What's Better? What's Worse? What's The Same?
A comprehensive 2023-24 Big Ten basketball preview
Welcome back to Year 3 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. Here we’re going to dive in deep on every team and look into where each team is primed to improve or fall back, why that’s the case, and what it all means. This preview assumes you have a basic familiarity with Big Ten rosters and the sorts of advanced metrics from KenPom or Torvik.
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Some indispensable resources for this preview: kenpom.com, barttorvik.com, hoop-explorer.com, sports-reference.com, and a tiny startup online video website called youtube.com.
Illinois Fighting Illini
Projected Final KenPom Ranking: #15 (+20 from last season)
Projected Final Big Ten Rankings: 6th offense/1st defense
What’s the same?
Last year’s Illinois team was heavily imbalanced toward the frontcourt. Their four best players were Terrence Shannon, Matthew Mayer, Dain Dainja, and Coleman Hawkins. Maybe next up was a guard in Jayden Epps, or maybe another wing/forward in RJ Melendez or Ty Rodgers.
Either way, this was a big team and they played like it. One of the surest bets was their two-point defense taking a step back with the departure of Kofi Cockburn, but, nope:
The tiny drop in defensive efficiency came because opponents canned a couple extra three pointers. Dainja solidified the paint with Hawkins and Mayer flying in to collect blocks as help defenders. To add to the feat, Illinois took away the three point line rather well, allowing the second-fewest attempt rate in the conference. For context, Rutgers was #2 in the conference in two point defense, but that came with the second-highest three point attempt rate. In other words, Rutgers was willing to let you shoot in order to take away the paint. Illinois made no such compromise.
Hawkins and Dainja return as the backbone of the defense, and while none of the newcomers are a one-for-one replacement for Mayer on this end, Quincy Guerrier (6-8) and Marcus Domask (6-6) are fifth-year seniors and Amani Hansberry (6-8) is a top-75 recruit. Illinois will continue to take away the three point line and remain stingy on the interior.
Offensively they were elite scoring inside the arc: first in the conference in two-point percentage and second-best at getting to the free throw line. That’s all largely thanks to Shannon, who gets to the rim with ease and can score through contact. Only Zach Edey drew fouls at a higher rate in the Big Ten last season. He would’ve almost certainly been selected in the NBA Draft, but he’s back in Champaign. Having superseniors is a built-in advantage; having one as good as Shannon is a cheat code.
The offense largely functioned without a point guard last season: Skyy Clark lost his starting job and left the team soon after, and fellow freshman Jayden Epps was not a facilitator (he also transferred out). Brad Underwood is opting to roll with Ty Rodgers as the nominal point guard. The offense was never smooth last season, but it’s tough to envision slotting a 6-6 non-shooter into that role is going to make things better. They’ll give it an honest effort but when preseason-top-10 Marquette comes to down on November 14, it’s going to look a lot like it did last year with the ball in Terrence Shannon’s hands. That’s not the worst thing, but the lack of a true point guard limits their offensive ceiling.
What’s better?
This was the worst three-point shooting team in the conference last season and it wasn’t particularly close. The Illini shot 30.8% from behind the arc for the season and 29.1% in league play, the only team under 30%… and under 31%. Outside shooting did not appear to be a priority in the transfer portal. The incoming transfers are maybe marginally better than the returners with at least 20 attempts:
So, the reason for optimism? One, it’s hard to be that bad again. They lose Mayer’s 33% but they also lose Epps (31%) and RJ Melendez (26%). Along with Clark, their outgoing players shot 30.7%. The newcomers will top that, along with some likely positive regression for Shannon. And maybe, just maybe, this is the year Coleman Hawkins knocks it off. Last year, 44 Big Ten players attempt at least 100 three pointers. Hawkins ranked 44th in percentage.
The Illini will also get a full season from Luke Goode, who missed three months with a broken foot. He’s the guy on the roster with a reputation as a shooter, and my 20-shot benchmark above conveniently left him off the graphic (he shot 8-19, and has made 39% of his 62 career attempts). How much he gets on the court is an open question — he’s yet another big wing at 6-7 on a roster full of them — but he was getting real minutes at the end of last season: 16 against Purdue, 18 in the conference tournament against Penn State, and 23 in the NCAA tournament against Arkansas.
The team took an offseason trip to Spain. We’d probably all be smarter if these games were played in total secrecy with no box score or video, but it’s hard to completely ignore that they shot 16-79 in their three games. That’s 20.2%. Shooting is never going to be a strength this season, but the good thing about being dead last is that the bar is very low.
What’s going to elevate the defense from 4th to 1st in the conference? Experience. Last year they were 293rd in the country, featuring heavy minutes for their freshman class. Not surprisingly, that came with a lot of fouls being committed: they ranked 11th in the conference in terms of sending opponents to the stripe.
And it wasn’t the classic in-your-face Illinois defense that racked up fouls and steals as a matter of course. It was just a defense that had virtually no continuity. Starters Shannon, Dainja, and Hawkins now have a season together, and that built-in chemistry (plus the roster’s quality depth) should let Underwood do some new things with the defense. He’s changed things up radically in the past, going from a full-court press to a relaxed, half-court “funnel everything to Kofi Cockburn” system.
This year’s version doesn’t need that. The improvement doesn’t need to be drastic to go from top-30 to top-15. Fewer fouls, more turnovers, maybe slightly better opponent shooting luck… that’s all they need. There’s an obvious strength (two-point defense) and no obvious weakness.
What’s worse?
Shannon was The Guy for Illinois last year, but his usage wasn’t anything wild. Mayer and Epps were willing shooters and brought some balance to the offense. This year there’s no obvious second- or third-fiddle. Guerrier is nearly Mayer’s height and basically as good of a shooter, but he’s never been featured in an offense. Buddy Boeheim and Joe Girard took all the shots at Syracuse, and last year’s Oregon offense was centered around N’faly Dante.
Domask was part of a two-man show at SIU, but a) that was in the Missouri Valley, b) he missed much of the summer with a hamstring injury, and c) there’s an awful lot of positional overlap with him and Shannon. And him and Rodgers, for that matter. Rodgers meanwhile attempted one three pointer and made just 38% of his free-throw attempts. Safe to say he won’t be the shot-taker, at least you’d hope not.
Harmon has been a big part of some very good Utah Valley teams, but his offensive ratings have been 95.2 and 94.2 — a bit alarming he wasn’t able to put up better numbers in that system with the talent around him (in addition to Harmon, UVU had two other players transfer up to high-major teams).
The worry is that with unproven options next to him, the load on Shannon’s shoulders grows and his efficiency wanes. I don’t think it’s a significant worry, which is I have the offense improving overall, but that’s a risk you run with this roster construction.
What it all means
Illinois has kept what made last year’s team good and patched most of what ailed it. The outside shooting is the biggest sore spot but when a team does enough other things really well it doesn’t need to be lethal. With a top-15 defense, the offense only needs to be pretty good. The length and depth will be very disruptive and with the smallest rotation player standing at 6-4 there’s no breather.
The point guard question is mostly a red herring, I think. We saw what the offense looked like without one last season and it was acceptable. If the Ty Rodgers experiment doesn’t work out, they’ll go back to that and probably be a little better at it. If it does work out, well, it’s still Ty Rodgers playing point guard. Success in this regard means hitting a single or double; given the lack of shooting from Rodgers himself and the rest of the roster, it’s really hard to see a home run.
Last year the Illinois brought in a whole truckload of new lumber. They built the thing on the fly and still won 20 games. This go-around the foundation is in place and they need to smooth down the edges — fewer turnovers, fewer fouls committed, less intra-team drama.
Indiana Hoosiers
Projected Final KenPom Ranking: #38 (-8 from last season)
Projected Final Big Ten Rankings: 7th offense/6th defense
What’s the same?
Indiana could return its backcourt with Xavier Johnson healthy, but that comes down to how Mike Woodson deploys Trey Galloway. The fourth-year junior moved into the starting lineup once Johnson went down, playing alongside first-round pick Jalen Hood-Schifino. Galloway thrived after two underwhelming seasons to begin his career, draining nearly half his three-point attempts (30-65) and steadying his game across the board: fewer turnovers, better facilitation, and better defense.
The experience he banked last year will pay off this year, but which role Galloway ends up playing depends on how the frontcourt shakes out. Because despite the loss of Trayce Jackson-Davis and Race Thompson, that’s the strength of this year’s team. Galloway came close to his ceiling last year. He’s not wired to be a playmaker or a high-volume shooter. A modestly higher shot volume and continued steadiness is what Indiana needs, because Galloway is the only player back who played at least 40% of the team’s minutes.
What’s better?
The defense took an unexpected dip last season. They were the best defense in the conference in 2021-22 but fell off despite featuring the same cast of characters. How did that happen?
A shot against Indiana was worth just the same in 2022 as it was in 2023 — a 48.2% and 48.3% effective field goal percentage, respectively. But a combination of fewer turnovers and fewer rebounds meant opponents were getting off a lot more shots. And a fouling problem that was bad in 2022 got worse in 2023. A foul-happy defense that doesn’t generate turnovers to offset that is going to have issues, no matter how well you actually contest shots.
The rebounding is where the Hoosiers’ lack of wing depth was apparent. It certainly wasn’t Jackson-Davis’ fault as he led the conference in defensive rebounding — yup, even ahead of Zach Edey. Thompson was also solid enough, but those two didn’t have much help. Jordan Geronimo had the athleticism on the wing that they needed but his breakout never materialized so it was Miller Kopp on the wing, and Kopp was not mixing it up on the offensive glass. It really bit them in the tournament game against Miami when the Hurricanes grabbed 51% of their misses. Yes, part of that is that Norchad Omier is a crazy-good offensive rebounder, but four other Miami players had multiple offensive rebounds.
The depth of the frontcourt is encouraging for a bounceback in the rebound department. Kel’el Ware is 7-0 former top-10 recruit transferring in from Oregon, where he never meshed with Dana Altman. His offensive game is a work in progress but performed adequately on defense, and at least so far everyone is saying the right things about his attitude and drive after the Oregon flop. He’s at least got the tools to get the job done.
The good news is Indiana has options up front. Malik Reneau is another highly regarded recruit entering his sophomore year. He played well as an apprentice under TJD last year, but he was a big part of the Hoosiers’ sky-high foul rate and couldn’t stay on the floor, committing an eye-popping seven fouls per 40 minutes. And Payton Sparks transfers in from Ball State. The Cardinals were the MAC’s best defensive rebounding and two-point defense team. Their defense wasn’t very good outside of that, but I don’t hold it against Sparks. They allowed 5.5 more points per 100 possessions with Sparks off the floor.
Then there’s the other top-10 recruit on the team, Mackenzie Mgbako. He’s a 3/4 tweener at 6-8 215 but has the NBA 3-and-D starter kit. He’s a good athlete, not an explosive one, but he sure provides more rebounding upside than Miller Kopp did last season. Offensively, he’s not going to shoot the ball at the level Kopp did (44% on 142 attempts) but remember that some of the shots Race Thompson took (28% on 43 attempts) are going to fall to him too.
