conference cleanly. Illinois has the best chance this year (I'd put it at about 10 percent), followed by Michigan State (I'd say about eight percent, with the schedule help), with no one else cracking five percent. Am I wrong about this?

Regards,
Shawn M.

For the non-linkers in the crowd, Katz has this to say: "Once the Illini get into the league, there are only three likely trouble spots -- at Wisconsin on Jan. 25, at Michigan State on Feb. 1 and at Iowa on Feb. 19 -- that could derail this club from running the table."

Anyway, no, Shawn, I don't think you're wrong about this. In fact, I think you're spot-on right about this. The chances are very very very slim that anyone will run the table in the Big Ten.

BONUS Wonk waffle: However, in a year in which the Lakers were beaten easily in the Finals and the Yankees blew a 3-0 lead in the ALCS, Wonk has found he looks smarter longer by avoiding all waffle-less statements and predictions.

Wonk,

One thing I wanted to look a little closer at....you ended your points per weighted shot (PPWS) post by showing how many points Illinois and Indiana would score given equal field goal and free throw attempts.

However, if you multiply each component by the team's corresponding rate FG/FT shooting pct., you get a[n] (insignificantly) different result.

Take it easy,
Ryan K.

Ryan, who runs the excellent and woefully unduplicated at other Big Ten schools Hawkeye Hoops blog, alludes correctly to some bases Wonk left untouched in yesterday's post, where your intrepid blogger held up the points per weighted shot stat (PPWS) not only as an evaluative measure but also as a predictive tool for a player's or team's scoring output. Ryan's point, phrased in a decorous tone that belies its impregnability, is simply: hey, if you want to predict points, so-called Wonk, I have a novel thought. How about multiplying shooting percentage by attempts?

True enough. So let Wonk be clear: this PPWS is thus far feeling like a really interesting way of comparing apples (Dee Brown) to oranges (Kelvin Torbert). By collapsing all shot attempts--two's, three's and FT's--into a single points-driven figure it may turn out that it really does achieve some cognitive cogency in evaluating disparate player types. But it does so at the cost of some numerical symmetry. And, besides, all predictive tools are mushy. That's why we watch the games.

Thanks for the customarily close read, Ryan!
  7:39 AM
Monday, December 13, 2004
 
Wonk's Preseason All-Head-Case Team: WATN?
Wonk has a major announcement upcoming with regard to his All-Wonk Team, however, today your intrepid blogger wants to look at his Preseason All-Head-Case Team to see how they're doing and specifically whether or not they still merit this prestigious honor. So without further ado, here are the five players selected a few weeks ago by the crack staff on Wonk's Head Case Desk....

Bracey Wright, Indiana. This is a propitious moment to examine Wright's head-case bona fides because he's coming off indisputably his best game of the year: 31 points in the Hoosiers' loss against Kentucky (see below). But then Wright has had big games before (39 points in last season's game against North Texas) only to return to tried and true head-case ways. So Wonk says Wright stays for now but let this be a warning: a few more games like this, young man, and you're going to lose your spot.

Pierre Pierce, Iowa. Before the season began Wonk referred to Pierce as the "human turnover." Well, not to put too fine a point on it, he still is, averaging 3.8 gifts for the opponent ("From Pierre, thought you could use this") per game. Add in a .486 percentage shooting from the line and you've got one strong head-case resume: Pierce stays.

Paul Davis, Michigan State. Editors refer to certain headlines as "slugs," ones that are always true and can be inserted any time there's space to fill. "Mideast peace process at a crossroads," "Jim Carrey over acts and isn't funny in latest release," and "Consistency is an ongoing issue for MSU's Davis"--these are all slugs. The last example is an actual headline from three days ago. Davis stays.

Nick Smith, Illinois. Let's cut to the chase: not only can Wonk say that Smith stays, your intrepid blogger is thinking seriously of naming a national award--the head-case equivalent of the Wooden--after Smith. (Although Wonk still likes the sound of the Crispin Glover Head-Case Award). Anyone who saw Saturday's game between the Illini and Oregon knows whereof I am about to speak....Three minutes left in a game that's been decided long ago, Smith is called for a foul that will not influence the outcome of the game one whit, and he promptly gets T'd up for flinging the ball down the court, thus indulging in and exhibiting to the world precisely the kind of team-damaging "petulant hissy fit" that Wonk alluded to in naming Smith to the preseason team in the first place. (Bruce Weber was at least able to find humor in it after the game, telling reporters, "There was somebody open and [Smith] was throwing it down the court for an outlet.") Smith will be a first-ballot inductee into the Head-Case Hall of Fame.

Daniel Horton, Michigan. Horton's injured and the easy thing would be to bump him off the team on that account. But you know what? At the risk of being monotonous: Horton stays. These "likely out four weeks" injuries have had a way of morphing into "really out for two weeks" lately. Horton could be back sooner than we think. His play thus far this year has been demonstrably uninspired. And he still attracts polite but unmistakably we-can't-figure-you-out think pieces like this one from Wolverine beat reporters. Daniel, we'll keep your spot for you until you get back. Then we'll talk.

PPWS is sweeping the nation!
Wonk has been playing with a stat for points per field goal attempt lately and seeing if it can be of any use. On Friday your intrepid blogger outlined his reasons for re-naming this stat points per weighted shot (PPWS): it is based on both FGA's and FTA's and in effect yields a figure that predicts how many points a player or team will score in a game. Just plug in the number of attempts from the field and the line and PPWS does the rest. Wonk woke up this morning, at least, preferring this stat to a more familiar points-per-shot figure (PPS--which espn.com actually seems to have incorporated in its player tracking) because it takes in all points scored and not just made field goals.

And your intrepid blogger can pledge to likely prefer this stat over the long haul to a points per possession stat for an even more important reason--it's easier to figure, requiring only three numbers: points, FGA's and FTA's. (In case you didn't notice, Wonk comes from the J.J. Gittes school of statistical analysis.) Besides, those seeking current points-per-possession data on Big Ten play need look no further than this outstanding post from yesterday on the Hawkeye Hoops blog. (The difference between a stat measuring points through the denominator of shot-attempts and one that does so through the denominator of possessions seems to Wonk to come down to the difference between measuring yards in football via plays from scrimmage on the one hand or drives/possessions on the other. Both are valid.)

Enough preliminaries. Latest PPWS numbers, including all games played to date:

Team PPWS
1. Illinois (1.26)
2. Michigan State (1.23)
3. Ohio State (1.19)
4. Iowa (1.19)
5. Minnesota (1.15)
6. Wisconsin (1.11)
7. Penn State (1.09)
8. Michigan (1.03)
9. Northwestern (1.02)
10. Purdue (0.93)
11. Indiana (0.91)

What it means. Give Illinois a game with 55 FGA's and 20 FTA's and they'll score 80 points. Give the same number of shots to Indiana and they'll score 58.

Highest Individual PPWS
1. Dee Brown, Illinois (1.51)
2. Roger Powell, Illinois (1.46)
3. Je'Kel Foster, Ohio State (1.42)
4. Alan Anderson, Michigan State (1.42)
5. Jeff Horner, Iowa (1.41)
6. J.J. Sullinger, Ohio State (1.40)
7. Luther Head, Illinois (1.40)
8. Maurice Ager, Michigan State (1.36)
9. James Augustine, Illinois (1.36)
10. Kelvin Torbert, Michigan State (1.36)

Lowest Individual PPWS
1. David Teague, Purdue (0.68)
2. Nick Smith, Illinois (0.74)
3. Ron Coleman, Michigan (0.84)
4. Drew Neitzel, Michigan State (0.85)
5. Davor Duvancic, Northwestern (0.88)
6. Dion Harris, Michigan (0.93)
7. Brian Butch, Wisconsin (0.93)
8. Marshall Strickland, Indiana (0.94)
9. Brandon McKnight, Purdue (0.95)
10. Robert Vaden, Indiana (0.95)

Give Dee Brown 12 FGA's and six FTA's and he'll score 22 points. Give David Teague the same number of shots and he'll score 10.

In yesterday's less Wonk-ish venues....
Illinois beat Oregon 83-66 at the United Center in Chicago Saturday afternoon. (Links here, here, and here. View from the Ducks' pond here.) This was the Illini's most impressive victory of the year precisely because they looked so mediocre in the process. As Wonk so sagaciously and modestly forecast, Illinois played this game with heavy legs, having endured four games in four different arenas in eight days. Oregon is young, yes, but they're also talented, very well-coached, and they played a smart and disciplined game. And they were never really in it and they lost by 17. The always quotable Rick Morrissey of the Chicago Tribune says, "There hasn't been this much excitement for a game at the United Center since Michael Jordan was a Bull and the Bulls were an NBA team."

Meanwhile, sophomore forward Brian Randle says he wants to return by the second week in January. Randle injured his hand in practice in November after punching a wall in frustration. He is scheduled to have the pins removed December 23. Bruce Weber sounds less enthusiastic than Randle about the 6'7" Peoria native not redshirting but allows that the Illini might need Randle this year if other injuries occur.

Kentucky beat Indiana 73-58 Saturday at Freedom Hall in Louisville. (Links here and here.) Wonk All-Head Case first-teamer Bracey Wright, taking over for Marshall Strickland, played about half the game at point guard and put up 31 points and one assist. Um, meaning Wright brought the ball up and shot it, which, with where the Hoosiers are at right now, may be about the best "system" Mike Davis can put on the floor.

BONUS token Wonk moment of fair and balanced reporting: Wright played half the game at point and coughed up just one turnover to the Wildcats' pressure D.

Purdue beat Colorado State 69-68 Saturday in West Lafayette. (Links here and here.) Meanwhile, Gene Keady is anticipating adding Boilermaker tight end Charles Davis to the roster once Joe Tiller's men have played in the Sun Bowl on December 31. The 6'6" 265-pounder hasn't played competitive basketball since high school but Wonk saw him interviewed courtside during the Oklahoma game and he seems affable enough. (No sarcasm intended: Wonk is a firm believer in leadership stemming from attitude as much as from performance. In the case of the seemingly dour (except for Carl Landry) Boilermakers, maybe Davis will stir the tanks, in Apollo 13 parlance...although, I guess that was kind of what started the whole problem on board the spacecraft--never mind, bad metaphor.)

Michigan State beat Stanford 78-53 Saturday at the Palace in Auburn Hills. (Links here, here, here, and here.) Bob Wojnowski of the Detroit News says the Spartans "should be a major Big Ten contender, and they are, although not in Illinois' class." Yo, Bob! Read up on your Big Ten Wonk archives! State doesn't need to be in the Illini's class--leaving aside whether they are or not--because the schedule gives them a head-start: Tom Izzo and his men don't go to Champaign this year. Verily, Wonk says to the Spartan faithful: take care of business on February 1 when Illinois comes to the Breslin Center and you will find such class distinctions archaic.

Michigan beat South Florida 71-62 in Ann Arbor Saturday. (Links here, here, and here.)

