Welcome back to Year 2 of trying to write team previews that don’t suck. You can find your per-game stats, a roster roll call, and the typical coachspeak in any of the preseason magazines. Those are great for telling you the who and the what. I’m going to project each team’s final KenPom ranking, their conference offensive and defensive rankings, and delve into the why. If you enjoy what you read, tell a friend and drop your e-mail address to sign up for free to get new pieces in your mailbox as soon as they’re live.
Minnesota Golden Gophers
Projected Final KenPom Ranking: #92 (+17 from last season)
Projected Final Big Ten Rankings: 10th offense/11th defense
Welcome to Minnesota’s “year away.” You know, when you say a team is a year away? This is that year for Minnesota.
Jamison Battle is back and once you apply the context of “60% of his teammates at any given time did not belong on a Big Ten floor” his numbers from last season are fantastic. Defenses knew the Gophers had little else on offense besides putting the ball in Battle’s hands but he still scored in volume and at a decent efficiency. He can attack the basket, hit tough midrange jumpers, and shoots 36% from behind the arc. At 6-7, 225 that’s a nightmare matchup for opposing defenses.
The question is how much better the offense can get as the roster around him turns over completely. Their big pull from the portal is 6-11 forward/center Dawson Garcia, a Minnesota native with prior stops at Marquette and North Carolina. With the Golden Eagles he was a unanimous All-Freshman pick in the Big East, a floor-stretching 5 who rebounded well. With UNC he got caught behind Armando Bacot on the depth chart and efforts to play the two of them together fell short. Garcia left the team to attend to a family health issue in January. Putting aside the obvious — I hope everyone is doing well — the circumstances of how he fit with with Tar Heel teammates and how he left are… odd.
It does not seem as though North Carolina missed him. They went 9-2 to close the regular season after he left the team, and obviously made the tournament run. In Garcia’s season at Marquette, the team went 13-14 and the coach got fired. This is all smoke with no obvious flames, but it’s a player at his third stop and he’s going to be playing with Battle, who’s going to get shots up.
He is, at least, a valid Big Ten player which is not something we can say for the rest of the roster. Ta’lon Cooper transferred up from Morehead State and the hope is he can add a bit of playmaking to the mix. Last year Minnesota had an excellent turnover rate because their offensive gameplan was to get the ball to Battle or Payton Willis and let them do something. The Ohio Valley Conference to Big Ten jump is interesting, because the OVC was three good teams and a whole lot of really bad teams. The adjustment for any point guard going against those defenses to Big Ten defenses is a mystery. (Another option is Taurus Samuels from Dartmouth, but they’re in trouble if they need to rely on him)
Rounding out the starting five looks like two freshmen in guard Braeden Carrington and center Pharrel Payne, or if they opt to play Garcia at the 5 then it will be Carrington and another freshman. Last year’s collection of newcomers raced out to a 10-1 start but they were buoyed by elite three point shooting from Payton Willis that’s missing from this year’s team. Battle, Garcia, and Cooper are all decent shooters in the mid-30s but it’s hard to imagine this year’s version being better from behind the arc.
So the improvements will need to come from Cooper being able to create and Dawson doing more inside. It’s just too likely that those gains are offset by a young roster making typical young roster mistakes and asking an OVC point guard transfer to be the one to tie it all together. The excellent news is that every player mentioned (except Samuels) has eligibility to return next season.
It’s a more athletic roster so the defense should be better but with so many new pieces I can’t see it coming together into a top-half defense in the league. Garcia is mobile but his game is offense-oriented and Payne has a Big Ten body but it’s a lot to ask of a freshman to hold his own against the post players in this league. Cooper and Carrington have good size in the backcourt and there’s not a ton of teams with the guard play to cause fits, and with some offensive load off his shoulders Battle should be able to take a more active role defensively.