And he can do way more to challenge and disrupt a defense than Kopp and Thompson. Guys at his size who can both shoot and put the ball on the floor don’t grow on trees, and it gives Indiana a built-in matchup advantage virtually every game. It’ll take some experimenting to get it right, but the question is “how does this work best?” and not “will this work?”
The return of Johnson at point guard helps address the turnover problem on both sides of the ball — Indiana was 11th in the league both ways. He struggled with it before he got hurt — 6 turnovers against Rutgers and then 7 against Nebraska — but they were 5th-best at taking care of the basketball in the league in 2021-22 and I’ll give credit in this regard to any team with an ultra-veteran point guard. Johnson’s been inconsistent throughout his career, but offense initiated by a sixth-year senior is generally going to run more smoothly than when it’s initiated by a freshman, as it was last year (even one as talented as Jalen Hood-Schifino). Of course, the backup option this year is a freshman in Gabe Cupps, so, uh, don’t get hurt out there, Xavier.
What’s worse?
Well, there’s no Trayce Jackson-Davis. That seems like it’ll matter. It’s been a long time since Indiana’s had to build an offense around anything else. He was such a luxury as a guy you could dump the ball down to over and over. How do you have a long scoring drought with TJD? You don’t. He was too gifted of a scorer to hold down. After a bout of back spasms slowed him down, he scored at least 18 points in 22 of Indiana’s final 24 games. One was a loss to Penn State and the other was a road win over Purdue where he deferred to a white-hot Jalen Hood-Schifino, who… is also gone.
Aside from that they’re also losing Miller Kopp and Tamar Bates, the two outside shooters. Indiana attempted the lowest percentage of threes relative to total shot attempts, but those two helped the Hoosiers to the conference’ third-best shooting percentage from distance (they made 41.4% of 200 attempts).
Johnson’s return helps — he shot 38.5% in 2021-22 — and Trey Galloway made nearly half of his looks after hitting just 12 of 61 in his first two seasons, but the threeball figures to be a small part of the offense once again and this time there’s not TJD or Race Thompson inside or midrange maven Hood-Schifino.
Jackson-Davis’ absence will be felt defensively, too. He was the second-best shotblocker in the Big Ten, a skill that Reneau didn’t show at all as a freshman. Jackson-Davis blocked as many shots against Kansas (9) as Reneau did the whole season. Ware brings that ability over from Oregon with his length, but Indiana’s going to have longer stretches with Reneau (or Payton Sparks) as their big and it’s hard to see the interior defense being as stout. They were 20th nationally (fourth in the conference) in 2P% defense. Even with a plethora of bigs that figures to drop off.
What does it mean?
The loss of Trayce Jackson-Davis, Jalen Hood-Schifino, and Race Thompson creates a high degree of uncertainty. We have no idea what this year’s version will look like. Xavier Johnson hasn’t been the model of consistency throughout his career and his Pittsburgh teams won nothing when he was the alpha. That was also ancient history as far as college basketball goes, and there’s certainly more talent on this year’s Indiana team than any of those Panthers squads. Kel’el Ware and Mackenzie Mgbako are potential first-round picks but between them we only have a single season of underwhelming performance.
There’s enough big man depth between Ware, Malik Reneau, and Payton Sparks, plus Johnson at the point of attack, that I suspect the defense will be decent. My projected rankings of 7th offense/6th defense is a little misleading: It’s an order of magnitude harder to be the 6th-best defense in the conference than the 7th-best offense. It’s a bubble-ish looking team and which side they wind up comes down to how often they can get the big buckets that TJD and Hood-Schifino made even when the defense knew it was coming.
Iowa Hawkeyes
Projected Final KenPom Ranking: #45 (-4 from last season)
Projected Final Big Ten Rankings: 2nd offense/13th defense
What’s the same?
You’re gonna want to sit down for this. Iowa, yes, Iowa, projects to have a great offense and an iffy defense. I know.
Exactly what shape that offense takes is a bit unknown. For four straight seasons they’ve built around a super-efficient, high-usage player, first in Luka Garza and then in Keegan and Kris Murray. The offense has been tops in the Big Ten and top-five in the country each of those four seasons. Maybe they don’t reach those heights again, but the last time Fran McCaffrey fielded an offense outside the top 20 UConn was a sub-.500 American Athletic Conference team.
Kris Murray was not quite as relied on as Keegan and Garza, and Iowa was deep enough to thrive leaning into a (slightly) more balanced approach. That will hold true again this year. Payton Sandfort shot five three-pointers a game last season in a sixth man role and if anyone emerges as yet another 20 point scorer for the Hawkeyes it will be him. The 6-7 junior wing is in line for a lot more with more than 300 attempts departing between Murray and Connor McCaffrey.
Back in 2022, Iowa was 4-6 in the Big Ten. McCaffrey swapped Tony Perkins into the starting lineup for Joe Toussaint and Iowa went 8-2 the rest of the way and then won four games in four days to capture the conference tournament title. Toussaint transferred out and found success at West Virginia, but Perkins brought a steadiness that was missing.
He’s entering his fourth year and while I’m not sure he has another level he can take his game to, he doesn’t really need to for Iowa to be great on offense. Josh Dix and Dasonte Bowen didn’t get much run as freshmen, but neither looked out of place in the offense. Dix is the better shooter and Bowen the better driver, and in Iowa’s system that probably means Dix is more likely to emerge.
What’s better?
Defense has never been Iowa’s calling card but last year’s was particularly porous, the third-worst of McCaffrey’s tenure. They ranked dead last in the league in opponent shooting percentage from both inside and outside the three-point line. For good measure, they were next-to-last in opponent free throw percentage, too. Everyone felt comfortable taking shots against Iowa. Opponent free throw success rate is obviously entirely variance — they ranked 3rd the year prior — but there’s some bad luck baked into the other ones, too.
That last column is a calculation like ERA+ in baseball: 100 is average, so the further away, the worse you are. Iowa’s defensive three point percentage was the worst over the last five years, and it wasn’t because the Big Ten shot the ball way better. They were the furthest from average in that timespan.
Five years is a neat cutting off point, but, yes, six years ago someone was worse. And yes, that someone was Iowa. But after opponents hit 42.9% of their threes against Iowa in 2018, they made 33.9% of them in 2019. The Hawkeyes are going to benefit from positive regression this season as well, even if they aren’t putting any more pressure on shooters. Not much has to go right for Iowa to improve in this area.
None of this is to say the defense will be a strength, or even average. But another thing working in their favor is frontcourt depth, which was virtually non-existent last season. McCaffrey chose to go small when Filip Rebraca needed a breather and the team’s bad defense got even worse.
It looks like Rebraca is getting replaced by committee, with a pair of 6-9 transfers in Valparaiso’s Ben Krikke and Belmont’s Even Brauns. Krikke is the better offensive weapon and Brauns is the better defender. There’s also 6-10 freshman Owen Freeman. None of these guys on their own is a game-changer, but the optionality the group provides is valuable. Last year was Rebraca against Zach Edey, Rebraca against Julian Reese, Rebraca against Penn State’s no-true-big lineup. This year Iowa will be able to match up and trade offense for defense (and vice versa) when the situation calls for it.
Offensively, there’s some upside with the shooting as well. They were better in conference play but for the entire season they rated 173rd in three-point percentage, just barely in the country’s top half. They always had four players on the floor willing and able to shoot, which is an asset by itself, but nobody who played real minutes shot better than 34%.
Sandfort is a good bet to eclipse that. He shot 36% as a freshman and 39% in Big Ten games last season. Sophomores Josh Dix and Dasonte Bowen shot it well (very small sample size) as freshmen and have had a year to get acclimated to the offensive system. Krikke should be told to stop shooting the same way Rebraca was, which will be a good thing. The latter took 41 three pointers in his final season at North Dakota and then just 12 in two seasons at Iowa. Krikke attempted 59 last year and 152 in his career, but he’s only made 26%.
What’s worse?
Last year Iowa knew from their practice what their team was going to look like: plug Kris into Keegan’s role and run it back with Perkins, Rebraca, and the McCaffrey brothers. Sandfort was the only real new piece, and he’d gotten his feet wet the season before. This year there’s more uncertainty and new roles to be hashed out. Connor McCaffrey could play floor general from the wing to complement Perkins at guard. Can Sandfort do that? He’s not going to command the floor this year as the sixth-year coach’s son did. Without Murray and McCaffrey, responsibility gets shifted to players who haven’t done it yet. Which doesn’t mean they can’t or won’t — again, I’m a believer in the Iowa offense — but perhaps not quite to the same degree.
Where does that show up? Iowa led the Big Ten in taking care of the ball in 2022 and were 4th in 2023. Losing Kris Murray, who could score from anywhere, and Connor McCaffrey, who knew exactly how to keep the offense humming, will hinder that and maybe it slips more toward the middle of the pack.
Losing Murray affects just about everything else as well, of course. He and Rebraca formed a very good offensive rebounding duo and Iowa ranked only behind Purdue in the conference at collecting misses. Brauns was one of the MVC’s better offensive rebounders, but there’s little in the way of proven aptitude the way there was with Murray/Rebraca entering last season.
Iowa allowed by far the worst effective FG% in the conference last year and the only thing keeping the defense from being even worse was that they managed to take the ball away a fair amount, third-most in the conference. Partially these two hand-in-hand, insofar as Iowa is willing to (or unable to stop themselves from making a) gamble for a steal and when they don’t get it the defense is thrown into disarray and someone’s able to get an easy bucket. But they also had the benefit of Murray and McCaffrey being able to guard multiple positions and at least occasionally trip up an offense with their switchability.
What does it mean?
Iowa’s one of the teams I’m most excited to get a look at because there’s a lot of unknown but a lot of potential. There’s questions at all three levels but they always put together a quality offense and the defense honestly can’t get much worse.
Fran McCaffrey doesn’t get enough credit for recruiting the right guys to his system and developing them. And this is a roster full of his type of player. Freshmen are typically not a big part of the equation for Iowa so they’re probably a year away from truly popping but I really like the class they brought in this year: Pryce Sandfort is Payton’s brother and, yup, he can shoot, too. He’s the only top 100 recruit and he’s ranked 99th. Brock Harding and Owen Freeman were high school teammates in Illinois that both join the Hawkeyes. Harding has the Braden Smith starter pack (check out the Purdue section to see how much I love Smith) and Freeman is a 6-10 building block inside, the kind of guy who turns into a three-year starter that the rest of the league can’t wait to be rid of. And Ladji Dembele, the last member of the class, brings some athleticism and versatility in the frontcourt.
The past bunch of recruiting classes have been able to ease in under the radar with an All-American on the roster. Barring a Sandfort explosion, which can’t be ruled out, that won’t be the case this year. But in lieu of a wildly productive star, this roster is well-built and deep. The defense will be better, but not by leaps and bounds, so their success depends on if the offense is lethal or merely good. Your guess is as good as mine.
Maryland Terrapins
Projected Final KenPom Ranking: #23 (-0 from last season)
Projected Final Big Ten Rankings: 4th offense/8th defense
What’s the same?