Pittsburgh beat Penn State 84-71 in State College Saturday. (Links here and here.) An impostor put on Aaron Johnson's Nittany Lion jersey and slipped past security onto the floor at the Bryce Jordan Center, apparently, because the box score shows "Johnson" with only two boards. Still, Penn State shot a surprisingly robust .479 (including 11-of-22 on their three's) against the vaunted Panther D. Who-dat PSU freshman Mike Walker drained four three's and the Nittany Lions became the first Pitt opponent to eclipse 70 points since Notre Dame did so on January 12.

BONUS proof of Wonk's rigorous and exacting adjectival use: The aforementioned who-dat, PSU freshman Mike Walker, is referred to as "Matt" in this write up from the Harrisburg Patriot-News.

Minnesota beat Central Michigan in Minneapolis Saturday. (Links here and here.)

Ohio State beat Portland State 78-54 in Columbus Saturday. (Link here.)

Marquette beat Wisconsin 63-54 at the Bradley Center in Milwaukee Saturday night. (Link here.) The Badgers were beat senseless on the boards, being outrebounded by the Golden Eagles to the tune of 44-28. The game also featured a big performance from Travis Diener (29 points) and a mid-court finger-pointing session between Bo Ryan and Tom Crean. Without having personally witnessed the altercation, Wonk presumptuously and without any evidence sides with Crean.

(Reports that Crean was accusing Ryan of having hit on his wife could not be confirmed.)

Question to Wonk's Badger readers: what's the deal with Brian Butch? He's a 6'11" McDonald's All-American, we were all told and sold on what a great addition he'd be, and here the guy is averaging 12 minutes and five points a game. (Not to mention bottoming out on Wonk's points per weighted shot (PPWS) stat: 62nd out of 68 players.) Is this freshman jitters? Is he clashing with Ryan? What's going on? Clue Wonk in.

In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
Preparations for the Final Four are already underway in the host city of St. Louis.

More from the Rodney Dangerfield desk: See Gregg Doyel of cbs.sportsline refer to Purdue's Matt Kiefer as "Adam" here.

Iowa's Jeff Horner gets some too-long-delayed print love here. "Much of what Horner does isn't measurable by some fancy web site formula," says Susan Harman of the Iowa City Press-Citizen. Wow. Wonk's never been called fancy. I don't know quite what to say....

All you fans of Illinois' Jack Ingram who've been deluging Wonk with complaints that you just can't get enough Ingram coverage: get your Jack Ingram profile here. Meanwhile, coach Bruce Weber says the Illini can use the upcoming off week (i.e., finals week) to get in the gym and practice. Illinois does not play until this Sunday when it hosts Valparaiso, the fine school which the Wonk Mom attended her freshman year before transferring to Illinois. Wonk's Senior Wonk Mom Bureau Chief has learned on an EXCLUSIVE basis that Ms. Gasaway plans to arrive at the game wearing a Valpo sweatshirt and then, with precisely ten minutes remaining in the first half, switch to a U of I sweatshirt.

BONUS priceless school name coverage: In his tireless quest to bring you the latest Big Ten info, Wonk trolls some pretty out of the way spots and came across this snippet on the Illinois state elementary school girls basketball tournament. In Normal, IL, there is an elementary school called Epiphany. When written up in out-of-town papers the name becomes: Normal Epiphany. If any of Wonk's readers have struggling garage bands, your intrepid blogger thinks you could put your group on the road to cult status, hit single, stardom, charges of selling out, substance abuse, and "Behind the Music" with a name like Normal Epiphany.

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  7:51 AM
Saturday, December 11, 2004
 
In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
Nine of the conference's teams play today. As for the other two: Iowa beat Iowa State 70-63 last night (links here, here, and here); and Northwestern, uh, I don't know what the Wildcats are doing today, actually. If you do, let me know....

Michigan hosts South Florida today. (Link here.) The Wolverines will be without three starters: Lester Abram (out for the year), Daniel Horton (out for four weeks), and Graham Brown (out for four to six weeks).

Purdue hosts Colorado State today. (Links here and here.) The Boilermakers will be without the services of starting forward Matt Kiefer, expected to miss six weeks after undergoing surgery yesterday to repair a torn meniscus in his right knee. As absurd as the question sounds when speaking of a Big Ten team playing a home game against Colorado State: can the Boilers win today? Hard to tell. On the one hand, the Rams lost by 10 at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis (IUPUI). On the other hand, they only lost by three at Auburn.

BONUS Purdue-Colorado State rivalry note: The Boilermakers lost last year's game in Fort Collins 71-69 when Colorado State's Michael Morris made two three's in the final seven-tenths of a second. No, not a typo, just intriguing home-court clock operation at Moby Arena--and since the game wasn't televised there was no monitor for the refs to look at. Rams fans call that game the Miracle in Moby.

Minnesota hosts Central Michigan today. (Link here.)

Indiana plays Kentucky in Freedom Hall in Louisville today. (Links here and here.) Yes, Indiana's schedule is tough and they've lost some games. This much we know. But Wonk feels few understand just how deep the Hoosiers' problems really go. For starters, see yesterday's post.

Illinois plays Oregon today in the United Center in Chicago. (Links here, here, and here.) The Illini are tired, having played four games in eight days. The Ducks are young, starting two freshmen, two sophomores, and a junior. Wonk knows it's only December, but: even after three ugly wins since the Wake Forest game, Illinois still leads in the nation in assists.

Penn State hosts Pittsburgh today. (Links here and here.) Wonk knows it's only December, but: the Nittany Lions' Aaron Johnson is third in the nation in rebounding. Alert readers please note: Wonk does not pose the absurd question here that he posed above regarding Purdue's game today. Wonk saw Pitt devour Memphis in the Jimmy V. Classic and the Panthers looked tough.

Michigan State plays Stanford today at The Palace in Auburn Hills. (Link here.) Doctor Schedule's got the cure for what ails the Spartans: a next-to-home game against a Stanford team that ain't what it used to be. Meanwhile, Jemele Hill of the Detroit Free Press chips in with today's Trying to Figure Out Paul Davis piece here.

Ohio State hosts Portland State tonight (link here) in the first game played since OSU Athletic Directory Andy Geiger announced that the Buckeyes were self-imposing a ban on postseason play in light of former coach Jim O'Brien's admission that he gave $6,000 in 1999 to a recruit's family. This decision had to come as unwelcome news to all the team's seniors, of course, but especially to Tony Stockman, who transferred from Clemson with the stated intention of joining a team that would make it to the dance. (More here.)

Wisconsin plays Marquette at the Bradley Center in Milwaukee tonight. (Links here and here.)

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Looks like the Points per Field Goal Attempt stat only measures how efficient a team is when it comes to scoring points.

Good weblog.

Kevin O.

Kevin refers to yesterday's post where Wonk applied and provisionally renamed a stat conceived by John Hollinger to Big Ten numbers recorded thus far. And he's exactly right--offense is but half the picture and Wonk's blog will grapple with the whole vast canvas of Big Ten stats as the year unfurls. So stay tuned to this blog, alert readers, for more keen numeric insights.

Thanks, Kevin!
  6:54 AM
Friday, December 10, 2004
 
No big dance for the Buckeyes
The Ohio State University announced yesterday it is imposing a one-year postseason ban on its men's basketball team in response to payments made by former coach Jim O'Brien to one-time recruit Alesksandr Radojevic. O'Brien has reportedly admitted that he gave Radojevic $6,000 in 1999. The former Ohio State coach has maintained the money was intended as a loan for Radojevic's mother. Radojevic never played for the Buckeyes.

In announcing the self-imposed ban, Ohio State athletic director Andy Geiger said the Buckeyes would not compete in either the NCAA or NIT tournaments, but would play in the Big Ten tournament. This raises the possibility, as with Michigan's similar self-imposed ban in 2003, that a team prohibited from play in the NCAA tournament could take a bid away from the Big Ten by winning the conference tournament.

No Horton for the Wolverines
Michigan's Daniel Horton is expected to miss four weeks due to a sprained left knee suffered in practice Sunday. (Links here and here.) This would mean Horton is unavailable for at least the next seven games on the Wolverines' schedule, including a game next Saturday at UCLA and Michigan's conference opener January 5 at Iowa.

Stat validity defined: Illinois is first and Purdue and Indiana are last
Wonk is trotting a points-per-field-goal-attempt stat through its paces, seeing if it can be of any use. Yesterday's post used the term literally and divided a team's total points by its number of field goal attempts.

Upon reading further into the matter, however, Wonk has incorporated a wrinkle, developed by John Hollinger, that takes into account (a weighted measure of) the number of free-throws attempted by a player or team. The good news is the stat is based on three readily available numbers: PTS/(FGA + 0.44(FTA)). (Read here for the reasoning.)

By taking FTA's into account, Hollinger's stat attempts to measure both the team that burns it up from the field and the team that doesn't put up gaudy FGM/FGA numbers because it's busy driving to the basket, drawing the contact, and sinking their free-throws.

With this adjustment the stat seems to track reality pretty well. See below: Illinois is on top and Indiana's at the bottom. The Illini's Dee Brown is having a slightly better year by this measure than anyone else in the conference and David Teague of Purdue is having a much worse year than anyone else.

But its name, points per field goal attempt (PPFGA), strikes Wonk as misleading: it is not points per field goal attempt. Your intrepid blogger gets to make the rules on this page and he proposes to call this stat points per weighted shot (PPWS).

Here's what it looks like as of this morning (i.e., including the Illini's win at Georgetown last night):

Team PPWS
1. Illinois: 1.24
2. Michigan State: 1.23
3. Iowa: 1.21
4. Ohio State: 1.21
5. Minnesota: 1.14
6. Wisconsin: 1.14
7. Penn State: 1.08
8. Northwestern: 1.02
9. Michigan: 1.02
10. Purdue: 0.92
11. Indiana: 0.88

Highest Individual PPWS
1. Dee Brown, Illinois: 1.52
2. Brent Lawson, Minnesota: 1.48
3. Roger Powell, Illinois: 1.47
4. J.J. Sullinger, Ohio State: 1.45
5. Jeff Horner, Iowa: 1.43
6. Kelvin Torbert, Michigan State: 1.43
7. Ivan Harris, Ohio State: 1.40
8. Alan Anderson, Michigan State: 1.39
9. Aaron Robinson, Minnesota: 1.38
10. Chris Hill, Michigan State: 1.36

Lowest Individual PPWS
1. David Teague, Purdue: 0.53
2. Davor Duvancic, Northwestern: 0.88
3. Dion Harris, Michigan: 0.92
4. Robert Vaden, Indiana: 0.94
5. Marshall Strickland, Indiana: 0.95
6. Mohamed Hachad, Northwestern: 0.95
7. Dan Coleman, Minnesota: 0.95
8. Brandon Fuss-Cheatham, Ohio State: 0.96
9. Bracey Wright, Indiana: 0.96
10. Brandon McKnight, Purdue: 0.97

Numerical confirmation for what your eyes tell you
Note how Indiana is in a lose-lose situation. There are a finite number of shot attempts to be taken in a game and the Hoosiers' chances of winning are materially damaged no matter who's jacking up the latest brick from the field or from the line: Bracey Wright, Marshall Strickland, and Robert Vaden rank 55th, 59th, and 60th, respectively, out of 63 Big Ten starters and key reserves roped in on a customarily arbitrary basis by Wonk.