The very best version of this year’s Minnesota team is not a tournament team in my eyes, and getting the very best out of this year’s roster might hinder the longer outlook. Battle is good enough to win some games on his own but he’ll need to gel with Garcia, and Cooper’s going to need to get a sense of their strengths and weaknesses while figuring out himself how to score in the Big Ten, and the team will be figuring out which freshmen are ready to go and which need a season to acclimate. Those things don’t happen overnight but the roster is taking shape for next season and beyond.
Nebraska Cornhuskers
Projected Final KenPom Ranking: #138 (+2 from last season)
Projected Final Big Ten Rankings: 13th offense/14th defense
The Cornhuskers’ offense rated last in the Big Ten, the third time in three seasons that’s been true under Fred Hoiberg. But last year’s version actually showed progress: at .995 points per possession, they were 0.001 behind Penn State and the closest they’ve been to the conference’s median in The Mayor’s tenure. Unfortunately, the theme of that tenure has been roster churn and this year is no different. Bryce McGowens was drafted and his brother passed on a fifth year in college to go along with Alonzo Verge and Kobe Webster exhausting their eligibility.
The backcourt this year will be led by Sam Griesel, a transfer from North Dakota State who at least represents a departure from the talented-but-inefficient knucklehead era at point guard. He’s big at 6-6, 220 pounds and slower than guys like Verge, McGowens, and Cam Mack so it’ll be interesting to see if Griesel can run the team at the fast pace Hoiberg prefers, or if the coach decides to finally ease back on the tempo. They’ve been the fastest team all three seasons he’s been there.
There are a lot of red flags surrounding Griesel. The Summit League to Big Ten jump is huge, from the caliber of athlete to the style of play. The Summit is a defense-optional conference, ranking first in the country in offensive efficiency last season. The pieces that have made the jump to high-major basketball have been more complimentary than leading players (Stanley Umude, Kevin Obanor, Matt Mooney). Those players also had longer track records of success in the Summit League. Griesel was Just A Guy for three seasons before popping last year:
Just based on that, even if he was returning to North Dakota State for his final season I would be wary of a regression to his career mean. With a major step up in competition? Yikes. We saw how the Summit-to-Big Ten leap went for Kobe Webster. Oh, also: Griesel is coming off of off-season hip surgery.
I do think he’s going to bring a steadiness to the position that the Huskers have lacked. Mack, McGowens, and Verge were liable to lose their minds and play the Frank Reynolds “anyway, I started blasting” offense. I don’t think Griesel will go down that path, but a lot of things need to go right for this to work. He needs to acclimate the level, show that his senior season was not a fluke, and potentially do it under a coach trying out a new, slower style of play.
And it has to work for Nebraska to be any good because the Summit League transfer who just starting playing point guard in 2020 is about their only option at the position. He’ll be joined in the backcourt by Emmanuel Bandoumel, another transfer. He was the third or fourth banana in a guard-heavy lineup at SMU and his numbers were… fine. He’s been a decent outside shooter and an efficient inside scorer, but never both in the same season. Playing along with the conference’s POTY in Kendric Davis, it’s a little concerning that he wasn’t able to do more.
They’ll need CJ Wilcher to take more of a role in the offense. There will be more shots available for him with a less selfish backcourt this season, and he cashed in his attempts at a good efficiency last year (40% from three, 56% inside the arc). He’s one of the few players with any Big Ten experience on the roster. Another is Keisei Tominaga. I don’t know what percentage he needs to shoot from behind the arc to cancel out his massive negative on the defensive end, but I know it’s higher than the 33% he shot last season.
Next to Wilcher on the wing will be either Juwan Gary or Wilhelm Breidenbach. Gary’s shooting held him back from earning more minutes at Alabama: he’s 10-50 from behind the arc in two seasons. Breidenbach was a fringe top-100 prospect who looked lost early last season before a major knee injury knocked him out.