There was a brief moment when I was ordering Big Ten teams in my head and had to stop to think: Wait, is Maryland going to be the best team? The return of Zach Edey (and the departure of Hakim Hart) put that thought to bed but getting two fifth-year players back in Jahmir Young and Donta Scott to go along with junior Julian Reese is a great starting point.
Young turned out to be transfer portal gold: he was nearly just as good as Maryland as he was at Charlotte, and the Terps get him for multiple years. Should we do a rare pre-season Blind Resume?
You can’t really go wrong with either, right? They’re all getting steals, they’re not turning it over a ton, they’re taking and making about the same number of attempts inside the arc. Player B is the best shooter but doesn’t get to the free throw line at all. Player C is the best distributor and has the two-point edge, but is the worse shooter. Player A splits the difference, strong across the board. That would be Jahmir Young (player B is Tyson Walker and player C is Boo Buie).
Julian Reese became a bigger part of the Terrapins’ offense in his sophomore year and with the league-wide big man attrition he’s primed to ascent to the sub-Edey tier. Like with Young, it’s hard to say anything profound about Reese’s game: he can defend, he can rebound, and has posted the fourth-best two-point percentage in the conference. Not trying to do too much is a skill. Some rough edges of his game still need to be smoothed down: in particular, he didn’t quite solve his fouling problem, which limited his minutes and playing with fouls cut into his aggressiveness. The good news is that’s the exact kind of problem that gets better for guys going into their third season with 34 starts under their belt.
Reese experimented with a three-pointer in 2022 but Kevin Willard put the kibosh on that. I think it returns in 2023-24, not in any sort of major way, but at least the threat of him being willing (or allowed) to take a shot a game from behind the perimeter
What’s better?
Donta Scott’s usage and effectiveness have been on opposite paths: As the former goes up, the latter goes down. Last year that culminated in a career-worst offensive rating. The three-point shooting is a real concern. In three of his four years it’s been 31% or worse. But then you look dreamily at that empty-gym pandemic season where he shot 44% and you dream about the 6-8 230 forward changing the game by splashing from distance. Opponents have been happy to see Scott fire away the past two seasons where he’s made just 29% of 280 attempts.
Even if he doesn’t shoot much better, Scott will have a better year. His effectiveness inside the arc fell off a cliff, from 51% for better in his first three seasons to 44% last year (and only 40% in Big Ten play). Scott was particularly hurt by Reese’s foul issues limiting him time on the court and the lack of a backup at the 5. When playing with Reese, Scott’s eFG% was 48%. On the floor without Reese, it dropped to 40.6%. There’s still no obvious playable big man behind Reese, but his ability to stay on the floor more will benefit Scott. Even just through reversion to the mean, Scott will be better. He’s too good and too big to convert so poorly on two-point field goals.
Last year Maryland only had Young as a playmaker. The team went as he did because nobody was creating their own offense. Hakim Hart, Ian Martinez, Donald Carey, and Patrick Emilien were all somewhere between solid and very good as role players, but none were making things happen themselves. The addition of freshmen DeShawn Harris-Smith and Jamie Kaiser gives Willard an infusion of athleticism that was missing last year.
Pairing Harris-Smith next to Young makes for a scary backcourt. Both guys can get into the lane and bend the defense, which is something few Big Ten teams can boast. Kaiser is a perfect complement as a wing shooter, though projecting any freshman as a high-volume, good-percentage shooter is tough. But with Scott at the 4 and Reese at the 5, it’s a lineup that makes a lot of sense and fits together.
Offensively, improvement inside the arc seems likely. They rated 9th in the conference in that department a year ago. Young and Harris-Smith thrive in the lane, Scott will bounce back, and Reese should get even more shots. They’ll continue to pick up points at the free-throw line — Young excels at drawing contact and Harris-Smith should be strong too — and rebounding isn’t a concern. When you’re solid at everything, you’re quite good overall.
What’s worse?
Three-point shooting is the main concern on offense. They shot 32.8% last year and the only returning players who attempted at least a shot were at 31.2%. Loyola Marymount transfer Chance Stephens was brought in to address that, but a) I never feel great about guys who were just a shooter at a lower level, and Stephens shot 119 three pointers vs. 14 two pointers, and b) he suffered a knee injury in the summer and is going to miss most or all of the season anyway. Kaiser was a great prep shooter and will benefit from Young and Harris-Smith drawing help defenders, but he’ll be the fifth option in the starting five. It’d be a win if Kaiser can replicate Hart and Martinez’s outgoing three-point production (35.6% on 186 attempts), and that leaves the outgoing Carey’s 34.3% on 166 attempts unaccounted for. Young and Scott need to shoot better or there’s a good chance this develops into a real problem for Maryland.
The loss of Hart is going to sting in other ways, too. He was the league’s most efficient player (by ORtg) in 2012-22. That came down last year as his role in the offense got bigger but a Big Ten-tested 6-8 205 forward who can shoot threes, defend, and always seems to make the right play is really hard to replace. Aside from him, fellow veterans Martinez, Carey, and Emilien are out the door. Maryland wasn’t a deep team but those three played their role very well.
The big depth piece this year is Jordan Geronimo, a Big Ten veteran himself but in three seasons at Indiana he struggled to stick in the rotation (under two different coaches). He also brings them more athleticism and physicality, and maybe Willard can take advantage of that in ways Archie Miller and Mike Woodson couldn’t. For whatever it’s worth, I liked Geronimo as a breakout guy last year. Whatever upside is there, he’s been a very iffy shooter (31.0% from three, 52.3% at the line) in his career.
Also: the schedule is probably not going to be as easy this time. Six Big Ten teams missed the NCAA tournament last season and Maryland played five of them twice. It’s not that Maryland only beat up on the weaker teams: they beat Purdue, Penn State, Illinois, Indiana, and Northwestern (and Miami in an early-season tournament). But they didn’t exactly face a gauntlet. This year’s team could be better but go 12-8 or even 11-9 again just because of the way the schedule shakes out.
What does it mean?
Solid was the watchword for Maryland last season. Everything was pretty good. Nothing was spectacular and nothing was terrible. Kevin Willard? He was solid. The problem is Mark Turgeon got run out of town for being solid. Maryland overperformed low expectations last year but this go-around finishing in the top four of the league might only qualify as “solid.”
They’re trading some steadiness for explosiveness by swapping out veterans like Hakim Hart and Ian Martinez for freshman in DeShawn Harris-Smith and Jamie Kaiser. That seems like a good bet because of the returning trio of Jahmir Young, Donta Scott, and Julian Reese, and the extensive college basketball experience they’ve got.
Ultimately I have them just about where they were last season. Counting on two freshmen in your top six is always going to be risky, and Jordan Geronimo in that top six mix isn’t exactly Mr. Reliable. I can see Young playing at a high level the whole year, Scott bouncing back, and Reese taking the next step and the net result is they get a little better on offense, but losing Hart and all the other experience costs them the gains on defense.
Michigan Wolverines
Projected Final KenPom Ranking: #46 (-2 from last season)
Projected Final Big Ten Rankings: 8th offense/7th defense
What’s the same?
Not much, which tends to be the case when you lose two first-round NBA picks and one of the most coveted transfers. Even the coaching situation is unsettled, with Phil Martelli stepping in as Juwan Howard recovers from a heart procedure (he’s expected back by December and fingers crossed the recovery is going well). Michigan went to the transfer portal to fill the gaps but they’re set to ride with rising sophomores at point guard and center.
Dug McDaniel went from playing 15 minutes a night early in the season to almost never leaving the floor by the end of the season, including one three-game stretch of 43, 47, and 42 minutes. Jaelin Llewellyn’s injury was a bad break for Michigan last season but the experience McDaniel was forced to take on will pay dividends. At 5-11 160 he’s not what the NBA is looking for which makes him the perfect collegiate building block.
He can fly off of a screen and get to the rim or pull up and hit a three if the defense drops back, but too often he got stuck between in the Twilight Zone and forced up a difficult shot. His backcourt mate Kobe Bufkin shot 54.6% on twos last year; McDaniel shot 39.9%. Decision making and shot selection are typical things for a guard to improve in their second season, but his size and ability to consistently get to/score at the rim is a concern.
The track record of freshmen who play as much as McDaniel did is very solid, so I’m not concerned about McDaniel’s overall development in a vacuum. But he’s not going to be an elite scorer, at least not as a sophomore, and for this year’s Michigan team to outperform expectations, he needs to improve more as a playmaker. Last year’s team had Bufkin, Jett Howard, and Hunter Dickinson — three guys who could make something happen on their own. This year’s version needs better table-setting.
What’s better?
Michigan had such extreme non-conference/Big Ten splits last year that you really need to be specific. If I say Michigan’s defense will be better, do I mean that it will be better than second-best in league games, which is where it was last year? Or that it will be better than 47th overall in the country, which is also where it was? THey were the anti-Northwestern: The Wildcat’s defense was only 7th-best in Big Ten-only games, but 22nd overall.
How extreme of an outlier was Michigan in terms of their overall adjusted defensive efficiency compared to their raw conference-only number?
The gap between them and Iowa is bigger than the gap between Iowa and every other team. The defense was trash in the non-conference and treasure in the Big Ten. So, what to expect this year? The personnel is there to raise it up and made it good for the whole year.
Michigan’s frontcourt defense was a problem last season, exacerbated by the fact that they had to cover for Jett Howard or Joey Baker at the 3. Baker was an unathletic shooter coming off hip surgery, and Howard was allergic to defensive effort. Enter Olivier Nkamhoua at the 4, a key part of the nation’s #1 defense at Tennessee last season.
Nkamhoua’s physical and instinctual on the defensive end, and just so happened to be the Volunteers’ second-leading scorer, too. He’s not a freak athlete or a automatic shooter but he can do just about everything, and he proved it when he dominated Duke to take Tennessee to the Sweet 16, scoring 27 points including three three-pointers.
He’ll be next to Tarris Reed on the interior, a much more mobile (and vertical) defender than Michigan has had the past few years with Dickinson. Reed played some 4 next to Dickinson last year and Nkamhoua played some small-ball 5 for Tennessee. The increase in athleticism and versatility will help Michigan control the paint better than they have lately.
Nkamhoua wasn’t the only SEC transfer from a top defensive school. Nimari Burnett comes over from Alabama as McDaniel’s primary backcourt running mate. The Crimson Tide had the #3 defense (and were actually better than Tennessee in SEC play). Now, Burnett wasn’t the same sort of force behind that like Nkamhoua. He was the fourth guard in their rotation. But he’ll be another sturdy defender on the floor.
McDaniel’s size and inexperience cost Michigan on the defensive end last year, but at least he seemed interested in trying which was not the case at all times for some of his teammates. With a proven high-caliber defender in Nkamhoua, better athetes, and more consistent overall effort the Michigan defense will be better.
What’s worse?
Now we have to talk about the loss of Dickinson, Bufkin, and Howard, also known as the guys who did the actual scoring last season. Nkamhoua has a well-rounded offensive game but he’s not as reliable as Dickinson or as much of a natural scorer as Bufkin or Howard. Shooting is a major concern: Those three plus Joey Baker combined to make 37.6% of 500 three-pointers last season. Michigan’s returning cast plus transfers combined to make 31.7% of 412 attempts.