Somebody please foul the guy
Ohio State's Ivan Harris is averaging 22 minutes a game and yet he has not attempted a single free-throw so far this year. Meanwhile, Illinois reserve guard Rich McBride attempted his first two free throws of the year last night at Georgetown.

All-Wonk Team: Polls are still open
Keep those nominations for the All-Wonk team coming! Alert readers will recall that Wonk threw the selection over to you all in the wake of All-Wonk selection Lester Abram's season-ending injury. Send in your nomination here and remember the criteria: not necessarily the biggest talents or gaudiest stats, just guys you'd want in your foxhole.

In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
Watching Illinois play sluggishly for the first 15 minutes at Georgetown last night, Wonk wondered what the "game flow" graphic on the espn.com write up would look like for the Illini's 74-59 win. Here it is and it tells an accurate tale: ugly, ugly, ugly, oh...um, never mind. (More links here, here, and here. View from the Hoyas' turf here.) Illinois trailed for more minutes in the first half last night (11) than in the rest of the season combined (10) but broke the game open with a 24-3 run that spanned both halves.

Iowa hosts Iowa State tonight. The Cyclones are coming off their home win over Virginia. (Links here and here.)

Dave Dye of the Detroit News chips in with today's Trying to Figure Out Michigan State's Paul Davis piece here.

Gregg Doyel of cbs.sportsline looks at the state of basketball in the state of Wisconsin and says Wisconsin and Marquette are thriving by keeping the home-grown talent close to home.

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  7:28 AM
Thursday, December 09, 2004
 
Is Ohio State being overlooked?
Statistics from non-conference play are, of course, questionable. And when viewed comparatively across teams, they're downright iffy: they reflect mostly which opponents each coach has chosen to play. And yet....

Wonk can't help noticing what an intriguing stat line Ohio State has put up thus far:

First in the Big Ten in three-point shooting, turnover margin, and field goal percentage defense (tie).

Second in three-point defense and assist/turnover ratio.

Third in scoring margin and scoring defense.

Interesting....

Call Coach Majerus and order up some oh-fense
Mike DeCourcy of the Sporting News says the Big Ten is down. He's right.

Last night traditional conference stalwarts Indiana and Purdue scored a total of 103 points between them in double-digit losses at home to unranked nonconference opponents. Notre Dame won at Indiana 55-45 (links here and here) and Oklahoma won at Purdue 66-48 (links here and here).

The Hoosiers and Boilermakers are at the bottom of the Big Ten in field goal percentage and, along with Northwestern, in scoring offense. More tellingly, perhaps, Purdue and Indiana are at the bottom of the conference in points per field goal attempt:

1. Iowa 1.44
2. Michigan State 1.43
3. Minnesota 1.40
4. Illinois 1.38
5. Wisconsin 1.37
6. Ohio State 1.33
7. Penn State 1.29
8. Michigan 1.17
9. Northwestern 1.12
10. Purdue 1.07
11. Indiana 1.05

This number (discussed here on the College Basketball Blog yesterday) has the feel of a classic pass-fail stat. Wonk isn't ready to pick Iowa to win the Big Ten because they lead Michigan State in PPFGA by .001. In fact, the top five teams are all within .07 points per FGA and the top seven are within .015: pretty much a wash. But look how Indiana and Purdue lag well behind the leaders. (And note the surprisingly poor showing by Michigan, as well.)

Defense is customarily spoken of as a difference-maker in college basketball because it is assumed players can score: they're recruited out of high school on that basis and on the assumption that they can be taught defense. But Indiana and Purdue aren't meeting this threshold assumption this year. They just can't score.

Gophers playing defense?
Minnesota's 57-48 win at Nebraska last night was a surprise. (Links here, here, and here.) The Gophers hadn't won a true road game against a nonconference opponent in four years. But what was even more surprising was that they did it with defense, something that's been in short supply in the Dan Monson era. Nebraska's not North Carolina but they did come into the year with some promising newcomers and were expected to be slightly better than last year's club, a team that beat Kansas and took Oklahoma State into overtime in Stillwater.

But last night the Huskers were held to .333 shooting and just 22 second-half points by Monson's who-dat's. Vincent Grier, he of the Latrell Sprewell twin hair-sprouts, hit two big three's in the final two minutes to lead a 15-0 run for the Gophers.

(So how in the world did this team lose on its home floor to Florida State?)

EXCLUSIVE Wonk investigative report: Wonk gets results!
As of yesterday, the main men's basketball page on the Big Ten's official website at long last no longer carries a link to "Q&A with Kris Humphries," a story that had been posted to bigten.org on December 16, 2003. (Note to archivists: this link still works.)

That's right. For 357 days, hard-working middle-class American families had to struggle on day-to-day knowing they lived in a country with a major-college athletic conference web site that acted as if Kris Humphries were still in college.

Wonk is not too modest to point out to any potential Pulitzer nominating-committee readers (it's G-A-S-A-W-A-Y) that I owned this story, pillorying unfeeling fat-cat Big Ten plutocrats with hard-hitting posts here, here, and here. Let's face it: Wonk left the New York Times and Washington Post desperately playing catch-up, eating my dust, and doing the best they could with my leavings. Your intrepid blogger is currently proofing galleys on the behind-the-scenes book that will detail late-night meetings with anonymous sources in parking garages and that will no doubt lead to a major motion picture starring George Clooney as Wonk and Nicole Kidman as the Wonk Wife.

In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
Illinois plays at Georgetown tonight. (Links here, here, and here. View from the Hoyas' turf here.) The Hoyas enter the game 3-1, having opened the season with an 18-point loss at home to Temple before posting wins against the Citadel, Davidson, and Penn State. The last time Georgetown beat a #1 team was February 27, 1985, when Patrick Ewing led the Hoyas over Chris Mullin and St. John's, 85-69.

Meanwhile, the Illinois-Oregon game will proceed as scheduled this Saturday at the United Center in Chicago, despite calls from some faculty and student groups in Eugene to cancel the game as a protest against the U of I's continued use of Chief Illiniwek as its symbol. The teams are scheduled to play again next year in Portland and the two schools have agreed that the Chief will not perform at halftime at that game. (More here and here.)

Mark Stewart of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel says Wisconsin is playing good perimeter defense. Vic Feuerherd of the Wisconsin State Journal says Marquette's Travis Diener won't be at full-speed in Saturday's game against the Badgers in Milwaukee due to an ankle sprain suffered in practice Monday.

Jeff Rice of the Centre Daily Times says Penn State's Ben Luber is expected to return to action in Saturday's game against Pittsburgh in State College. Luber's been out three weeks due to what the team terms personal reasons.

Grant Wahl of cnnsi.com says Illinois, "Georgia Tech, Oklahoma State, and North Carolina are playing better than anyone, but if there's a first among equals, it's Illinois."

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Yesterday Wonk expressed his eagerness to see Oklahoma State play at Kansas and to see the Jayhawks play at OSU. The ever-alert readership points out, however, that your intrepid blogger will have to wait a while for one of those games....

Oklahoma State will visit Lawrence this year, but the Jayhawks don't have to go to Stillwater. The vagaries of the Big 12's schedule rob the Jayhawks of the old home-and-home with the Sooners and Cowboys (and prevents the assumption of such a series w/ Texas).

Not a huge deal in the end, it always seems like the home team in those big one-off games will be the beneficiary when it comes to winning the league, but there always seem to be enough unexpected results to minimize the effect.

Bret LaGree
hoopinion.blogspot.com

Thanks, Bret! (Note to all other alert readers: Wonk likes and highly recommends Bret's Jayhawkcentric blog.)
  7:41 AM
Wednesday, December 08, 2004
 
The All-Wonk Team has a vacancy
Michigan' s Lester Abram is out for the season. Who merits Abram's spot on the All-Wonk Team? Send in your nominations here and remember the criteria: not necessarily the biggest talents or gaudiest stats; just guys you'd want in your foxhole.

Game of the year? Maybe. Not.
On Monday your intrepid blogger said he was really looking forward to last night's Syracuse-Oklahoma State contest, a game the Cowboys ended up winning by the deceivingly comfortable score of 74-60. (Recaps from the national commentariat here and here.) Despite being a hard-fought defensive struggle--too ugly to be a "classic"--the game left Wonk very impressed with OSU, a senior-heavy team whose best pure talent may just be freshman JamesOn "Not a Typo!" Curry. When you see a freshman in December making passes that are Magic-esque, verily Wonk says: remember the name. And the Cowboys' veterans--John Lucas, Joey Graham, Ivan McFarlin, et. al.--play with the comfortably weary complementary mastery of the 2004 Pistons. Wonk is a Big Ten fan but he'll find time to watch when Kansas goes to Stillwater and when the Cowboys visit Lawrence.

Link out of this blog and read this. Now.
Wonk doesn't usually tout today's other articles in the top-half of the blog (official blog motto: poor-man's Tuesday Morning Quarterback on the top; slavish mimicry of The Note on the bottom) but Kyle Veltrop and Mike DeCourcy of the Sporting News have written a gem: an account of the preparations of both teams leading up to last week's Wake Forest-Illinois game.

A taste:

Monday, Wake Forest 1:05 p.m....There still is some cleanup to do from the Deacons' tight victory over Arizona in the Preseason NIT title game. Chris Paul went 2-of-11 from the field, his poorest offensive game, and assistant Dino Gaudio wants to show him why.

He runs clips of 11 plays for Paul, showing him each time how he overpenetrated. Gaudio asks a simple question: How many of their guys are in the lane? Clearly, the answer is three. "You can't beat all of them," Gaudio says.

Bloggers moan and wail about the mainstream media but if Wonk had the access, mission-statement, and expense account of a card-carrying MSM'er, this is the kind of thing I would want to write: informative and perceptive but built on legwork. Well done, Kyle and Mike.

Better than 1?
With Illinois perched atop the polls as a consensus number 1, Wonk indulges in some parlor-game speculation and poses the following scary question: would the Illini be even better today had Bill Self chosen to stay as head coach in April 2003 instead of leaving to take the Kansas job? (Or, if you like, think of it in even more O. Henry-esque terms: would Illinois be even better if North Carolina's Sean May had not injured his foot in practice in December 2002, which resulted in a catastrophic 17-15 season for the Tar Heels, which resulted in the firing of Matt Doherty, which resulted in the hiring of Roy Williams, which resulted in the vacancy that lured Self away from Illinois--the only such vacancy that could have done so, if Self is to be believed?)

Would Illinois be even better? The arguments on either side might run like this:

No. First of all there is nothing better than number 1. Second, the precise qualities for which the Illini are being praised--selfless (har!) ball movement on offense and hustling help defense--were somewhat or even greatly diminished under Self, whether because of the different system (Self ran a high-post offense with lots of high-low action; Bruce Weber runs a motion offense wherein the 5 can be and often is out by the arc setting screens) or merely the different developmental stages of the players (today's starting five all played under Self and they all--most strikingly Luther Head--play much better defense today than two years ago).