The one player I don’t have any questions about is Derrick Walker, the 6-9 center. He gets lost in the mix of Big Ten bigs but for the past two seasons he’s been scrapping for Nebraska. He turns 25 next month and isn’t going to learn any new tricks at this point, but they know he’s dependable in his role. He’s not a guy you can run offense through but he has excellent touch around the rim and can body up with most on defense.
You can see what Nebraska is going for with this year’s team. Griesel, Walker, Bandoumel, Gary, and Wilcher have all been in college for years. This should be Hoiberg’s smartest, most mature team. With those five, they could switch 1-4 on defense which is not a luxury they’ve had with smaller guards in the past. It could work, right?
I see it, but I don’t buy it. There are too many red flags with Griesel, if that doesn’t work then this offense is really screwed. Verge and the McGowenses were erratic but they could always create their own shots. Who’s doing that this season? Nearly the entire bench is new to college basketball. Blaise Keita was a top-5 JUCO transfer but a) these guys almost never have the impact that’s projected/dreamed of, and b) he’s going to be behind Walker, so whatever impact he does have is going to be tiny. By the way, Keita shot just barely over 50% from the field. As a 6-11 guy going against JUCO defenses. There are some freshmen who might end up being program building blocks, but only Ramel Lloyd was close to the top 100.
The burden of proof that Nebraska is going to climb out of the basement is on Hoiberg at this point. They finished last season on a surprising three game road winning streak, but that was Bryce McGowens and Alonzo Verge getting hot. There’s been very little in the way of program building and with three fresh transfers starting again this season the pattern continues.
Northwestern Wildcats
Projected Final KenPom Ranking: #126 (-39 from last season)
Projected Final Big Ten Rankings: 14th offense/12th defense
It’s getting bleak in Evanston. Their 7-13 record had them a tier above 4-16 Minnesota and Nebraska last season but the seven wins were as empty as they come. Twice over Nebraska, once over Minnesota, once over Maryland in the immediate aftermath of the Mark Turgeon resignation/firing, once over Rutgers before Rutgers was Rutgers, and once over an Indiana team missing two starters. Their road win over Michigan State was the most inexplicable result in the league until Nebraska ended the year on a three game road winning streak.
Pete Nance did everything for the Wildcats: he led them in 3P%, he blocked shots, he was their best rebounder, and he even dished out eight assists in a win over Nebraska. His backup, Ryan Young, was one of my favorite underrated players in the league, a big body who could rebound and carve out space for an easy layup. Anyway, they’re both gone and now a team that already struggled to get two point buckets is in serious trouble. Here’s every player with at least 20 two point attempts last season:
They pulled in Tydus Verhoeven from the transfer portal but the best outcome for him would be if he’s able to replicate what Young did. There’s not even a pseudo replacement for what Nance gave them as an inside/outside thread. Robbie Beran had a really nice season but he’s an opportunistic player, not one who can create for himself. That means the offense is going to be tilted even more in favor of the backcourt.
If Boo Buie was going to lead a decent Northwestern offense we’d have seen it by now. They’ve ranked 13th, 12th, and 12th in his first three seasons. The point isn’t that he’s bad — he’d start for at least half the league — it’s that he’s not so good that he can drag the rest of the roster to respectability. Chase Audige has been a black hole on offense for two years now, but they have no choice but to start him as part of a three guard lineup. Ty Berry and Julian Roper shot better from outside, but like Audige they were a disaster inside the arc. Pete Nance is going to start and play a big role for the #1 team in the country — and the Northwestern offense was poor even with that guy. It’s gonna be ugly without him.
On the other side of the ball the Wildcats packed the paint and dared teams to beat them over the top, which was not such a terrible strategy. They allowed the highest rate of three point attempts in the conference and even though opponents hit 37% of those, Northwestern fashioned together an average defense by doing enough other things well. Led by Audige they have active hands going for steals (they ranked second in turnovers!) though this comes at the expense of a lot of fouls (they had the worst defensive free throw rate). And they did a better job on the defensive glass after that was a major sore spot ever since Dererk Pardon graduated.