It won’t be the disaster that stat might hint toward. Llewellyn and Williams are better shooters than they showed last season. Shooting is the strength for incoming freshman George Washington III. But the volume is very likely to come down: that comparison was four players taking 500 attempts versus nine players taking 412.
That puts more pressure on the rest of the offense to run smoothly, but the 2 and the 3 are major question marks. Burnett was a five-star recruit who left Texas Tech because of playing time concerns, and got passed on the depth chart by a freshman at Alabama after a wrist injury. The error bars are wide on what him playing 25-30 minutes a night looks like, and that’s something Michigan needs unless Washington III really pops as a freshman.
The most interesting player on the offensive side is Tray Jackson, who’s 6-10 and has made 38% of 121 three-pointers the past two seasons at Seton Hall. He is a potential matchup terror but under two different coaches he failed to break through as a 20-minutes-a-game guy. His defense was a major issue and Kevin Willard and Shaheen Holloway couldn’t quite figure out how to cash in on what Jackson could do while covering for what he couldn’t. Playing along with Nkamhoua or Reed should help mask his defensive woes, but like Burnett it’s hard to count on a player who’s been stuck on the bench for major contributions.
What does it mean?
Michigan and Indiana are interesting parallels, rebuilding after the departure of a cornerstone big man and a first-round NBA pick (or two). They each bring back a point guard (Xavier Johnson and Dug McDaniel) and a touted sophomore big man (Malik Reneau was the #30 recruit in the 2022 class; Tarris Reed was #35). Trey Galloway and Terrance Williams are back as rotation pieces. They both got a coveted portal frontcourt player (Kel’el Ware and Olivier Nkamhoua).
Ultimately I have Indiana slightly higher because, unlike Michigan, there’s two projected NBA picks in Ware and incoming top-10 freshman Mackenzie Mgbako. It’s the latter that’s the real difference for me. Michigan’s lack of playmaking on the wing is the thorn in the side of an offense that otherwise makes a lot of sense with McDaniel, Nkamhoua, and Reed.
How big the sophomore leap is for McDaniel and Reed is the key and anyone who can actually project that with any degree of certainty is probably toiling in an NBA front office somewhere. Is McDaniel’s sophomore year closer to Wade Taylor’s or Chucky Hepburn’s? The boring answer is that it’s probably somewhere in the middle, but the uncertainty is what makes this all fun.
Michigan created their own bad luck last season. They trailed Eastern Michigan with 6 minutes to go, Ohio with 4 minutes to go, and Lipscomb with 4 minutes go and then finally got burned by Central Michigan. Hard to complain about the bad luck of losing to Virginia, Kentucky, and North Carolina by a combined 10 points when you play down to inferior competition like that. They also went 1-3 in overtime games in the Big Ten and lost by 1 to Indiana. They were the opposite of Nebraska, winning big and losing small. They’re not built to collect as many easy wins, but better performance and better luck in close games will have them in the bubble discussion.
Michigan State Spartans
Projected Final KenPom Ranking: #19 (+7 from last season)
Projected Final Big Ten Rankings: 5th offense/4th defense
What’s the same?
Tyson Walker in year 5. Malik Hall in year 5. AJ Hoggard in year 4. Jaden Akins in year 3. That’s a pretty good place to start. A lot of shot-making, right? Well, yes but also no. Michigan State was the third-best three-point shooting team in the country last year, but the offense was outside of the top 25 nationally. How come?
For one, they didn’t actually shoot that many of them. Only a third of their total shot attempts were three-pointers. Compare that to another elite shooting team in the Big Ten in Penn State: Nearly half (47.1%) of the Nittany Lions’ attempts came from behind the arc.
Second, lack of a consistent interior scoring threat. Michigan State played 90% of their possessions with one of Mady Sissoko, Jaxon Kohler, or Carson Cooper on the floor, but their true centers only had 226 two-point attempts. Wisconsin, Maryland, and Illinois had a similar number of attempts from their centers, but they played without a true center 25-50% of the time.
So Michigan State wasn’t shooting oodles of threes and their big men weren’t getting touches inside. What’s that mean? Lots of pull-ups, stepbacks, and leaners inside the arc. The curse of having players good enough to make lower-percentage shots at an above-average rate is their continued willingness to take them. Sparty ranked 269th nationally (and 12th in the Big Ten) in two-point percentage.
This is coming across harshly but I’m just trying to illustrate why it is that their offense was not quite as good as you’d think given the talent or the lasting memory of their epic shot-making duel with Kansas State in the Sweet 16. They probably should’ve taken more threes, or gone small with Joey Hauser at the 5 more. But that’s not the way Tom Izzo does things, and when things have worked as well as they have for him in his career he’s not likely to change now. But I do see a ceiling for this offense, which is why I’m projecting only a moderate improvement and not a leap into the top 5 or even top 10.
What’s better?
A highly-touted recruiting class including Xavier Booker (#11 recruit), Jeremy Fears (#32), and Coen Carr (#46) gives the Spartans better depth. Carr is the best athlete not just in Michigan State’s class but in the entire country, and he provides explosiveness at the 3 or the 4 that simply wasn’t there last season with Hall, Joey Hauser, and Pierre Brooks. Hall isn’t a stiff but he had lingering foot and ankle issues all seasons that limited him, and even at his peak he’s not in Carr’s class as an athlete. It remains to be seen what sort of actual basketball player Carr is, but he doesn’t need to be an all-around player to have a positive impact. If he’s cutting hard and jamming putbacks and just generally existing as a wildcard, that’s a good thing. Look at what Andre Jackson was able to do for UConn. The Spartans need Carr to start down that path.
Fears gives them another body in the backcourt. He’s a year away from really making a splash but the combination of him and whatever they get from the sophomore year of Tre Holloman is going to be an upgrade over freshman year Holloman last year, where his assignment was to not screw anything up while one of the other guards got a breather.
Booker has a lot of potential to alter the ceiling, but it’s a fair question to wonder what his real impact will be. He’s 6-11 with a skillset that has everyone drooling. He can shoot and he can handle the ball, but is he going to have the assertiveness (and the green light from Izzo) to do those things? One knock on him coming in is his motor and intensity. Is he going to be on the floor with veterans like Walker, Hoggard, and Akins and suddenly decide to be the alpha? Will Izzo give him the freedom to work through defensive struggles at the 5 in order to pay dividends later?
As with all freshmen there are valid concerns, but overall the infusion of length and athleticism is welcome. The offensive rebounding fell off a cliff last year, ranking 213th in the country — the lowest Michigan State has rated since 2004. They’re not going to turn back the clock to the Nick Ward, Gavin Schilling, Xavier Tillman season where they were 4th-best in the country, but Carr and Booker are upgrades over Hauser and Brooks in that department, and Hall should grab a few more misses assuming he’s all the way back from his foot issues.
One other note in Michigan State’s favor: All of their numbers last season came without the chance to goose them against Minnesota, as that game was canceled in the wake of the tragic shooting on campus. They play the Gophers (and Penn State) twice this season, and Purdue only once.
What’s worse?
Hauser’s departure will be felt on the other side of the ball. He scored double digits in all but four games last season, netting 46.1% of his 167 three-pointers. Having him on the floor with Walker and Akins gave them three elite shooters with Walker and Hoggard able to drive and draw attention to knock the defense into scramble mode which would let one of the shooters get open. Only one other high-major player 6’9” or taller shot 50%+ on twos and 40%+ on threes with at least 100 attempts: LSU’s KJ Williams. Without that shooting threat in the frontcourt, opponents can send help defenders to the guards without getting burned quite so badly.
They’ll still be a very good three-point shooting team, but not 3rd in the country. Walker and Akins can still be great shooters but repeating 41.8% on 258 attempts is a tall task. Marginal low-volume improvements from Hall and Hoggard won’t offset Hauser’s departure and any regression from Walker/Akins.
The Hoggard-Walker backcourt was promising in 2021-22 but the offense had a major turnover issue, ranking dead last in the Big Ten. They got more comfortable playing next to each other last year and improved that to 8th. Working some freshmen who are going to handle the ball into the rotation in place of an experienced veteran shooter like Hauser is probably going to set them back a bit.
What does it mean?
I was really surprised to see Michigan State so widely projected to take such a big jump. This was a solid team last year and now it’s going to be an elite one? It’s not impossible, of course, but there a few reasons I’m skeptical.
One: The “they brought everyone back!” team rarely does as well as the lofty expectations that get set. (Also, the loss of Joey Hauser has been glossed over) Teams that jump from where Michigan State was last year (26th at KenPom) to the top five do so because of a talent infusion and/or sophomore breakouts, not because a bunch of upperclassmen get a lot better.
Two: Michigan State’s talent infusion is entirely freshmen. I think the effect of a big recruiting class is overrated in general, and that goes double for when it’s under a coach like Tom Izzo, who’s shown a clear preference for veterans. A litany of highly-ranked freshmen have come through East Lansing since the last game-breaker. Guys like Max Christie, Rocket Watts, Jaden Akins, even Mady Sissoko were top-75 prospects. Booker is the best one in a while but a wait-and-see approach for Michigan State freshmen is warranted.
Two teams took the mid-20s to top-five jump last year: UConn and Alabama. Both added a starting transfer (Tristen Newton and Mark Sears) and an actual or projected lottery pick (Donovan Clingan and Brandon Miller). Maybe one of Michigan State’s recruits becomes the latter, but we know they don’t have the former. There’s also no one to take the freshman-to-sophomore leap like Jordan Hawkins.
And lastly, it goes back to the roster makeup I discussed up top. There aren’t enough easy baskets for me to think this offense is going to significantly better than last year. The loss of Hauser certainly hurts that. If the freshmen can play right away offensively, great, but that comes with its own drawbacks (defensively, perhaps, or with turnovers). Michigan State would’ve been a 12-8 team if the Minnesota game was played. I’m thinking 13-7, but I recognize I’m on the low end and it’s more likely they’re two games better than that at 15-5 than two games worse at 11-9.
Minnesota Golden Gophers
Projected Final KenPom Ranking: #154 (+62 from last season)
Projected Final Big Ten Rankings: 14th offense/14th defense
What’s the same?
For the first time, Ben Johnson has some degree of continuity on the roster. He built Year 1 on the fly with mid-major grad transfers but he brought several freshmen into the rotation for Year 2. Three of them are back in Braeden Carrington, Joshua Ola-Joseph, and Pharrel Payne, plus last year’s prized transfer in Dawson Garcia. On one hand, bringing back players from a team that went 2-17 in the league isn’t very heartening. On the other hand, Johnson hasn’t shown the ability to attract winning Big Ten players from the transfer portal. Both hands are bad, is my point.
The Gophers have a long way to go on both sides of the ball to even catch up to the bottom of the pack in the conference. They were 3.2 points per 100 possessions worse than the 13th ranked team both offensively (where Nebraska was 13th) and defensively (where Iowa was 13th).