Yes. For one thing Connecticut's Charlie Villanueva would be wearing an Illinois jersey. He'd committed to Illinois and when Self took the Kansas job Villanueva looked long and hard at Kansas before choosing the Huskies. His play is often listless, it's true, but it's at least the listless play of a 6'11" former McDonald's All-American. And who's to say that Self would not have landed Missouri's Kalen Grimes? Or that--before bolting to the NBA, which he doubtless would have done in any event--Peoria product and current LA Clipper Shaun Livingston would not have at least declared for Illinois, as he did for Duke, giving the Illini the resulting prestige and in-state recruiting hegemony? Lastly, the Illini almost certainly would not have suffered as they did last December and January. Without struggling to learn a new system and adapt to a new coach, Illinois would have suffered fewer losses, secured a higher seeding in the tournament, and gone further, thus resulting in an even stronger program going into this season.

Wonk doesn't know one way or the other. No one does. But I'll close with the following words on behalf of both coaches.

In defense of Self: though not putting up the gaudy assist-to-field-goal percentages that are currently the talk of the national hoops commentariat, Illinois teams under Self did lead the Big Ten in assists. As for defense, the 2002-03 team was young and young teams, generally, don't play defense well. But Self's other two (older) Illinois teams did defend well--just ask Kansas, completely shut down in the 2001 regional semi's, despite starting three future NBA players: Drew Gooden, Kirk Hinrich, and Nick Collison. (Wonk still remembers what Frank Williams did on defense to Hinrich in that game, with Bill Walton doing the commentary and raving in Walton-esque hyperbole all the while, and wonders how Williams can't find a starting spot in the NBA.)

In defense of Weber: Villanueva is no loss--better to have him jogging up the court, missing three's and getting into foul trouble in Storrs than in Champaign. And Self was able to land recruits like Dee Brown and Deron Williams in large part because they saw, rightly, opportunities for playing time. (Conversely, with Brown and Williams established in the program and projected for minutes far into the future, legendary recruiter Self lost Brown's high school teammate Shannon Brown to Tom Izzo and Michigan State.) The test for Weber is who he can land now that those minutes are once again becoming available in the near future.

Beware the Hoyas
The always interesting Ken Pomeroy blogged yesterday on Georgetown, whom Illinois will face tomorrow night in Washington DC. Thus far this year the Hoyas rank fourth in the nation in fewest possessions per game, meaning they play a slow game--to be expected, perhaps, when your coach is John Thompson III, late of Princeton.

In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
First Michigan lost Lester Abram for the year. Then Graham Brown went down for four to six weeks. And now comes news that Wonk All-Head-Case first teamer Daniel Horton suffered a knee injury in practice Monday and was scheduled to have an MRI last night. Still, even a depleted Michigan team was able to handle a not very scrappy High Point squad in Ann Arbor last night, 67-53. (Links here and here.)

Iowa held off an unsurprisingly scrappy (see yesterday's post) Northern Iowa team in Iowa City last night, 76-73. (Excellent recap over at the Hawkeye Hoops blog. Mainstream links here and here.)

Wisconsin beat Wisconsin-Green Bay in Madison last night by the not-as-close-as-it-sounds score of 65-55. (Links here and here.)

Indiana hosts Notre Dame tonight. Bold Wonk prediction: close game--see yesterday's post. (Game preview here.)

Purdue hosts Oklahoma tonight. Bold Wonk prediction: bad second half for the Boilers--see Saturday's post. (Links here and here. Wonk hesitates to say the water's out of the tub but Gene Keady really is going to start former walk-on Andrew Ford tonight.) The Sooners will be without the services of sophomore guard Lawrence McKenzie, ruled indefinitely ineligible due to his actions off the court during the Great Alaska Shootout. McKenzie was bailed out of an Anchorage, Alaska, jail by an assistant coach at 2 in the morning that weekend after he allegedly tried (i.e., failed) to enter a bar there using a fake ID. (More here.)

Gregg Doyel of cbs.sportsline says it's too bad Gene Keady's illustrious Purdue career has to end with this particular group here.

Minnesota plays at Nebraska tonight. (Links here and here.)

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  7:58 AM
Tuesday, December 07, 2004
 
1
Illinois was ranked number 1 in the nation yesterday in both the ESPN/USA Today poll and, barely, the AP. A December number 1 ranking plainly means nothing. One of the first thoughts that occurred to Wonk, don't know why, was that Alabama was a December number 1 two years ago. They went on to barely make the NCAA tournament and lost in the first round at the Fleet Center in Boston to Indiana (subsequently devoured by Pitt). So it's a distinction without meaning. Illinois will lose a game and number 2 or 3 or 4 will move up.

But it's a rare meaningless distinction, at least for Illinois fans. The last time the Illini were atop the polls was January 1989 and it was but a one-week stay. They had just defeated Georgia Tech in overtime at home, a game in which Kendall Gill was injured. (Coincidentally enough, Gill was signed yesterday by the Milwaukee Bucks.) Illinois went on to lose their first game without Gill, at Minnesota, and three more without him as well, before welcoming him back, reaching the Final Four, and losing in the national semi's to eventual national champion Michigan on a Sean Higgins tip-in. Yes, it's rare and, obviously, memorable.

So enjoy your time at the top, Illini. Many Illinois players have come and gone without this particular "meaningless distinction."

1?
Illinois limped along on tired legs to a 78-59 win over Chicago State in a surprisingly subdued (and surprisingly un-orange) Assembly Hall last night. (Links here and here.) Said Dee Brown aptly, "It was a fun game. Boring, but fun." The Illini will be happy come Saturday night. They're in the midst of a virtually NBA-esque 11-day five-game stretch that includes games at Georgetown this Thursday and against Oregon in the United Center in Chicago this Saturday.

Sportswriters are a tougher audience than coaches
Michigan State is 16th in the ESPN/USA Today poll and 20th in the AP.

Coaches are a tougher audience than sportswriters
Iowa is 17th in the AP and 24th in the ESPN/USA Today.

Guaranteed lowest point-spreads
Every game Indiana's played this year has been decided by seven points or less. Western Illinois or North Carolina: doesn't matter, it's going to be close.

EXCLUSIVE Wonk investigative report: Shame of a Nation, Day 356
The diligent professionals at the Big Ten press offices continue to maintain a link on the conference's main men's basketball page to this story: "Q&A with Kris Humphries." This was originally posted, mind you, on December 16, 2003.

Meticulous can't-be-rushed antiquarians of the Big Ten's web content group, Wonk salutes you! In fact, Wonk thinks you've got a pretty sweet gig if your boss looks to you for new content only every year or so. Watch for still more fast-breaking stories coming soon from the tireless scriveners at Big Ten HQ:

"Illinois is Number 1! President Truman Wires Congrats to Johnny 'Red' Kerr"

"An Appreciation of John Wooden: Purdue Sophomore Looks Promising"

"Expansion Again on the Table for the Big Ten: U. of Chicago Opposed"

In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
Penn State lost at Georgetown last night, 66-53. (Links here and here.)

Iowa hosts Northern Iowa tonight. (Links here and here.) An NCAA tournament team last year, the Panthers have already knocked off Iowa State this season (who, in turn, beat Virginia by two points last night in Ames). And since Iowa's beaten Drake this year this can fairly be termed the state championship game.

Wisconsin hosts Wisconsin-Green Bay tonight and excitement is building to a fever pitch for a game that marks the reunion of former Indian Hills Community College roommates Zach Morley (now with Wisconsin) and Javier Mendiburu (Wisconsin-Green Bay). Want to read more? In God's name, why? Link here, if you feel you must. More here.

EXCLUSIVE Wonk warning to journalism students. You major in journalism, you graduate, you get a job with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and your assignments editor tells you to write a story on the reunion of former Indian Hills Community College roommates Zach Morley and Javier Mendiburu. Wonk thinks this paragraph should be included in the college catalogue, next to Journ. 101.

Michigan hosts High Point tonight. (Link here.)

Tom Izzo grouses about his Michigan State team here, but says Chris Hill can be both a quiet guy and an effective point guard while the Waiting for Neitzel continues. "You don't have to be demonstrative like Mateen Cleaves or myself. Charlie Bell was not a demonstrative point guard in any way, shape, or form, but he made sure people knew what they had to do and where they had to be."

In his "Weekly Watch," Andy Katz of espn.com says of Illinois: "The Illini's dismantling of Wake Forest was the most impressive performance of the year, to date. Illinois looked like it could be in St. Louis today."

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Wonk,

Good post on State this morning. There seem to be two different ways that State fans are thinking about this GW loss, and I'm not yet clear which side of the fence I'm on.

Argument #1: Izzo's teams are always a little shaky/inconsistent early on in the year, so the GW loss is bad, but not a disaster. Most folks who feel this way point to the Wright State loss early in the national championship year. They also point out that Izzo teams are always markedly better later in the year (including last year, with the exception of the slaughter at Champaign).

Adding to this belief is that the GW loss does not resemble last year's awkward early-season defeats (Oklahoma, etc.), and really resembles no game at all from last year with the exception of the aforementioned Illinois debacle. Last year, the team played hard, often looked good, but didn't have the "it" to pull any big games out. In the GW game this weekend, we were just completely incompetent against an adequate team. This is actually a positive, because we know the team isn't terrible, so this must have just been a bad weekend.

Argument #2: The GW loss is indicative of a complete lack of growth from last year, and the only solution is for Hill, Torbert, et. al., to graduate and then rebuild from the Neitzel up. These folks say that our seniors play hard, represent the school well, and are very talented, but will never ever win any championships, Big Ten or otherwise, because they just don't have it in them.

As I said, I'm not sure which is the correct interpretation, and we may not find out until the NCAA tourney this year, since State has a relatively favorable schedule for the rest of the way.

Regards,
Shawn M.

Great email, Shawn. (Didn't the Wright State loss in 1999-2000 come while Cleaves was injured and sitting out?)

Wonk will remain studiously and ponderously agnostic on whether to favor Argument 1 or 2. Except to say that the book on this generation of Spartans seems to be morphing before our eyes into an almost Steve Lavin-era UCLA kind of profile: tremendous talent; who knows if they'll show up but if they do then you're in trouble. What was endearing about the Flint-stone era Spartans, by contrast (even for an Illinois fan whose team was always losing to Izzo's), was that they brought the "A" game every night. Cold shooting didn't matter to State because they would shut you down on your end and rebound the misses on both ends.
  5:42 AM
Monday, December 06, 2004
 
George Washington 96, Michigan State 83
Does the Spartans' loss Saturday to GW look a little better this morning knowing that the Colonials went on to beat Maryland yesterday? Yes, a little, but Michigan State's loss to George Washington in the BB&T Classic in Washington DC is still the most disappointing loss yet for the Big Ten. (Link here.) Disappointing because on paper State is the conference's best shot at at least a second top-10 team. Maybe disaster/injury will befall Illinois and we'll be talking no top-10's. Maybe Wisconsin, Iowa, and Michigan will stun the world and we'll be talking five. I don't say never to either. What I do say (and said, on this blog's second day of life) is that a Michigan State team that was ranked a preseason #3 in the nation last year and, in effect, returns everyone this year has legitimate top-10 potential. Spartan fans, who thus far have been Wonk's most diligent and insightful correspondents, agree.

