Topics to kick around the water cooler, or the local watering hole, as this week’s Big Ten tournament approaches:
*Wisconsin may have walked off with the regular-season title, but it is hardly a prohibitive favorite to claim the tournament championship in Indianapolis. The Badgers, an admirable blend of talents, have relied on their defense, which statistically is the best in the country.
“You can’t talk a good game defensively,” coach Bo Ryan said over the weekend. “You’ve got to get results, which for the most part [we have].”
That is important. Stinginess is often critical in the postseason, when games are tighter and every basket is prized.
Yet even Ryan knows the past guarantees nothing, which he acknowledged by immediately adding, “That’s not to say a team in the Big Ten tournament or the NCAA can’t get hot, can’t drain a bunch of threes, can’t do this, can’t do that.”
*This is not to dismiss the Badgers’ chances or to suggest they are now fat and sassy. One reason is their history. In 2002 and ’03, the last times they won the regular season, they lost their first game in the conference tournament. The other is their makeup.
“We all believe in each other,” forward Brian Butch said. “We all care about each other, on and off the floor. It’s not a fake thing by any means. Everybody cares, and everybody wants to be successful. It just keeps on growing and building. With success, you want more success.
“You kind of get greedy this time of the season. You realize the amount of basketball you have left to play is up to you.”
*Purdue, like Wisconsin, was a surprise in the regular season, and that is only appropriate. For the Boilermakers, like the Badgers, are an egalitarian crew featuring diversity rather than a superstar.
The only difference is the Boilermakers are far younger, with four freshmen and two sophomores, which is why coach Matt Painter was asked if he feared they might lose their legs late and crash into the wall. Painter fairly sneered at the idea.
“They hit it early in the year,” he said. “It was hard for all of them immediately. It hit everyone on the team around Christmastime, which is when they realized this is the way it is. You have to keep fighting. Mentally, they’ve done a good job with that.”
*It is also reasonable to wonder about the mental condition of Indiana, especially after its overtime loss Sunday to Penn State. The Hoosiers endured endless days of turmoil during the soap opera starring former coach Kelvin Sampson, who eventually resigned and left them in the hands of Dan Dakich.
Now they must not only enter the postseason with an interim coach, they must also call on emotional reserves that were buffeted and severely depleted less than a month ago. Do they have any gas left in their tank to navigate yet another emotionally charged stretch?
*The questions are not so simple at Michigan State, the league’s biggest disappointment. Once highly regarded, the Spartans are now nothing more than a mystery, a group whose inconsistency defies explanation.
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Two Sundays ago, at home against Indiana, they appeared capable of making a deep tournament run. They got 20 points from Raymar Morgan and 17 each from Drew Neitzel and Goran Suton. But a week later, at Ohio State, they fell flat against a group of Buckeyes hooked up to life support. They got 19 from Morgan but only six each from Neitzel and Suton.
That performance mirrored the malaise that has bedeviled the Spartans all year. Rarely did their top three players come up big in the same game. In fact, only twice in their 18-game conference schedule did all three finish in double figures. That is hardly a harbinger of tournament success.
*Until their victories over Michigan State and Purdue, the Buckeyes had been the conference’s biggest flop. Those two wins refurbished their NCAA tournament chances, but remember that those victories came at home. And now they must hit the road, where they have won only twice this calendar year.
And those successes, by the way, came at Illinois and at Northwestern, the bottom seeds in the festivities that kick off Thursday.
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