The 6-9 255 Payne was the most promising of the freshmen, leading the Big Ten in two-point percentage. That stat can be asterisked for a dozen reasons but scoring inside the arc is one thing the Minnesota offense wasn’t poor at (they ranked 8th in the conference). Payne (67.7%), Ola-Joseph (54.5%), and Garcia (48.2%) were largely responsible for that, while the ones dragging it down are gone. The most noteworthy departure, Jamison Battle, was hampered by injuries earlier and regressed badly across the board.
There’s something to be said for Battle and Cooper’s willingness to actually shoot the ball — someone has to — but on the whole this shouldn’t be onerous to replace. Garcia was already the team’s alpha on offense but bigger roles are due for Ola-Joseph and Payne. The three returnees can be on the floor together, something that wasn’t the case last year when Battle was also in the mix. Nobody’s waking up in a cold sweat afraid of what Garcia, Payne, and Ola-Joseph can do against them offensively, but they provide a baseline of competent high-major performance, which is welcome after such a bad year.
What’s better?
The team’s depth got crushed in the offseason each of Johnson’s first two years as Parker Fox and Isaiah Ihnen combined for four more ACL injuries than games played. Who knows how they’ll look after such a long time off, but Fox was a Division 2 standout and Ihnen was playing 14 minutes a game as a sophomore for the Gophers. There’s actual playable depth in the frontcourt for the first time under Ben Johnson. Two major injuries to scholarship players is such a handicap for a rebuilding team. Throw in a redshirt for Kadyn Betts and Minnesota was dealing from a very short deck. Having Parker and Fox back plus Betts ready to go gives them little more wiggle room with his rotations, makes practices more competitive, and maybe lifts a spiritual black cloud that had been hanging. (Then again, a reported 87-49 secret scrimmage loss to Colorado State might have that cloud racing back in a hurry)
This year’s mid-major backcourt of Mike Mitchell Jr. (from Pepperdine) and Elijah Hawkins (from Howard) should be a step up from last year, and the guard room also benefits from the arrival of Cameron Christie, a top-100 recruit and Max Christie’s brother.
Ta’lon Cooper did about as well as could be expected in a very tough situation. He couldn’t leave the floor because he was the team’s only capable ball handler. Taurus Samuels also played about as well as I expected, but my hopes for the up-transfer who struggled at Dartmouth were not particularly high.
Mitchell Jr. and Hawkins are from the scratch-and-dent section of Portal Hardware. Mitchell, Jr. is small (6-2) and not the sort to get into the lane and put pressure on a defense. At Pepperdine he attempted six free throws in 16 conference games. The Waves were 3-29 in WCC play in his two seasons and while that’s never the fault of one guy, it’s not like he has many winning habits to pass along. Hawkins on the other hand did pilot Howard to an 11-3 MEAC record and a 16 seed, but he’s even smaller (listed at 5-11 165) and the MEAC to Big Ten jump is as extreme as it gets.
Remember Sam Sessoms? The little guard for Penn State? In two years for the Nittany Lions, he made 42% of his two-pointers. He grad-transferred to Coppin State last season and made 57% of his twos against MEAC defenses. Hawkins, meanwhile, has made just 39% of his twos in two seasons at Howard. Apply any sort of penalty to that number for the jump up in competition and it’s not pretty. There’s a sunnier precedent in former Howard guard RJ Cole, who went on to have some success at UConn. But Cole was bigger (6-1) and better (offensive ratings of 106 and 111 compared to Hawkins’ 90 and 102).
But! Having two guys on the roster who can dribble a basketball is an upgrade over last year. Minnesota was last in the conference in turnover rateAnd Mitchell Jr. and Hawkins can both shoot. Last year they combined to hit 42.8% of their three pointers and that was an element Minnesota was sorely lacking at 13th in the league.
What’s worse?
If last year wasn’t the nadir across the board then Minnesota is really in trouble. If the guards struggle to acclimate to Big Ten competition then maybe the offense’s two-point percentage dips a bit but things were so bleak last year that there’s pretty much nowhere to go but up.
What does it mean?
The way the rebuild is going for Ben Johnson is an anachronism. Once upon a time his tenure so far would’ve been framed as a written-off Year 0 and a hard reset in his second season where he begins to restock the roster with players like Garcia, Payne, and Ola-Joseph. The transfer portal era took a sledgehammer to that model and when you see T.J. Otzelberger take over a winless Big 12 team and get them to the tournament in year 1 or Jerome Tang taking Kansas State to the Elite 8 as a 3-seed in his first season it spotlights Johnson’s shortcomings.
And it’s not like he’s building this way on purpose. He’d clearly love to do better in the prep and transfer recruiting game but he can’t get his footing. Fringe 5-star recruit Dennis Evans asking out of his letter of intent and then committing to Louisville, one of the few power-conference teams that was worse than the Gophers, stings.
It’s an important player development year. Nearly everyone who’ll play has eligibility beyond this season (just not sure about Parker Fox, who has been in college forever but between the injuries and the free COVID year I don’t know where exactly he stands). The bounceback from the bottoming-out needs to show up in the win column, though.
Johnson’s name is already popping up on “hot seat” lists and no amount of promising individual progress would overcome the stench of, say, a 3-17 season. At that point he’ll either get the axe or he’ll be a dead coach walking, doomed to coach another season while the school transparently waits for a lower buyout. The former seems more merciful. Either way, the lights on the exit door get bright and those who showed promise look to leave and the whole situation becomes toxic. If they go 3-17 because they caught two teams shorthanded and another shoots 2-24 on three pointers and the sophomores aren’t any better and Garcia is visibly upset… that makes things easier.
Pharrel Payne and Joshua Ola-Joseph will benefit from the sophomore bump and the guard play and shooting are improved. Kadyn Betts and Cameron Christie are four-star freshmen. Dawson Garcia’s good enough to make an all-conference team. They’ll be better but the hole they’re climbing out of is so deep that it may not matter, record-wise.
Minnesota was 216th in KenPom last year. Ole Miss was 108th… but went 4-14 in the SEC. DePaul ranked 135th… and went 3-17 in the Big East. They can be normal-bad and still lose far too many games to capture any sense of program momentum. With how poorly his first two seasons went, Johnson’s future is staked to this core. I think they’re good enough to buy him another year. Whether that’s truly the best thing for the future of Minnesota basketball is another question.
Nebraska Cornhuskers
Projected Final KenPom Ranking: #81 (+13 from last season)
Projected Final Big Ten Rankings: 12th offense/12th defense
What’s the same?
Keisei Tominaga turned on his flamethrower and hit 40% of his three-pointers, attempting five and a half per game, but it was his growth in other areas that made Nebraska the toughest out they’ve been under Fred Hoiberg. A fun stat: Tominaga had a better two-point percentage than Zach Edey. Who’s really the scarier paint presence?
CJ Wilcher and Juwan Gary are back after disappointing campaigns. Wilcher’s shooting imploded, from 40.6% in 2021-22 to 31.3% last season. And Gary missed the back half of the year after shoulder surgery. Freshmen Jamarques Lawrence and Sam Hoiberg were conscripted into serious minutes due to Gary (and others’) injury and are also back, but like every Hoiberg squad the rotation will be filled out by a bevy of transfers.
What’s better?
Nebraska was not as good as its' 9-11 conference record. In league games decided by double digits, they went 4-10 — and one of those was an overtime win. In other words, they tended to win small and lose big, which is not what you’re looking for if you want believe that the five-game improvement is what it seemed.
Only Minnesota had a lower efficiency margin in Big Ten play. Winning and losing games matters, of course, which is why Penn State made the tournament and Michigan didn’t (and, you know, non-conference is 33% of the season, too). But in terms of gauging the actual quality of a team, efficiency margin is a better spot to start than record.
All of which is to say, if the 9-11 record is where you’re setting the bar for better or worse, you’ll be disappointed. They could be meaningfully better but post a worse record. But the good news, at least for this section of the preview, is: Plenty of room for improvement!
Despite Tominaga’s performance, the offense struggled for most of the year. Lawrence and Hoiberg shot it well but combined for fewer than 100 attempts, and the rest of the roster was disastrous. Outside of those three, the rest of the Huskers shot 28.2%. The good news? Most of those guys are hone. The bad news is that employing a player-friendly, shoot-if-you’re-open offense sounds great in theory until you realize it’s empowering Juwan Gary to take three or four attempts a game despite being a career 23.4% shooter from behind the arc.
Brice Williams, on the other hand, could flourish in such a system. The 6’7 215 transfer from Charlotte can score inside and out and infuses some needed athleticism on the wing. He’s made more than 40% of his threes over the past two seasons and was an offensive star in Conference USA, which was a really good league last year. The jump for Williams to the Big Ten is not as big as the one Sam Griesel had to make coming from the Summit League a year ago and his scoring should not take much of a hit.
Like Williams, the other transfers have good size. Josiah Allick is 6-8 235, Rienk Mast is 6-9 240, and Jarron Coleman is 6-5 210. All of that helps to offset Tominaga’s small stature defensively, and it should also make them better on the boards. Nebraska struggled last year in both giving themselves second chances (12th in OReb% in the Big Ten) and giving them up to their opponent (13th in DReb%). Hoiberg’s system will never make crashing the offensive glass a priority, but back at Iowa State his teams at least corralled the ball to start their offense at a higher rate. I expect this year’s Nebraska to take a step in the right direction. Mast was a good rebounder but it was in the Missouri Valley Conference, and it’s that “but” that I keep coming back to.
What’s worse?
I just can’t get there on projecting a lot of improvement with so little in the way of established high-major production. Derrick Walker was an SEC recruit and played three seasons at Nebraska. It’s true that this year’s Nebraska roster has plenty of experience, but Walker was the rare program mainstay for the Huskers and the chemistry he developed with Tominaga isn’t plug-and-play, even if Mast is a good passer.
Mast is from the Missouri Valley, Williams is from C-USA, Allick’s from the Mountain West/Summit, and Coleman is from the MAC. Coleman played a year at Missouri before boomeranging back to Ball State and it went horribly. Those are all decent mid-major leagues — it’s not like they’re plucking guys from the NEC or the America East — but the “mid-major all-star” approach to building a team has a ceiling.
Tominaga will have to be on the court and he’s a liability defensively. Coleman didn’t commit to the Huskers until August and wasn’t with the team on their summer trip to Spain (Tominaga and Mast also were absent as they were playing with their country’s national team in the FIBA tournament). The Huskers had just six scholarship players available for their exhibition against Doane. My point is: it’s hard to see how there’s enough cohesion to overcome the built-in obstacles, namely Tominaga and the lack of a rim protector.
What does it mean?
Fred Hoiberg’s team will be one of the most experienced in the conference. It’s littered with fourth- and fifth-year players and that should give them a floor. They’re not going to regress back to how bad things were in his first three years when they went 9-50 in league play. But there’s also a ceiling, and I don’t think it’s very high. The flipside of all that experience is that you’re generally not getting a breakout year at this stage. Everyone is who they are.
It’s better than the Big Ten’s last attempt at a mid-major all star squad (Minnesota, in Ben Johnson’s first year). It’s marginally better than last year’s squad in Lincoln. But with a tougher schedule — they only play presumed bottom-dwellers Minnesota and Penn State once apiece — it’s really hard to see a path to the tournament, and so I suspect we’ll get the “is an NIT bid enough to save Hoiberg’s job?” conversation come spring.