But their performance Saturday was far from top-10. "I'm going to have to find lineups that are going to play harder," Tom Izzo said afterward. "The best players don't always play the hardest." His comments were pointed at multiple targets but bulls-eye number 1 was being sported by Wonk All-Head-Case selection Paul Davis, who posted an anemic line of seven points and four boards in 19 minutes.

Proof it's not 2000 anymore: the Colonials grabbed 15 offensive boards. Against a Tom Izzo team.

Don't get me wrong. GW is a good team. They beat Maryland yesterday and they gave Wake Forest a game in the Preseason NIT. They're expected to be at or near the top in the A-10 this year.

But this loss hurts. It hurts Michigan State most obviously and directly. But it also hurts Illinois. And Wisconsin. And Iowa and Michigan and any other team whose shot at the dance is real enough to worry about its seeding. The trap that the Big Ten has found itself in for the past couple years is that teams lose games like this, games that drive the RPI down. Then, when your NCAA-bound Big Ten team loses at Iowa or at Purdue or at Indiana, that shows up as a "bad loss" on the resume come early March because losing on the home floor of the fifth- or sixth-best team in the conference is no longer viewed as pardonable. And then your conference champion gets a 4- or 5-seed. Even if you win a couple tournament games in impressive fashion, you get Duke in the regional semi's. (Can you tell it's a bitter Illinois fan talking?)

Inside-the-Beltway coverage-of-the-coverage note: The Detroit Free Press had their troops deployed in aloha-land for the football Spartans' season-ending game against Hawaii. Any sentient being would prefer Oahu in December to DC, surely, but it did reduce the Freep to the humiliation of running only this wire story on the biggest story in Spartans basketball thus far this year. And the Detroit News doesn't even have that excuse for running the same story because it ran the wire story on the Hawaii game, as well. Not the MSM's best day.

The All-Wonk Team loses a member
As first reported by the aforementioned Detroit News yesterday, Michigan's Lester Abram has decided to undergo surgery on his injured left shoulder, meaning the All-Wonk selection will miss the rest of the year and will take a medical redshirt. As alert readers know, Wonk believes Abram is the Wolverines' single most important player--in ways that go beyond the fact that he is their leading returning scorer. (Translation: he's not young and he's not a head-case.) Losing him will be a blow.

While not a comparable loss, having center Graham Brown miss four to six weeks due to a hernia will also hurt the Wolverines' depth.

Remember the Hogs
Illinois beat Arkansas 72-60 Saturday in North Little Rock. (Links here, here, here, and here. Views from the Razorbacks' turf here and here.) The Illini saved their worst eight minutes of basketball for the start of the second half, turning the ball over five times on five unforced errors. Arkansas guard Ronnie Brewer has NBA potential, yes, but during that stretch Illinois made him look like he was already there. On a day when the Illini guards were bothered by the length of the young Hogs, Roger Powell came to the rescue, posting a double-double with 19 points and 11 boards. The Hogs have talent, a good coach in Stan Heath, and they are young. You'll be hearing from them.

How bad was Connecticut Saturday?
Fairly bad if they could only beat Indiana by five at the friendly confines of the Hartford Civic Center: Saturday's final was Huskies 74, Hoosiers 69. (Links here and here.) Who'd-a-thunk the Huskies would miss Ben Gordon more than Emeka Okafor? Apparently they do. They've still got plenty of athletes and shot-blockers down low (two words: Rudy Gay; third word: wow) but they showed zero ability to run a half-court set--or a break when they got a chance--on their own floor (in effect) against a struggling opponent. Indiana, meanwhile, jacked up a notable 71 attempts which helped Connecticut record a notable 53 rebounds. Hoosier beat writers raved about the sudden emergence of an allegedly potent Indiana offense--which shot .324 from the field. Wonk All-Head-Case first-teamer Bracey Wright scored 28, yes, but he needed almost as many attempts (24) to do it and went just 3-of-12 on his three's. What's that spell? With no disrespect to our Big Ten brethren Hoosiers, it spells an abysmal day for Connecticut, one on which they were fortunate to win.

Deja-vu alert: Wonk moonlights on another blog
Yoni Cohen, the hoops polymath behind the industry-standard College Basketball Blog and, not to put too fine a point on it, the hardest working man in college-hoops blogging, is taking a much deserved vacation. So he's asked Wonk, and five other dudes with free time, to do some guest-blogging on his site in his absence. From time to time over the next couple weeks, then, you'll be seeing items in this space labeled as appearing simultaneously over there. Think of them as BONUS non-Big-Ten notes. Such as this....

Game of the year. Maybe.
Last week's Wake Forest-Illinois game drew an almost Final Four-esque plurality of the national hoops commentariat. When Jay Bilas, Bill Raftery, Mike DeCourcy, Andy Katz, and Luke Winn are all under one roof, something is afoot.

What was not afoot, alas, was a good game. But there's a little get-together tomorrow night that, for my money, has all the promise of last week's game, if not more. I can't wait for Syracuse-Oklahoma State, the nightcap at the Jimmy V. Classic in Madison Square Garden.

A non-Big-East type such as your intrepid blogger turns his gaze upon this year's Orangemen and discovers with a start that they still have the same 4 and 5, Hakim Warrick and Craig Forth, that created such match-up problems for an extremely talented Kansas team in a national title game that seems like ten years ago now. Warrick and Forth were to 'Melo what Ortiz is to Ramirez: the talent that surrounds you alters how the opponent plays you. Forth may seem like a 7-foot water heater but he is 7 feet: in the aforementioned national title game he was guarded by the equally tectonic Jeff Graves. Nick Collison drew Warrick, which left a certain 3 for the Orangemen being guarded by Keith Langford, giving up four inches and claiming no advantage in quickness. The Jayhawks, knowing their man needed help, swarmed to Anthony with multiple defenders whenever he touched the ball. So Anthony dished assists and the 'Cuse got big games from Gerry McNamara, Billy Edelin, et. al. With the exception of a certain Denver Nugget, every name in the paragraph is still there. The Orangemen are clearly one of the top six teams in the nation.

So are the Cowboys and, I swear, I felt that way before they beat a major-conference foe by the score of 81-29. The hosannas currently raining down on Illinois--their execution on offense, their patience, their efficiency that outstrips their personnel on paper--have been, or should have been, directed to Stillwater, Oklahoma, for longer than the past ten days. This is a team, after all, that led the nation in field goal percentage last year. And that's just on offense. Having watched his Washington State team score just 29 points against OSU, Cougars coach Dick Bennett (no slouch he when it comes to D) said simply: "I have not run into, in my 40 years, that kind of defensive intensity for as long as they played it."

Should be a great game.

In yesterday's less Wonk-ish venues....
Michigan beat Notre Dame 61-60 in Ann Arbor Saturday afternoon. (Links here and here.) The Irish led and controlled this game for much of the second half but Daniel Horton made the play of the day in the final minute: making a steal, driving to the other end, hitting the layup, drawing the foul, and sinking the freebie. With one last shot at the win, Irish coach Mike Brey, oddly, went with a 1-4 isolation set for the struggling Chris Thomas (two points all afternoon), instead of giving the ball to the emerging Arizona transfer Dennis Latimore (18 points).

Minnesota defeated Holy Cross in Minneapolis Saturday afternoon, 72-56. (Link here.) Wonk knows it's only December, but: Vincent Grier, the Gophers' juco-transfer wing, is leading the Big Ten in scoring with 19.8 points per game.

Wisconsin beat Rutgers in Piscataway, NJ, Saturday night, 70-62. (Links here and here.)

Northwestern defeated Chicago State 78-53 in Evanston Saturday night. (Links here and here.)

Iowa beat UNC-Greensboro Saturday night 83-58 in Iowa City in the title game of the hosts' Hawkeye Classic. (Good recap at the Hawkeye Hoops blog. Mainstream links here and here.)

In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
Michigan State beat George Mason 66-60 in the consolation game of the BB&T Classic in Washington DC yesterday. (Links here, here, and here.) As threatened in the aftermath of Saturday's loss to George Washington (see above), Tom Izzo pulled both Paul Davis and Shannon Brown from the starting lineup for this game. "I didn't change the lineup, they did," Izzo said. "There are standards they have to meet and if they don't meet them, they change the lineup." Said it before and will say it again: Wonk likes Izzo.

Meanwhile, Andy Katz of espn.com trods a very, very well-worn path and tries to figure out Davis here.

Penn State plays at Georgetown tonight. (Links here and here.) Wonk knows it's only December, but: the Nittany Lions' Aaron Johnson is fourth in the nation in rebounding, averaging 12.4 boards per game.

Illinois hosts Chicago State tonight. (Links here and here.) The Cougars are 0-4, with losses against UCLA, Texas Southern, Wisconsin-Green Bay, and Northwestern.

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  6:21 AM
Saturday, December 04, 2004
 
Mystery solved
During the Duke-Michigan State game Tuesday night, when Paul Davis went to the line in the second half, a strange chant arose from the Cameron Crazies. "What are they saying?" Wonk wondered aloud. No one else watching with Wonk could understand the chant, either.

They were chanting "Caroline." They'd heard it was the name of an ex of the big man's. Say this for the Crazies. They do their due diligence.

In yesterday afternoon's less Wonk-ish venues....
Frank Burlison of the Sporting News, posting at a time when bashful politicians are issuing bad-news press releases (Friday afternoon at 3), thought he could sneak this past Wonk. Wrong! Burlison says: "After seeing most everyone play over the first three weeks of the season, I'd say Weber's Illini team is a solid notch better than anyone else right now. Its offensive explosiveness and efficiency (both in transition and half-court settings), selflessness and commitment to sound defense appear almost at April-level."

In today's less Wonk-ish venues
Memphis beat Purdue in West Lafayette last night, 62-51. (Links here and here.) The Boilermakers led this game with 14 minutes to go but shot only 6-of-26 in the second half. In their last three games, all losses, Purdue has been outscored in the second half by an average of nine points. Wonk hesitates to say the water's out of the tub but it's not exactly reassuring to hear coach Gene Keady muse that the answer to the Boilermakers' woes might be a shake-up in the rotation that gives more playing time to...Andrew Ford and Chris Hartley.

Iowa advanced to the championship game of its Hawkeye Classic with an 88-53 victory last night over a not very scrappy Centenary squad. (Links here and here.) In the Classic's other game, North Carolina-Greensboro defeated Southern Mississippi, thus denying the locals the opportunity of seeing former Iowa State coach Larry Eustachy pit his Southern Miss team against the Hawkeyes.

Penn State beat Lock Haven in Happy Valley last night by the notably lopsided score of 94-46. (Link here.)

Michigan State plays George Washington this afternoon in the BB&T Classic in the MCI Center in Washington DC. (Game-day preview here.) A win for the Spartans would set up a likely game against Maryland tomorrow.

Indiana plays at Connecticut this afternoon. (Game-day preview here.) Gregg Doyel of cbs.sportsline says coach Mike Davis can't be feeling too comfortable these days in light of what's befallen Tyrone Willingham and Indiana football coach Gerry DiNardo.