That was all based on around having a bouncy athlete in Nance capable of blocking or altering shots and skying for a rebound, or having Young and his instincts. Verhoeven is an inch shorter than both, fifteen pounds lighter than Young, and wasn’t even a top-20 rebounder in Conference USA. There’s no path to replicating that top half of the conference defensive performance.
It’s a boring story but there’s not the talent here to do anything besides steal a couple wins against the bottom half of the league. This year will be it for Chris Collins, who should always be appreciated for 2017 team that broke the tournament drought, but the best case for 2022-23 is that they remain stuck in the mud.
Ohio State Buckeyes
Projected Final KenPom Ranking: #60 (-29 from last season)
Projected Final Big Ten Rankings: 7th offense/9th defense
For the entirety of his Ohio State tenure Chris Holtman has had a multi-year star in the frontcourt to build around. Keita Bates-Diop overlapped with Kaleb Wesson who overlapped with EJ Liddell. That cycle ends this season. The roster is a mix of old (Justice Sueing and three senior or grad transfers) and young (a five-man recruiting class that ranked 8th in the country) without a clear identity or go-to scoring. The uncertainty leads to a wide range of outcomes.
It looks like they’re going to be starting freshman Bruce Thornton at point guard, by which I mean Bruce Thornton is the only point guard on the roster. He’s a top-50 recruit but, like Illinois, I have reservations about how well that work in the Big Ten. Also like Illinois, they bring in two Big 12 transfers, but Sean McNeil and Isaac Likekele are a couple notches below Terrance Shannon and Matthew Mayer.
Likelele is probably the next man up for handling the ball but he’s really here to fix the defense which has been an issue for years under Holtman. He was a part of the #4 defense in the country at Oklahoma State last season, long enough and quick enough at 6-5 to guard 1-4. He’s capable of taking on a scoring role but hasn’t done so particularly efficiently throughout his career. In four seasons he’s attempted only 68 three pointers, making 19 of them (27.9%).
McNeil comes in as the shooter. He’s a 37% career three point shooter on 421 attempts and is going to be leaned on heavily as the only proven threat on the roster. This is where things start to get dicey and I worry about the offense. Zed Key (and freshman Felix Okpara) are not shooters. At all. I’m setting the over/under on their combined attempts for the season at 0.5. So unlike with Wesson and especially Liddell, they don’t have the luxury of a big man who can stretch the floor.
Sueing is a willing shooter but he’s made under 32% of them in his career. He’s also not as good of a passer as Wesson or Liddell. Teams will not need to guard him as tightly or close out as aggressively which could clog things up. Tanner Holden, another transfer, is a 6-5 wing who scorched the Horizon League with midrange jumpers. In three seasons he’s attempted 88% of his shots inside the arc. He’s played against exactly three high-major defenses in his career, and the 2022 NC State defense arguably should not qualify. Being that sort of tough shot maker has a ceiling in this conference.
Ohio State’s missing that do-everything player that’s made them so tough to guard for the past five seasons. It’s possible that one of the freshmen (Roddy Gayle or Brice Sensabaugh) could become that but that’s not going to happen out of the box, especially with the wing depth in front of them.
The only time Holtman has fielded a defense in the top half of the conference was his very first season with Thad Matta’s players. Since then they’ve ranked 8th, 10th, 10th, and 10th. Sueing’s California teams were bad on defense. Holden’s Wright State team took a giant step back defensively when their star big man graduated. West Virginia had the worst defense in the Big 12 last season. And freshman defenders are freshman defenders. Isaac Likekele can only help so much, and if the offense does get bogged down he’s going to be the one they switch out to help it.
This projected ranking (60th) is on the lower end of possible outcomes. If everything goes right, they’ll be a lot better. If everything goes wrong, they won’t that much worse because purely on talent they’re ahead of much of the conference. With such a solid incoming freshman group, a down year will only be a blip for the Buckeyes.