Northwestern Wildcats
Projected Final KenPom Ranking: #53 (-15 from last season)
Projected Final Big Ten Rankings: 11th offense/10th defense
What’s the same?
You can surmise from my rating above that I’m a Certified Hater so I’ll be blunt: sometimes teams overachieve and the smart bet is on them to come back to Earth the following year. Northwestern is familiar with this as anybody: the 2017 team that nearly upset Gonzaga in the round of 32 returned Bryant McIntosh, Vic Law, Scottie Lindsey, and Dererk Pardon after ranking 38th in KenPom. Next year’s squad was rated 85th.
This year’s team returns Boo Buie, Ty Berry, Matthew Nicholson, and Brooks Barnhizer. They pushed UCLA in the round of 32 and their final ranking at KenPom was… 38th. That’s just a neat coincidence, of course, but sometimes teams just get worse. Notre Dame made the Sweet 16 in 2022 and were the third-most experienced team in the country in 2023. They went 3-17 in the ACC. It happens.
The fall isn’t going to be quite so dramatic for Northwestern. The effect of Buie as a fifth-year point guard can’t be understated. He was 4th in the conference in assist rate and his creation for others is maybe the third-best thing about his offensive game. He’s a threat to score 20 in any given game with a wide arsenal: stepbacks and pull-up jumpers were his go-to for years but he became a much better driver last season. His two-point percentage in Big Ten games jumped from 43.8% to 49.5% on 56 extra attempts, and he’s more willing to play through contact and cash in at the free throw line. He made more free throws last year than the previous two seasons combined.
What’s better?
Northwestern was 320th in the country in effective field goal percentage a season ago, struggling badly to put the ball in the basket from anywhere on the court. A combination of positive regression and a Princeton transfer will help.
Ryan Langborg is the best shooter, but he’s also the one who needs to prove that he can hang athletically in the Big Ten. There was a Princeton up-transfer last off-season with a very similar profile to Langborg: Ethan Wright. He was about the same size as Langborg and about the same type of shooter (36.5% in three years for the Tigers). He went out to Colorado and couldn’t stick on the floor, getting exposed on defense and failing to make shots the way he could against Ivy Leaguers. Playing for Mitch Henderson can make your stats exceed your actual talent (see also: Jaelin Llewellyn’s struggles at Michigan before getting hurt).
But even on their own Buie and Berry is an offensive upgrade over Buie and Chase Audige, who had to be on the court for his defense but brought little to the table offensively outside of a willingness to take shots. Audige shot 40.4% on twos and 32.5% on threes last year, and both numbers were an upgrade from the year before. So it doesn’t take much for Langborg to be an upgrade on that side of the ball. All three guards have no issues bombing it from well behind the line which should help open things in lieu of a big shooting threat at the 4 or 5.
Barnhizer had the quietest breakout in the Big Ten. He couldn’t sniff the court as a freshman and suddenly was a rock-solid dude who could play the 3 or the 4. How much you believe in Northwestern has a lot to do with how real you think that was. He shot the much better in Big Ten play (20-50 in Big Ten games, 6-34 in all others) which is either a player getting better as he got more experienced, or a player who had a nice hot streak. I lean toward it mostly being real but he’s also not going to shoot 40% on his three-pointers in conference play again. He did everything else well enough — scoring inside the arc and chipping in with rebounding — that even if regression hits he’s a useful player.
Blake Preston is another important transfer, providing depth behind Nicholson. He’s not bringing anything new to the table but he’s an upgrade over last year’s model (Tydus Verhoeven), especially on the glass. Liberty was the #1 defensive rebounding team in the country and while Preston has never averaged more than 20 minutes a game he’s always hoovered up rebounds when he’s on the floor.
What’s worse?
Northwestern’s defense was centered entirely around getting steals last year. Opponents made shots against them (Northwestern was 9th in the Big Ten in defensive 2P% and 10th in 3P%). They rebounded their misses (the Wildcats were 11th in defensive rebounding rate). Northwestern’s goal was to take the ball away before any of that could happen, and they excelled at it: their 20.3% turnover rate led the conference.
Unfortunately, the departed Audige was the one who made the whole thing tick. Buie and Berry are capable defenders but Audige was the gamewrecker, short-circuiting whatever the offense was trying to run. His length, athleticism, and instincts helped to create badly-needed transition points for an team that struggled in the halfcourt and, outside of the opportunities Audige sparked, rarely scored in transition — they were 355th in the country in terms of the percentage of their points that came that way. Audige was highly inefficient on offense but one thing he could do was handle the ball and let Buie run around screens to hunt shots. Berry might be able to do that, but it’s not a given.
Now a decent portion of Audige’s minutes are going to Langborg, who’s the polar opposite on both sides of the ball. He’s certainly not wreaking havoc on defense, limited athletically and coming from a system where that was not emphasized at all (Princeton was last in the Ivy League in takeaways). If Northwestern is merely above-average, rather than elite, at taking the ball away that’s a problem because they don’t project to be good enough at everything else to make up for it.
The other loss, Beran, isn’t as big but they’re losing a 6-9 capable shooter (36.1% from deep for his career) who really bought in on the defensive end. There’s no replacement so it falls on Barnhizer to play as a small-ball 4, and the defense really suffered when they played that way last year:
What does it mean?
Even though they bring back a lot of what made last year’s team so good, they’re going to have to reinvent themselves. There’s just no way for the defense to be as good, and the drop off is going to be significant. Swapping an Ivy League shooter in Ryan Langborg in for Chase Audige is about as extreme as it gets, and going from a Robbie Beran/Brooks Barnhizer timeshare at the 4 to just Barnhizer (or Nick Martinelli??) could go pretty poorly too on defense.
The hope is obviously that the offensive gains can offset the defensive plunge and this is where I say: not quite. Boo Buie is awesome and they’ll win a couple of games because he goes nuclear. But last year the offense around him did not need to do much since the defense was so good. This year they need Barnhizer to be as good (or better) as he was last year, and they need Langborg and Ty Berry to step into bigger roles (and in Langborg’s case, a tougher league).
There are enough red flags — for instance, the fact that trio shot 30.6% on 445 three-point attempts last season — to stop me from buying in. I’m convinced there’s positive regression on those shooting numbers and I’m convinced whoever takes the 450 shots that Audige took will make more of them. I’m just not convinced the improvement will be big enough to overcome the deterioration of the defense and get the Wildcats back to the tournament.
Ohio State Buckeyes
Projected Final KenPom Ranking: #25 (+24 from last season)
Projected Final Big Ten Rankings: 3rd offense/9th defense
What’s the same?
There’s not any context to make Ohio State’s 5-15 league record more palatable given the talent on the roster. But it was essentially an entirely new team and the absence of reliable veterans like EJ Liddell, Kyle Young, and Justin Ahrens was acutely felt. Good news, then, that this year’s team has even more talent and much of it has Big Ten experience, too.
Three top-75 recruits return in Bruce Thornton, Felix Okpara, and Roddy Gayle. Zed Key, one of the few holdovers from the 2021-22 team, is back again and healthy after a January shoulder injury torpedoed his season. Thornton was the best shooter on the team besides first-round pick Brice Sensabaugh, canning 37.5% of his three pointers. Gayle was also shot well although he didn’t play serious minutes until the tail end of the year.
Those two are both good but it’s Okpara who interests me the most. The 6-11 center gives them a completely different element than the ground-bound Key. Chris Holtmann has struggled to solve the defensive puzzle, but Okpara is like finding a corner piece. He’s longer and can elevate, and his 8.8% block rate was the best among Big Ten freshman. Four freshman 6-9 or taller played at least 30% of their team’s minutes:
Okpara was less of an offensive option than the others last year, and will continue to be this year given the scoring options elsewhere, but he’s not a zero on that side of the ball and doesn’t force things. Improved chemistry with Thornton will lead to extra lobs and dunks. Defensively, it’s encouraging that he posted the highest block rate while being less foul-prone than his peers. Adding strength will help his defensive rebounding and willingness to put the ball up and finish despite contact.
The playing time distribution between him and Key is a balancing act because they can’t play together. Key was playing very well prior to his injury and has a much, much better post-up game than Okpara. It’s a strong platoon overall with a high floor of Key’s offense and Okpara’s defense. That gives Holtmann needed malleability. Guards getting stymied? Throw Key out for some extra offense. Someone’s cooking and can’t miss? More minutes for Okpara to help the defense. It’s an up-and-down game? That’s an Okpara day. More of a stuck-in-the-mud affair? That’s more suited to Key.
What’s better?
Holtmann has not fielding an upper-half defense since Year 1 when it was Thad Matta’s guys. Last year was their worst effort yet, ranking only above Iowa and Minnesota in defensive efficiency. Not the company you want to keep.
Okpara can’t anchor a defensive turnaround on his own and luckily he won’t have to. One of the bigger issues recently has been the touted incoming freshmen thinking of defense as “that annoying time I have to stand around until I get to shoot again.” Neither Malaki Branham nor Brice Sensabaugh showed much interest in defense, but their scoring ability was so good they had to be on the floor. That sort of attitude from a primary player permeated the rest of the roster and the defensive intensity never materialized.
That should be different this year. Scotty Middleton has NBA physicality and by all accounts cares enough to apply it defensively. He’s not the sort of playmaker on the win that Sensabaugh or Branham was, but the Buckeyes need a freshman to be a serious 3-and-D threat more than they need him to try and do everything offensively.
Incoming guard transfer Dale Bonner from Baylor is a former Division 2 standout in his sixth year of college. He hasn’t much of an impact offensively against high-major competition, but he’s a very good defender. He fell out of Baylor’s rotation for a while last season but popped back in toward the end, and whenever he was in he was good for a steal or two. In the Buckeyes’ exhibition against Baylor, he notched four steals. Ohio State had nobody who could harass opposing guards even on a part-time basis last year, so Bonner is a welcome addition.
The offense will improve because there’s more guys who can do more things. Thornton can drive and shoot and as a sophomore his decision-making will be better. He’s actually a decent mid-range shooter but he’s also good enough to get to the rim for an even higher-percentage attempt. Gayle played his best basketball at the end of the year, shooting 9-for-11 from behind the arc during their conference tournament run. He can also get into the lane himself.
Compared to last year, when Sean McNeil and Isaac Likelele were counted on as contributors, the baseline is higher. They’ll be better inside the arc (where Likekele dragged them down with a sub-40% hit rate on 118 attempts). Increased minutes for Okpara means better offensive rebounding.
What’s worse?
I’m not crazy about the transfer portal addition of Jamison Battle. He’s played exclusively for losing teams, first at George Washington and then at Minnesota, and pretty much stopped trying to do anything but get shots up for the Gophers last year. It was a miserable year that started with a foot injury even before the losses stacked up, so maybe it’s a write-off. But even if he reverts to his junior year production, I’m worried about how he fits in with the offense. He’s a ball-stopper who succumbs to the hero ball temptation too often. There’s a lot of Justice Sueing to his game: he’s a capable enough scorer, but did anything about last year’s Buckeyes leave you longing for more Justice Sueing?