Illinois plays Arkansas at Alltel Arena in North Little Rock this afternoon. (Game-day previews here, here, and here. View from the Razorbacks' turf here.) Arkansas is coached by former Tom Izzo assistant Stan Heath.

Michigan hosts Notre Dame today. (Game-day preview here.)

Wisconsin plays at Rutgers tonight. (Game-day preview here.)

Also: Northwestern hosts Chicago State tonight.

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  10:17 AM
Friday, December 03, 2004
 
BONUS Friday catch-up edition
It's been a lively week, what with Wonk's 'round-the-most-convenient-parts-of-the-clock coverage of the ACC/Big Ten Challenge and all, and Wonk has let even more things than usual slip through the cracks....

Wow, Wonk provides bulletin-board material
On Monday Wonk made the fatal error of starting a sentence with "One thing we do know is...." Wonk warning: never start a sentence with "One thing we do know is." It will prove only there is one thing you don't know. You could write, "One thing we do know is that John Madden will not win the swimsuit competition at the Miss World pageant," and then, lo and behold, he'd run out and get some liposuction and implants in the right places and eke out a victory over both Miss Sweden and Michael Moore. Just don't do it.

Oblivious to his own warning, Wonk, in the aftermath of the surprisingly easy victory posted by Illinois over Gonzaga, proclaimed smugly: "One thing we do know is that Gonzaga had no business being in the top 25." No doubt enraged by this post (and, perhaps, by an earlier one which lashed into the Bulldogs' hometown paper, the Spokane Spokesman-Review, for having the temerity to be a paid site), the Zags took to the court Wednesday night--while Wonk and every other person east of Coeur d' Alene was fixated on Wake Forest-Illinois--and thumped 14th-ranked Washington, 99-87.

Wonk's Senior Spokane Bureau Chief reports that the Bulldogs took the floor in a cold fury, chanting "We'll show Wonk!"

In Wonk's defense your intrepid blogger did say that Adam Morrison (game-high 26 points against the Illini and, monotonously enough, game-high 26 points against the Huskies) had game and that the Bulldogs would get better as the season went along. Just didn't know it would be this fast.

The missing links
Wonk encourages any readers who have not already done so to utilize the handy link permanently offered on this page to Ken Pomeroy's blog. Pomeroy posts on topics and questions that Wonk has been mulling in his head and tackles them with a degree of precision and savvy that makes your intrepid blogger glad he didn't fumble around with them in pixels after all. This much Wonk knew. But this week Pomeroy caught all of a game that Wonk saw only in snatches and put up a customarily outstanding post. Those who seek better blogging on the Georgia Tech-Michigan game than that found in Wonk's thin five-sentence gruel, look no further: link here.

Speaking of good links, Wonk was delighted this week to encounter a blog from a fellow Big Ten fellow who deftly takes in everyone and everything from hoops to Condi Rice. Purdue grad Matt May blogs a good game. Link here for a great Bruce Weber story based on Matt's own personal experience: it's Mean Joe Greene Coke commercial-good. And link here for a simile whose time has come: Peter Jennings as Yoda. Keep the good stuff coming, Matt!

Head-case clarification
Your intrepid blogger's Wednesday post on the Duke-Michigan State game noted that, after a fantastic first eight minutes, Wonk All-Head-Case first-teamer Paul Davis "disappeared for the balance of the game." Alert reader Dave N. wrote in to say I was being too hard on Davis. After all, Dave pointed out, the big guy can't make the plays if he doesn't get the touches. Wonk agrees! My point was that what I called "this generation of Spartans" has a habit of disappearing en masse, as it were, and that State needs a player who can impose Izzo's will on the floor--a will that, certainly, would include getting more touches for a post player who's started the game red-hot.

Only college hoops blog with regular Crispin Glover updates
Yesterday Wonk strayed from his Big Ten beat long enough to remark that North Carolina's Rashad McCants is a head case and that in fact he "is out there in Crispin Glover territory." Known primarily for his portrayal of George McFly in Back to the Future, Glover cemented his reputation for all time as a head-case's head-case in an infamous 1987 interview with David Letterman in which he wore a wig and platform shoes and, more to the point, came within inches of kicking Letterman in the face.

This much Wonk knew. But now alert reader Shawn M., who bids fair to join alert readers Dave N. and Jason H. as a regular contributor to this blog, points out that Glover actually recorded an album in 1989, The Big Problem Does Not Equal the Solution. Tracks include Glover's cover of "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'," "Never Say 'Never' to Always," and Wonk's personal favorite after a long day, "Selected Readings from Rat Catching." Enjoy!

In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
Preseason All-Wonk selection Lester Abram of Michigan underwent an MRI on his left shoulder yesterday. (Link here.) Abram has missed four games thus far this season. (The Wolverines host Notre Dame tomorrow.)

Purdue hosts Memphis tonight (game previews here and here). Meanwhile, Wonk salutes Purdue guard David Teague, winner of today's Blinding Flash of the Obvious Award. Shooting .120 from the field (not a typo, nor even a good batting average) since returning from a broken hand, Teague states with appropriate insider knowledge, "Our offensive execution is not where we want it to be right now."

Mike DeCourcy of the Sporting News has a very good farewell profile of Purdue coach Gene Keady here.

Iowa hosts Centenary tonight in the opening round of the Hawkeye Challenge, an event being talked about in the state of Iowa primarily because it marks the return of former Iowa State coach Larry Eustachy, back in the neighborhood as the coach of Southern Mississippi. See the Hawkeye Hoops blog for this Challenge preview; previews of tonight's game here and here.

Penn State hosts Lock Haven tonight, as seen yesterday in this blog's "pasty shelf" feature. Additional (i.e., real) game preview here.

Continuing its year-long tribute to the nonconference schedule played by Tom Izzo in 2003-04, Indiana plays at Connecticut tomorrow. Meanwhile, indefatigable Indiana beat writer Terry Hutchens of the Indianapolis Star is out with the latest installment of his excellent Q&A forum here. (Hoosier fans are still obsessed with why local boy Sean May didn't choose Indiana--three years after the fact. Wonk imagines morose and pathetic Indiana fans engaging that estimable and time-honored college breakup activity, the drink-and-dial: calling May at 2 in the morning and insisting they can still make things work out.)

Illinois plays Arkansas tomorrow at Alltel Arena in North Little Rock. Get your feet-on-the-ground-themed day-before game previews here and here.

Michigan State faces George Washington in the opening round of the BB&T Classic at the MCI Center in Washington DC tomorrow. (Day-before game preview here.) A win would set up a likely meeting with Maryland on Sunday.

Luke Winn of cnnsi.com says that with their win Tuesday night over a tough Maryland team, Wisconsin proved they will be in the hunt for the Big Ten title. The Badgers play at Rutgers tomorrow.

Other games tomorrow: Minnesota hosts Holy Cross and Northwestern hosts Chicago State.

Jay Bilas has his wrap on the ACC/Big Ten Challenge filed inside the paid portion of espn.com. Read the first three paragraphs free of charge here. (If any of Wonk's alert readers subscribe and if I'm missing anything good, please let me know.)

Gregg Doyel of cbs.sportsline is out with his ACC/Big Ten Challenge wrap and says: Michigan State's Drew Neitzel is not ready for prime time; Wisconsin's backcourt is going to be OK after all, Pepperdine notwithstanding; Indiana is a mid-major in a major conference; Illinois has the best backcourt in the nation; and Ohio State guard and Clemson transfer Tony Stockman has matured into a senior leader.

Rabid anti-ACC conspiracy theorists take note! Illinois tops Dick Vitale's list of most impressive performers in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge. Wow. Two places above Duke on Dookie V's list. Wonk has rubbed his eyes and looked at it three times but it really appears to be so. EXCLUSIVE Wonk forecast of the next equally epochal paradigm-shifting occurrence. Four words: Billy Packer, "American Idol."

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  8:23 AM
Thursday, December 02, 2004
 
Brawl in the Hall, wall-to-wall: Paul stalls and 1 falls
For the second game in a row, Wonk's beloved Illinois blew a ranked opponent completely off the floor (score with eight minutes left: 81-49) and then left behind a deceivingly normal final score, beating #1 Wake Forest last night 91-73.

It's the pass-and-shoot, stupid: The Illini are doing what they're doing with movement--on both ends of the floor. (And, not to belabor the obvious, with good shooting: .541 from the floor for the year, good for fourth in the nation). There are two categories in which Illinois leads the nation this morning: assists and assist-to-turnover ratio. The Illini are averaging an absolutely absurd 24.4 assists a game.

Think of it as very nearly five assists per position per game.

Last year Deron Williams was the only player in the entire Big Ten to average more than five assists a game.

Nor, as Mike DeCourcy rightly points out, are these numbers inflated by walkovers against Delaware State, Florida A&M, and Oakland. The assist numbers have actually been better against Gonzaga and Wake Forest. Deron Williams had foul trouble all night last night and he still notched 11 assists in only 25 minutes. Just sick.

The assist numbers are all the more remarkable when you consider that Illinois has a starter, Roger Powell, who has a grand total of just two assists thus far this year. Bill Raftery wasn't kidding last night when he said that if Powell gets the ball, there's a shot about to happen. No one's complaining so far, though, because Powell is shooting an I-guess-that's-acceptable .757 from the floor. (Bold Wonk prediction: as the season progresses that number will go down.)

On D, the Illini are compensating for a lack of size on the interior (the aforementioned Powell is 6'6" and playing a 4-spot he inherited from the 6'10" Brian Cook, now with the LA Lakers) by double-teaming the post and rotating off the ball. Sounds simple, is simple, but, when every guy does it on every play, it works: ask Ronny Turiaf. It takes legs and commitment and, so far, Illinois has only had to do it for a half to salt the game away. That commitment will need to remain, however, because there will be nights in East Lansing or Madison when the game is not over at halftime and the Illini are not shooting .541.

Who are those guys?
This is what the national punditry is asking this morning (see below). Wonk sez: They're the same as they were last year, really, with two big exceptions. In order of importance they are:

Luther Head. Who knew that a guy known primarily for his hops and, really, given a starting spot by default would become such a complete player? Not even his teammates. After the Gonzaga game Deron Williams fielded a softball question intended for Head by saying, "Luther just learned to pass this year." There is truth in the good-natured abuse. Head leads Illinois in scoring (17.2) and is second in assists (6.8). Putting these kinds of numbers alongside a Dee Brown and a Deron Williams puts any team over the tipping-point.

Dee Brown. Wonk felt Brown was a bit misunderstood by the national punditry last year. Brown might fairly be said to have captivated all comers his freshman year with his speed, of course, and his promise. So he was named preseason POY in the conference last year and then when his shooting stayed the same as it was his freshman year (nothing special), he was tagged as overrated.

Wonk says: unfair. The thing to remember about Brown was articulated last week by Doug Altenberger, of all people, a former Illinois player who does analysis on some of the ESPN Plus feeds for Big Ten games. In an allusion that made Wonk slap his forehead and say "Of course!" Altenberger likened Brown to that holiest of Illini holies, Ken Battle, the hustling floor leader of the 1989 Final Four team. Perfect comparison: Brown elevates the play of his teammates through a force of will that far exceeds his height or talent. (Recruited heavily in high school by Tom Izzo, Brown is precisely what the Spartans are hoping Drew Neitzel becomes--soon.)