It feels like a low-upside lottery ticket, a gamble Ohio State didn’t really need to take. A month after Battle committed they also reeled in Evan Mahaffey from Penn State, and that one makes way more sense: a tough defender with three years of eligibility ready for a slightly bigger offensive role, versus a grad transfer gunner.
Still, when a program like Ohio State suffers through such a bad season, there’s not much further to fall. Most everything should get better. One area of concern? Three point shooting. Ohio State attempted 636 threes last season. Players responsible for 70% of those are no longer with the team.
Thornton is the only established shooter. Gayle got white-hot in the Big Ten tournament but shot 6-21 during the conference regular season. Bonner shot better last year than his cover-your-eyes 10-52 output in 2021-22, but his volume was low enough that big shooting days against Mississippi Valley State and Tarleton State skew the sample. Battle is more than willing to fill the attempts void, but he was a 31% shooter last year and his ceiling seems to be 36-37%. Middleton shot well in high school but projecting freshmen three-point percentage (and volume) is impossible.
What does it mean?
Things will be much, much better in Columbus. Last year’s team wasn’t as bad as the 5-15 record would indicate. A run of close losses and bad breaks eventually wrecked the Buckeyes’ confidence in their execution. There was some really bad basketball at times — one three-game stretch saw them lose by an average of nearly 22 points — but they played better than their record. When they beat Wisconsin in the Big Ten tournament, the Badgers were rated 14 spots worse despite four more conference wins (and it’s not like the Badgers stunk in their non-conference schedule). It took the perfect formula of hard luck to end up at 5-15.
The sophomore bump for a group of four-star prospects is tantalizing, and there’s another batch of quality recruits right behind them. The sticking points are mostly the good kind: how to split minutes between Zed Key and Felix Okpara, and how to manage a crowded wing group. I wish there was one more established scorer, preferably in the backcourt, but the depth compensates. Someone will step up.
Given the talent, this should be a bubble team at minimum. I’m trusting enough of Chris Holtmann’s track record on offense and intrigued enough by the defensive potential that I think it will be something more.
Purdue Boilermakers
Projected Final KenPom Ranking: #3 (+4 from last season)
Projected Final Big Ten Rankings: 1st offense/2nd defense
What’s the same?
Zach Edey is back, I’ve heard he’s pretty good. The National Player of the Year is doubly-dominant, posting insane numbers on his own while demanding such attention that he makes things easy for his teammates. Easy doesn’t mean automatic, as the tournament loss to Fairleigh Dickinson proved, but the Boilermakers cleared the Big Ten by three games last season and there’s not a compelling case against them doing it again. Even if Michigan State improved to 14-6, it wouldn’t exactly be a shock to see Purdue at 17-3. They’re that good. (By the way, the Boilermakers and Spartans meet only once this season, and it’s at Mackey Arena).
Look, this is probably going to be my least insightful writeup because what else is there to say about Purdue? You know about Edey, you know about the freshman guards becoming sophomores, and you know about the pieces on the wing that can burn you (see: Mason Gillis hitting nine three pointers against Penn State). It was a great team last year and it’s going to be a great team this year.
Those freshman guards, Braden Smith and Fletcher Loyer, took most of the flack for the FDU loss and not unfairly so: they shot 6-20 and turned it over ten times. That final sour note left a bad taste, and an SEC fan who hadn’t watched Purdue all year until the tournament would’ve bristled at how a team piloted by the 6-foot Smith could’ve ranked #1 for so much of the year.
But Braden Smith was awesome and there’s a chance, maybe even a good chance, that he turns out to be the most valuable recruit in the class of 2022. I’m not going to make the case that he’s a better player than Brandon Miller or Kyle Filipowski but Smith has tremendous value for the same reason Edey does: The NBA isn’t that interested, so he’s likely to stick around campus for a long time.
Bart Torvik has a stat called PORPAGATU!, which stands for Points Over Replacement Per Adjusted Game At That Usage! and is the closest thing college basketball has to an encompassing stat similar to WAR in baseball. It’s not perfect but it’s a reasonable capture of a player’s offensive value. Not surprisingly, Edey easily led the country in this stat last year, and Keegan Murray was tops in 2021-22. It’s a reasonably, uh, reasonable measure. Anyway, here’s the top twelve freshmen in PORPAGATU! last year:
Seven of the top twelve are off to the NBA. Filipowski and Judah Mintz are projected 2024 first-rounders, and Alex Karaban’s a projected second-rounder. Andrew Rohde posted his stats against Summit League competition; he could easily play his way onto the NBA Draft radar this season at Virginia. And then there’s Braden Smith.
He wasn’t merely along for the Zach Edey ride, he was helping operate it. He shot it well from deep (37.6%) for a team that didn’t (32.2%). He was trusted to be more than a caretaker for the offense from Day 1, and the bet from Matt Painter paid off. Here’s how he compared to some other returning freshmen (now sophomore) Big Ten guards:
Check out the free throw rate. Smith wasn’t afraid to dribble into the paint and look for contact. Yes, this stat is skewed by the fact that Purdue often led games late and Smith was the one catching the ball when opponents needed to foul. But you can also see by his rim rate that he was getting the hoop with some regularity. He had the benefit of Edey, of course, but Hunter Dickinson and Cliff Omoruyi commanded plenty of attention away from McDaniel and Simpson, too.
Smith got to the rim and finished roughly as well as Simpson, but he made three times as many three-pointers than him. McDaniel and Thornton matched Smith’s shooting but got to the rim half as often. Smith was terrific, and as an added bonus he actually tried on defense, which was something more than Purdue got from the lead guard spot the year prior.
What’s better?
It’s a little much to ask Smith to take a big sophomore leap given how good he was, but there’s an obvious spot for improvement from him and the offense as a whole: turnovers. Only Minnesota gave the ball away more in conference play last season. If Purdue lost a game, it was because shot the ball miserably (Maryland, vsIndiana) or turned it over too often (Rutgers, Northwestern, at Indiana). And then against Fairleigh Dickinson they did both and voila, season over.
This year the offense should be more on time. Smith and Loyer had a year to adjust the speed of the college game, and their teammates have had a year to adjust to them. I don’t think ball security will morph into a strength, but erasing a weakness is the next best thing.
The outside shooting should also improve. We know the looks will be there given the defensive attention on Edey. Caleb Furst (26.8%) and Ethan Morton (27.7%) are better shooters than they showed last year, and the bar for improvement is not high. Mason Gillis (35.6%) shot worse than his career number, and Loyer’s 32.6% belies his reputation as a shooter. I like at least three of them to improve their numbers, and even if Smith regresses a bit the teamwide success should increase.
Lance Jones isn’t an especially exciting addition from the transfer portal from Southern Illinois, but a necessary one. Purdue was in a tough spot trying to attract a portal guard with Smith and Loyer locked in as the starters, but no other real options. Jones was an ultra high-usage guy for SIU, never really threatening efficiency for a team that made its bones on defense.
Along with incoming freshman Myles Colvin, Jones helps the overall athleticism and lets Painter get more aggressive defensively. In addition to their struggles taking care of the ball, Purdue was 330th in the country in taking it away from others, which is not a huge surprise considering the inexperience in the backcourt. Last year’s portal guard, David Jenkins, was offense-oriented; Jones feels like a better fit for this roster’s needs.
What’s worse?
Very few thought Edey could maintain his production while increasing his minutes as the full-time starter once Trevion Williams graduated. Bart Torvik’s computer did, but even the man himself did not:
Well, he did, and Purdue took the college basketball world by storm with a 22-1 start. But after that they went just 7-5. To believe Purdue is set up for a slide is to believe that they were scouted better as the season went on, and opponents were able to find things to take advantage of that were not evident earlier in the year. That’s possible, but to me it looked more like an inexperienced freshman backcourt hitting a late-season wall.
Edey simply raises this team’s floor to an absurd degree. The rebound differential by itself is eye-popping: Purdue rebounded 37.9% of its misses in conference play and their opponents recovered 23.6% of theirs. Both were best in the league. The second-best offensive rebounding team was closer to 10th than they were to Purdue. They get extra shots and you don’t.
Things got weird in Lexington when Oscar Tshiebwe won Player of the Year and came back, so there’s a vibes-based case to be made. But that Kentucky team had a lot more turnover than this Purdue team, and Matt Painter is a better coach than John Calipari.
The way things get worse is if last year was the year where things were sharpest and this year the edges get blurry: Edey is merely excellent instead of transcendent, Smith is good instead of great, the wings stagnate. Each of those feels less likely than the alternative, so multiple things going wrong is a longshot.
What does it mean?
Purdue is the clear heavy favorite to repeat as Big Ten champions. Zach Edey is a ridiculous human being and basketball player and with Hunter Dickinson and Trayce Jackson-Davis gone the gap between him and the next-best big man is comically large. He provides them with a built-in edge every night, but it’s not just him dragging a middling roster. Braden Smith was the most complete freshman guard in the conference and sophomore year is when guards are supposed to pop.
I’ve got nothing else. This team rocks. They’ll win the league. Whether they get another #1 seed depends on how they do against a loaded non-conference slate: Arizona, Alabama, Xavier, and then a round one matchup with Gonzaga in a loaded Maui Invitational field.
Penn State Nittany Lions
Projected Final KenPom Ranking: #103 (-67 from last season)
Projected Final Big Ten Rankings: 13th offense/11th defense
What’s the same?
Pretty much nothing. They were already destined for a hard reset with Jalen Pickett, Andrew Funk, Camren Wynter, and Myles Dread exhausting their eligibility and Seth Lundy having his sights on the NBA. Then Micah Shrewsberry accepted the Notre Dame job and brought with him Kebba Njie as well as all three committed high school prospects. In the end, new coach Mike Rhoades was forced to turn to the transfer portal where he brought in nine new players. The only returners are Kanye Clary, who played 10 minutes per game and Jameel Brown, who barely played 10 total minutes in the Big Ten.
They won’t be the most experienced team in the country the way they were last season but the bright side to not bringing in any freshmen is… you don’t have to put freshmen on the floor. Everyone in the rotation has been around the block including a fourth-year point guard and a fifth-year center.
What’s better?
Rhoades was Shaka Smart’s assistant when VCU made it to the Final Four on the back of their Havoc defense. Rhoades doesn’t exactly employ that style as a head coach, but VCU ranked in the top 10 in the country in generating turnovers five years in a row. Penn State, meanwhile, ranked last in the Big Ten at generating them each of the past two seasons. In fact only one team in the country created fewer turnovers than Penn State last season (take a bow, North Dakota State). Safe to say that opponents will find the Bryce Jordan Center less relaxing this year.
Point guard Ace Baldwin, who followed Rhoades from VCU, ranked in the top three in the Atlantic-10 in steals each of his three seasons in Richmond. Baldwin is on the smaller side at 6-1 190 and swiping the ball from A-10 guards isn’t the same as doing it to Big Ten guards, but an A-10 defensive player of the year with three years of experience in his coach’s defensive system is a pretty good building block.
And the bar isn’t high for improvement on the defensive end. Penn State (correctly) leaned into its offensive identity last year, and the defense ranked 11th in the league. With a defensive-minded coach in Rhodes and a veteran roster, there’s upside.