But what's different this year, of course, is that Brown is shooting the rock: .636 from the field and .555 on his three's. Those numbers will come down to earth as the games roll by but opponents will still be confronted with a guy who can shoot the three and at the same time has been acknowledged by everyone for three years to be as quick as anyone in the country. Good combination, that.

Brawl in the Hall: day-after hype
Know the "MSM Pundits" box on Yoni Cohen's industry-standard College Basketball Blog? A notable plurality of these mainstream media pundits were in attendance last night and they're all out in pixels this morning with Champaign bylines....

Mike DeCourcy of the Sporting News was once a skeptic when it came to the Illini but has now repented and seen the light. Say this for the man--he can write:

Seeing as how so many members of the NCAA Tournament selection committee are just good people, given how much they'll have to squeeze into a single weekend next March, I thought it might be nice to take a little work off their hands. So I'm going to suggest they go ahead and fill in Illinois as a No. 1 seed right now.

That's right. We're five games in to the season, one day into December, and they can book the Illini for one of four available positions at the top of the bracket. Kansas, Oklahoma State, Georgia Tech, Kentucky and all the rest will be competing for one fewer spot.

Illinois is that good. Its schedule is that safe. Its league is that suspect. The Illini won't go undefeated, because no one does, but they'll be buying in the neighborhood. Where might they lose? Non-league games against Oregon, Missouri and Cincinnati are on neutral floors. They face Big Ten road games at Wisconsin and Michigan State. Let's say they lose both. There might not be any others.

Luke Winn of cnnsi.com gives his props to Luther Head: "[Dee] Brown matched Head's scoring output with 16 points, but it was Head who took the bulk of the assignment of guarding [Chris] Paul one-on-one, keeping Wake's All-American from asserting himself on offense and ensuring that Illinois had the dominant transition game. With all the energy he exerted hounding Paul, Head still had enough left in the tank to hit 4-of-6 from beyond the arc, and rack up five rebounds and five assists against just one turnover."

Andy Katz of espn.com says the game was a blur: Illinois "was so quick to make shots, let alone attempt them that it seemed like Wake Forest never even had a chance....[snip] The Illini aren't a fluke offensively. Gonzaga coach Mark Few said Tuesday that he couldn't get over how well Illinois shared the ball." This team, Katz says, is truly selfless (har!).

In ACC-land: Rob Daniels of the Greensboro News-Record made the trip and reports: "If you thought the Deacons were quick--and they are--you should see the Illini. Perpetual motion, a horde of players with great first and second steps and smooth passing combined to get everybody open. Right wing, left wing, right baseline, left baseline. Half-court, transition, anything in between."...David Scott of the Charlotte Observer, clearly a writer of Wonk-ish sensibilities, chips in with this gem: "The Champaign News-Gazette, in a spread that covered much of its front sports page Wednesday, compared the Deacons' appearance in Champaign with others in the past 25 years that included Bill Clinton, Frank Sinatra, and Billy Graham. Those three all had better nights in Champaign than the Deacons."

And in this blog's traditional less Wonk-ish venues: Chicago Sun-Times columnist Jay Mariotti (link): "Remember, we are conditioned in these parts to expect heartbreak from hyped-up sports teams, even those not associated with billy goats and lame quarterbacks. But perhaps the Illini can cut through the evil karma with fabulous guards, quality depth, invaluable experience and a chemistry that defies the gimme-the-rock mentality of our nation's hoops youth."...The always quotable Mike Nadel, columnist for Copley News Service, leads with: "Even taking the selection committee's East Coast bias into account, a 33-0 record should be good enough for Illinois to score a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament, right?" (Don't worry folks, he's kidding.)...Chicago Tribune columnist Mike Downey says Illinois is clearly number 1--for now....More here, here, here, here, and here.

Guaranteed to be the only Digger Phelps kudo all year
Former coach. Too loud. Hand gestures. If you're thinking this must be an ESPN analyst, you're right! It's Digger Phelps, who ordinarily triggers a Pavlovian instinct in Wonk to lunge for the mute button but who, let it be known, said all week long that Illinois would win because of superior defense. Well done, coach, and thank you for taking precious air time away from the surprisingly creepy Mike Jarvis, who, with his widely-spaced words and unctuous certainty in his own solemnity, reminds Wonk way too much of the guy who asks if you'd wish to view the casket now.

Thomas Wolfe was right
North Carolina won ugly in Bloomington last night, beating Indiana 70-63. Watching this game was a bit like watching Civil War geeks do a reenactment of the siege of Petersburg: after a reasonable exposure you just knew (unlike Dick Vitale) that Carolina wasn't going to blow this open but you also knew there was absolutely zero chance of the offensively-challenged Hoosiers getting over the hump. (Just look at the "game flow" graphic--new wrinkle that Wonk loves--on the espn.com writeup here: at a glance it tells an accurate tale of a game continuously poised between upset and tedium.) Inveterate iconoclast Gregg Doyel of cbs.sportsline resisted the urge to go to Champaign and landed instead in Hoosierland, where he reports, correctly, that Tar Heels big man and Bloomington native Sean May had a horrendous outing. (More here.) Indiana's Patrick Ewing, Jr., conversely, had another outstanding cameo (eight boards in just 16 minutes) and moves Wonk to repeat his Ewing Paradox: if this guy were on a better team, he'd be starting. (Explained here.)

BONUS non-Big-Ten note: After watching Rashad McCants at close range, your intrepid blogger feels he owes each and every member of Wonk's preseason All-Head-Case team an apology. Messrs. Bracey Wright, Pierre Pierce, Paul Davis, Nick Smith, and Daniel Horton may indeed be head cases but McCants is out there in Crispin Glover territory. The dude's buggy. Speaking of which...Does anyone else get the sense that Roy Williams is biding time until he can put his own stamp on Carolina? Where Kansas already plays and acts like very much Bill Self's team, Williams feels like a guy who's smiling patiently and racking up the W's yet complaining when he gets home every night about the tremendously talented yet very un-Williams-like team left to him by Matt Doherty.

Pastry shelf
Penn State has fearlessly scheduled a game against Lock Haven University for tomorrow night. With an enrollment of 4,240, LHU is located in Lock Haven, PA, population 9,149. Its Biological Sciences Department is so vital, apparently, that it lists no fewer than two “backup”s (Dr. Shonah Hunter and Dr. Joseph Calabrese) for its one Department Head (Dr. Ted Nuttall), presumably in the event that a crazed assassin seeks to garner unwarranted publicity for his sick cause by taking out the Biological Sciences Department Head at Lock Haven University.

Dr. Wonk’s crack team of senior investigative analysts has uncovered the following EXCLUSIVE: Drs. Hunter and Calabrese are not allowed to fly at the same time on the Biological Sciences Department jet, “Cytoplasm One,” and are shuttled to different underground bunkers at undisclosed locations as a further precaution. Proactive paranoids of the LHU Biological Sciences Department, Wonk salutes you!

Perhaps distracted by shadowy threats against their Biological Sciences Department Head, Lock Haven has started the year 0-3, with double-digit losses to Grand Valley State, Youngstown State, and the University of Charleston. Last year the Bald Eagles went 4-23 but, hey, they took some tough opponents down to the wire. We’re talking Missouri-Rolla (73-46), Cheyney (98-59), and Washburn (129-68). Think all LHU can do is lose the close ones? Just talk to any of their four vanquished foes: Fairmont State, Shippensburg, Slippery Rock, or Clarion. You’re next, Nittany Lions!

In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
Virginia beat Northwestern last night in Evanston by the all-you-need-to-know score of 48-44. (Links here and here.) Wonk swears it's something about Welsh-Ryan Arena. They've been playing ugly games like this in this barn for decades, since it was called McGaw Hall. I don't know if it's something to do with the lighting or the ventilation or some kind of Cubs-esque goat-based curse or what. All Wonk knows is that you could put the 1980s-era Showtime Lakers in Welsh-Ryan against a fair-to-middlin' high school team and the Lakers would get about 53 points.

Ohio State lost at Clemson last night, 80-73. (Link here.)

Penn State, keenly conscious of being left out of the ACC/Big Ten Challenge, went out and scheduled a high-profile cash-generating game at...Rutgers. The Nittany Lions won last night by the surprisingly lopsided score of 83-60. (Links here and here.)

Wonk back!
Don't just mutter ineffectually; email me!

Wonk,

Great site. I enjoy it quite a bit. However, I must point out something about your rather compelling "Neitzel or no Neitzel Hypothesis"- it is simultaneously spot on the money and dead wrong. But mostly dead wrong.

You're right that Neitzel probably won't improve our offensive efficiency much, and that our numbers will probably go down a little this year from last. But no Spartan fan cares: the reason we're so excited about the kid is that he can be, as you say, "the player who can impose Tom Izzo's will on the floor".

That's what you're missing here: Neitzel came in from HS with the rep of being a hard-nosed, knock-down leader, and that's exactly what we've been missing since Cleaves, Bell, et. al. left. That's the key to understanding the Neitzel hype.

Regards,
Shawn M.

Wonk agrees with your analysis word-for-word, Shawn, um, except for the "dead wrong" part.

Your intrepid blogger's been toying with the idea of printing up the Neitzel or No Neitzel Hypothesis on a handy refrigerator magnet so that it's always close at hand in emergencies. But for now allow me to simply grab the original post and reprint:

Michigan State’s numbers on offense—definitely in efficiency terms and likely in absolute terms—will be down this year from last year, Neitzel or no Neitzel.

Wonk still thinks it's likely this will come to pass, even with the string of stat-inflating pastries with which the Spartans opened their season. Thus it seems to Wonk that your points, Shawn, really boil down to two:

1) State can still have a great season and even a Final Four appearance with numbers on offense that are slightly down from last year. Wonk agrees! The original post forecast no doom and said only that Izzo would have to find a different way and not expect unconscious shooting two years running.

2) Neitzel can be the guy who gives the Spartans what they lack. It's too early to tell, of course, how Neitzel will actually pan out but as far as what's needed: Wonk agrees! The original post said Neitzel's most important contribution can be as a leader.

In other Wonk-back news, alert readers will recall yesterday's post where your intrepid blogger wondered aloud if "Bucks" was an Ohio-State-fan-accepted euphemism or merely the latest in a series of strange things uttered by Brent Musburger....

Wonk,

Good pick-up on Musburger's usage of Bucks in referring to the Buckeyes. While it may seem odd, your intrepid Ohio field reporter, who unlike a sideline reporter is actually somewhere useful, notes that his Ohio State friends do use the term Bucks as shorthand for Buckeyes. The term won't eclipse Buckeyes anytime soon in overall usage, or even Ohio State, but it does have some precedent.

BTWF (Big Ten Wonk Fan) and Ohio correspondent,
Jason H.

Case closed. Thanks, Jason!
  9:00 AM
Wednesday, December 01, 2004
 
Just watch: the mainstream media will distort Wonk's impassioned speech
Welcome to Day 3 of Wonk's EXCLUSIVE 'round-the-most-convenient-parts-of-the-clock coverage of the ACC/Big Ten Challenge! Wonk has lamely offered the following contrived simile as his narrative gimmick for the week: this too-early media-driven and over-analyzed but nevertheless genuinely compelling and eagerly anticipated competitive spectacle is nothing less than the Iowa Caucuses of hoops.

And so your intrepid blogger finds himself here, late on what has been a busy night, in the Val Air Ballroom, in West Des Moines, Iowa. With his dedicated core of loyal and hard-working Big Ten supporters and his laptop.

Maybe the results tonight have not been what we Big Ten fans had hoped. The ACC leads in the Challenge 4-1. The pundits all say we're finished. No one believes in us anymore.

But you know what....

You know something? Not only are we going to Champaign, Illinois! We're going to Clemson, South Carolina, and Bloomington, Indiana, and Evanston, Illinois! We're going to the BB&T Classic in Washington DC! And we're going to Hartford, and Freedom Hall in Louisville, and Pauley Pavilion, and Dallas! And then we're going to St. Louis! To the Final Four! To take back the National Championship!

We will not give up! We will not give up in Champaign! We will not give up in Clemson! We will not give up in Bloomington, or Evanston, Hartford, Louisville, Westwood, or Dallas! We will not quit now or ever! We want our college hoops back for ordinary Americans! And we're going to win in Champaign! And Clemson! And Bloomington! And Evanston! And Hartford! And Louisville! And Washington! And the Final Four in St. Louis!...

YEEEEAAAAARRRRGGGGGGHHHHHH!

Duke may be "down" but they're still Duke
While Dick Vitale and a suit whose name I refuse on principle to google chatted amiably about who gave how much to the Jimmy V. Foundation last night, Michigan State and Duke played one hell of a game called "basketball" in the Blue Devils' 81-74 win at home over the Spartans. (Links here, here, here, here, and here.) In one of the toughest venues for an opponent in all of sports, Wonk All-Head-Case first-teamer Paul Davis came out in the first eight minutes looking like Tim Duncan (nine points and four boards by the second TV timeout) and frankly had me reconsidering my selection of him for this dubious honor.

And then Davis disappeared for the balance of the game. This has been precisely the maddening MO of this generation of Spartans: Davis, Chris Hill (man, where was he last night?), Kelvin Torbert, Alan Anderson, Maurice Ager, et. al. They show flashes and indeed complete games characterized by brilliance and domination. But then they disappear. A promising start devolved into a flurry of turnovers (of the unforced-error variety) late in the first half. A sweet comeback (capped off by far and away the most spectacular dunk Wonk has seen this year--good grief, it was tasty: props to Shannon Brown) petered out amidst a succession of missed free throws.

We have all seen this disappearing act and we have all said: Michigan State remedies this by getting a true point guard. Well, yes, but, to drag Wonk's Neitzel or no Neitzel Hypothesis center-stage once again: this is a question primarily of leadership. Not assists, or turnovers, or points. Leadership. It pains a blogger to say that because he can't link to stats on something so nebulous. But, again, the truth is that last year's Spartans compare quite favorably on a statistical basis to the 2000 national champions or to any other team.

The Spartans have the skills. They need the player who can impose Tom Izzo's will on the floor. This is the one skill this generation of players has conspicuously lacked. (This would be Wonk's definition of the "it" that Detroit Free Press columnist Drew Sharp says Michigan State does not have.) Spartan beat writers can and will do coming-of-age and maturation stories on Davis and Hill and Torbert until they are blue in the face--it's been a cottage industry for three-plus years--but the fact is: these players still have not shown they possess this skill.

Proposed research topic for Wonk's grad-student readers
It's an empirical fact: when the play-by-play announcer says, "Let's go to Sideline Reporter X: whaddya got for us, X?" a spectacular play is about to happen and the crowd is about to erupt in a thunderous and prolonged chorus of screams that will completely drown out whatever extraneous lagniappe the sideline reporter was going to share. Last night midway through the first half at the precise moment when the sideline reporter whose name I refuse on principle to google uttered her first syllable, J.J. Redick drained a three from what Wonk conservatively estimates to have been 27 feet away, resulting in pandemonium and the complete auditory obliteration of whatever it was she wanted to tell us.

Why do sideline reporters exist? In a setting such as Cameron Indoor Stadium, they are "reporting" from literally just a few feet away from the announcers. It reminds Wonk of the absurd and increasingly prevalent cutaways during local news broadcasts where the anchor in the studio goes to a "live report" from a reporter "in the newsroom," in other words, across the hall.

Glass-is-half-full headline writers of the Detroit News, Wonk salutes you!
Actual headline this morning from a sidebar piece on the Duke-Michigan State game: "No embarrassment this time."

Brawl in the Hall: game-day hype
Wake Forest (ranked first in both the AP and ESPN/USA Today polls) plays at Illinois (ranked fifth in the AP, third in the ESPN/USA Today) tonight in the most keenly anticipated match up of the Challenge. While perhaps a little less plentiful than it otherwise might have been had Notre Dame football coach Tyrone Willingham not been fired yesterday (see below), the ink is flowing....Frank Burlison of the Sporting News sees tonight's game as a possible Final Four preview....Dan Collins of the Winston-Salem Journal wins this week's bet-on-the-Globetrotters award by publishing his courageous forecast that there will be a lot of orange in the Assembly Hall tonight....Lorenzo Perez of the Charlotte News & Observer shudders to think what "many in the 'look at me, I'm on TV!'" generation might do for a celebration if Illinois wins....Indefatigable Chicago Sun-Times Illini beat writer Herb Gould says Illinois is the last best hope for a state of sports fans stuck with the likes of the Bears, the Bulls, the Cubs and the White Sox....Who-dat Gould colleague Jim O'Donnell mails in this Dee Brown-led game-day piece....Luther Head-led game-day piece from the Chicago Tribune here....More here, here, and here.

Wonk on the march: in blogs!
Yesterday your intrepid blogger hastily tossed in a few words with little behind them (Wonk knows this will come as a surprise) but poor phrasing and Wonk's own dim memory. Well, OK, that pretty much describes yesterday's whole post, but in this instance I'm specifically referring to the part where I said I thought the first person I'd heard utter the words "Dookie V" was Lute Olson.

So imagine Wonk's horror when this reckless assertion was picked up and analyzed not only by the crack staff of research chimps over at Yoni Cohen's industry-standard College Basketball Blog but also, and this was even more mortifying, by the alert readers on Yoni's always lively Comments pages. Great, thought Wonk. A rare opportunity to be proven incontrovertibly wrong by both years and miles in indelible pixels....

Except a funny thing happened. Upon further review and much googling by others, Wonk's half-cocked statement has held up (so far): it appears the first instance of "Dookie V" in print can be traced to a Lute Olson press conference in the spring of 2001.

Wow. Unmediated expression of intuition proven correct. How Emersonian!

Wonk on the march: in mainstream media!
The vigilant sentinels on Wonk's crack Traffic Desk have noted a decided up-tick in readers (defined as: more than none) hailing from ACC country since Wonk landed a mention in this story by Rob Daniels in this morning's Greensboro News-Record. Wonk's old-fashioned shoe-leather reporting (defined as: sitting at my computer) on this week's explosive Illinois uniforms story (links here and here: it really cries out for a "-gate" suffix--send in your suggestions here) netted Wonk this particular cite. Be assured, faithful readers! Wonk would never compromise his considerable journalistic integrity by stooping to cheap flattery in a clumsy bid to win further mentions from Rob Daniels at the Greensboro News-Record, who, by the way, is the best reporter in the history of the species.

Announcing the "Mike Alden Perspicacity in Staffing" Award
Named in honor of the University of Missouri athletic director who hired Quin Snyder over then-Tulsa coach Bill Self in April 1999. Since that day Snyder’s Missouri teams have attracted more NCAA investigations than Jim Harrick while reaching one Elite Eight and going 103-66 (.609), never finishing higher than fifth in the Big 12. Over that same span Self’s teams at Tulsa, Illinois and Kansas have been to three Elite Eight’s and gone 137-38 (.783). Lacking even the learning ability possessed by house plants that instinctively turn toward the sun, Alden has cannily responded to this new data by signing Snyder to a contract that runs through the 2007-08 season.

The winner is: Notre Dame Athletic Director Kevin White, for his decision yesterday to fire head football coach Tyrone Willingham.

Wonk doesn't really follow college football (translation: I'm an Illinois fan) and certainly didn't follow the Fighting Irish this year. But Wonk does number among his friends numerous Notre Dame alums and has always admired the fanatical and indeed borderline-cultish bond that the university so often forges with its students. I had always fancied that said bond was rooted in something distinct and qualitatively removed from the norm of college athletics, even if I couldn't really define what, exactly, that "something" was.

But yesterday Notre Dame didn't just embrace the norm. They epitomized it. Yesterday the Irish merely looked like Florida. Or Colorado. Or Nebraska.

In today's less Wonk-ish venues....
Looking much younger than they actually are, Michigan was eaten alive at Georgia Tech last night, 99-68. (Links here and here.) The Wolverines were never in this one. Maybe the return of preseason All-Wonk selection Lester Abram will right Tommy Amaker's ship. Maybe, but last night did not bode well for Michigan's prospects on the road in the Big Ten this year. Let's just say it: they looked scared.

Wisconsin defeated Maryland in Madison last night, 69-64. (Links here, here, and here.) Alando Tucker carried the Badgers in the first half and Sharif Chambliss made some clutch shots down the stretch in the second. Chambliss has an uncanny knack for hitting shots despite ugly footwork, precisely the kind of shot he hit to beat these very same Badgers while he was still with Penn State in 2003 (link). (Speaking of uncanny knacks: for years Wonk has winced at the odd terms that Brent Musburger uses as if they are common sports verbiage but that in fact are peculiar to him. Last night he kept saying "three-ball." In years past Musburger has done Ohio State football games and invariably referred to the team as "the Bucks." Question to Buckeye readers: is this an acceptable usage? Clue Wonk in.)

Florida State beat Minnesota in Minneapolis last night, 70-69. (Links here, here, here, and here.) EXCLUSIVE Wonk expert analysis: losing at home to a team that's lost at home to Texas A&M Corpus Christi is not good.

Iowa, keenly conscious of being left out of the ACC/Big Ten Challenge, went out and scheduled a high-profile cash-generating game at...Drake. The Hawkeyes won last night, 91-75. (As always, excellent recap over at the Hawkeye Hoops blog. Mainstream links here, here, here, here, and here. Please use this last link if for no other reason than to gaze upon an egregiously large DMV-quality columnist photo. Sorry, girls, he's taken.)

Indiana hosts North Carolina tonight, a game that will feature Tar Heels big man Sean May playing in his hometown of Bloomington, Indiana. More here.

Northwestern hosts Virginia tonight. (Link here.)

Ohio State plays at Clemson tonight. (Link here.)

Wonk back!
Don't just mutter ineffectually; email me!
  7:33 AM



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