What’s worse?
Penn State was the Big Ten’s best shot-making bunch last year, topping the conference in effective FG%. Pickett, Lundy, Funk, Wynter and Dread all shot 38% or better on a combined 866 three point attempts. That’s an awful lot to replace, and even the “proven” shooters they’re bringing in don’t quite measure up.
Baldwin has been up and down in his career, from 26% as a freshman to 41% as a sophomore to 34% as a junior. Zach Hicks, in from Temple, is a 36% career shooter. Puff Johnson and D’Marco Dunn were both sub-30% in their limited time at North Carolina. RayQuawndis Mitchell’s a 31% shooter covering three different stops in lower leagues.
Leo O’Boyle is the best of the group at 38% in four season at Lafayette and will look to recreate the success that Funk (and Rutgers’ Cam Spencer) found in transferring up from the Patriot League. Unfortunately O’Boyle isn’t quite the same kind of all-around player that those two were. The up-transfers who make it in the Big Ten or other high-major leagues are the ones who were well-rounded and highly-used in their low-major league. Funk (30.8%) and Spencer (28.8%) took the highest percentage of their team’s shots in the Patriot League.
O’Boyle (20.4%) ranked fourth on Lafayette last season. That’s more in line with Patriot League transfers like Jimmy Sotos (20% at Bucknell) and Pat Andree (23.6% at Lehigh), neither of whom made much of an impact for Ohio State or NC State when they moved up.
The Nittany Lions were also great inside the arc, thanks to an All-American season from Pickett. The way he opened up offense by getting into the lane, backing down opposing guards, and firing off smart passes is impossible to replicate. That’s obviously not Baldwin’s game anyway at 6-1, but the spacing is going to be a lot worse even if O’Boyle and Hicks are capable shooters. After playing without a traditional center last year, Qudus Wahab (via Georgetown via Maryland via Georgetown) transferred in.
Wahab’s always put up decent numbers but his teams have never been good. In his four seasons, the conference defensive rankings of Wahab’s teams are: 10th (out of 10), 10th (out of 11), 12th (out of 14), and 11th (out of 11). He’s played for really bad coaches in Patrick Ewing and Danny Manning, but that doesn’t speak well to his ability to elevate a defense. He also has a tendency to limit his minutes with foul trouble, and backup Favour Aire has all of 38 career minutes.
What does it mean?
Trying to break down a brand new team with a brand new coach is a pretty funny thing to try to do, honestly. The most interesting thing, I think, is that Rhoades’ teams have not looked much like what Big Ten teams look like and he doesn’t plan on trying to fit in. There’s a world in which that kind of disruption works but we haven’t seen it yet. Fred Hoiberg tried bringing his outsider style to Nebraska and had the Cornhuskers playing at the league’s fastest tempo in his first three seasons. They went 9-50 in league play. Last year Hoiberg slowed them down and played something closer to traditional Big Ten basketball and they went 9-11.
VCU generated a bunch of turnovers under Rhoades but it came at the expense of a high foul rate. Things that work against La Salle and Duquesne probably won’t work against Iowa and Wisconsin, and at that point you’re just fouling a lot. There’s hardly any Big Ten experience on the coaching staff or the roster and there’ll be an inevitable adjustment period to the level of skill and the style of officiating.
Ace Baldwin can be a star and it might not even matter. He’s 6-1 and his backcourt mate Kanye Clary is 5-11. D’Marco Dunn and Puff Johnson were good enough to get recruited by North Carolina but not good enough to play — and remember, North Carolina has been an 8 seed twice and an NIT team once in the past three seasons, so it’s not like they were buried on the bench of a 1 seed. RayQuawndis Mitchell hasn’t been an efficient player at Idaho, UIC, or UMKC so expecting that in the Big Ten is a lofty dream.
Rhoades did a very good job of putting together a team, but the assignment was so tough that a lot still has to go right for this team to wind up closer to the 12th best team than the 14th. Fielding a competitive team in year 1 without inheriting multiple proven Big Ten players is basically impossible. Here’s every current coach’s first-year record:
A 5-15 or 6-14 record would be a mark of success. If they get there it’s because Rhoades is able to stamp his defensive identity with a group of pedigreed and older but largely unproven players.
Rutgers Scarlet Knights
Projected Final KenPom Ranking: #41 (-2 from last season)
Projected Final Big Ten Rankings: 9th offense/5th defense
What’s the same?
Rutgers was set to return nearly everyone from a team that rose as high as 13th in KenPom before Mawot Mag tore his ACL and the season spun off the axis. Then Cam Spencer and Paul Mulcahy entered the portal as graduate transfers in May and June, long after the Scarlet Knights had any reasonable chance at replacing them.
The tumble that Rutgers took once Mag went down spoke to both how good Mag was and how little depth there was behind him. From the start of the season through February 3, Rutgers was the #13 team per barttorvik.com. From February 4 through the end of the season, they were #92. The final on/off numbers for Mag make him look like a superhero: they were +10.2 points per 100 possessions with Mag on the floor and -6.3 without him (this is with cupcake opponents filtered out).
That’s a little misleading because naturally more minutes had to go worse players once got injured. But Brian Fonseca of nj.com pulled the numbers right after Mag got injured and they told the same story:
Mag has returned to practice but didn’t play in their charity exhibition against St. John’s. When he returns — and when he gets back to playing a full share of minutes — is an open question, but the buzz has been positive and it seems like he’s on track to be a full go with no minutes restrictions by the time the calendar flips at the latest. His defense was crucial last year and only means more with two-time Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year Caleb McConnell off to the G-League.
Cliff Omoruyi’s another huge piece back. His offensive game stagnated last year — his two-point percentage dipped from 63.5% to 52.9% — but he got better as a rebounder and was neck-and-neck with Trayce Jackson-Davis as the league’s best shotblockers. Rutgers was counting on him to be a more dependable part of their offense and prop up other shortcomings. He was still a big lob threat and threw down plenty of dunks, but his post-up game remained unpolished and a mildly-ballyhooed outside shot never materialized. He made 4 of 22 three-pointers and basically stopped hoisting them by January. But he and Mag can be the backbone of another strong defense. Even with the late-season downturn the Scarlet Knights had the conference’s best defense and the #6 unit in the country.
Sophomore guard Derek Simpson is getting a lot of buzz as a breakout guy. The offense went into a shell in February but found a bit of life by leaning more on Simpson and less on Mulcahy as the lead guard. He’s a little further away than typical “breakout” guys, but his ability and willingness to drive to the basket was impressive — he had a much higher rim rate than fellow freshmen Dug McDaniel and Bruce Thornton. We’ll get to the problematic shooting numbers in a bit.
Aundre Hyatt is back for a sixth season, which is ordinarily something I love. In the COVID extra eligibility era, having a super- or super-duper senior around is closer to a necessity than a luxury. Unfortunately Hyatt might be the exception. He’s the one who stepped into Mag’s starting spot and there were some highs (24 points against Nebraska) and lows (a goose egg in 28 minutes against Michigan) offensively but the real problem was on defense. He was so undisciplined and ineffective that he lost Steve Pikiell’s trust and ceded minutes to Oskar Palmquist, no defensive wizard himself. Palmquist got beat plenty but it’s telling that Pikiell still preferred him.
Ultimately Rutgers is probably better off having Hyatt than not. Experience matters and he executed better offensively, cutting out the nonsense turnovers and poor shot selection that were problems in 2021-22. Having Mag healthy again will let Pikiell mold Hyatt’s role to something more suitable.
What’s better?
The shooting was abysmal even though they had a certified sniper in Cam Spencer, who hit 43.4% of his threes. Your perception of Rutgers is probably that they trot out not just bad shooters, but atrocious ones. And you’re absolutely correct. Since 2008, only 46 high-major players have attempted at least 60 three-pointers and made 22% or fewer. Two of them played for Rutgers last season — Simpson was 13-60 and McConnel was 13-64. Throw in Omoruyi’s 4-22 and Dean Reiber’s 5-21 and, yeah, Spencer’s sharpshooting got canceled out and this was the #12 three-point offense in the conference. Which is better than how they fared inside the arc, which would be dead last.
I think both improve, and not just because they’ve set the bar so low. Mulcahy hurt his shoulder early in the season and it really messed with his offensive game. It became clear he didn’t have his full bag of tricks available when he’d get into the paint and his two-point percentage fell from 50% in Big Ten games as a junior to 42.6% as a senior. The knock-on effect of that was that he wasn’t drawing help defenders as often and there were fewer easy dunks created for Omoruyi.
UMass transfer Noah Fernandes is eight inches shorter than Mulcahy but their games have more in common than you might think. Neither has the explosiveness to consistently get to the rim. Mulcahy uses his size and Fernandes uses a tight handle but the goal is the same: get into the paint and keep their head up for a pass or use pivots and shot-fakes to create a look for themselves.
How well the latter works for Fernandes at 5-11 against bigger defenses in the Big Ten is a fair question, but compared to a limited Mulcahy last season he should be able to do more to open things up for Omoruyi to convert at a much higher rate. Even if big Cliff doesn’t get back to where he was as a freshman or sophomore (up around 63% on twos) I’m confident that last year’s 52.9% represents his floor.
Fernandes will help the three-point shooting, too. He’s a 37.6% career shooter from outside and launched more than four per game in his time at UMass. Mulcahy was a capable shooter but attempted fewer than two a game last year. But the big hope for better shooting is freshman Gavin Griffiths, a top-50 recruit who’s one of the best in the class from deep. Projecting a freshman to light it up is never a good idea, but Griffiths doesn’t need to light it up to help Rutgers improve. He just needs to shoot it reasonably well.
The other incoming freshman is JaMichael Davis, a twitchy point guard who’s probably going to have to play given the (lack of) guard depth. Marist/Hartford/FIU transfer Austin Williams, coming off a knee injury, doesn’t do much for me outside of being an old guy. Best case, he gives the guard version of what Mikey Henn (Penn State) or Patrick Emilien (Maryland) did last year.
Between Fernandes, Simpson, and Davis, the backcourt is way quicker than last year or, really, any year under Pikiell. There’s every reason to be skeptical about his ability to craft a productive offense. In seven seasons, the highest they’ve finished is 9th in the conference and 72nd nationally. At least he’s shuffling the deck with a different kind of backcourt and an offense-first recruit in Griffiths. Last year’s squad finished 11th and only that high on the strength of good offensive rebounding. Omoruyi will continue to bring those in and it’s been a Pikiell staple before. Combine that with more dynamic guard play and better shotmaking and I’ll bet on some improvement.
What’s worse?
The last ingredient in the secret sauce for the offense getting better is that McConnell will no longer be on the floor 33 minutes a night. But he had to be out there because his defense was so, so good. He repeated as conference Defensive POTY — sharing the honor last year with Northwestern’s Chase Audige — because had the size and the instincts to completely short-circuit opponents’ halfcourt sets. He was a very good man-to-man defender — he shut down Jalen Pickett entirely in the second half of Rutgers’ comeback win — but really made his mark jumping passing lanes, tipping balls, and blowing up a play to cause the offense to do something else.
Mulcahy and Spencer chipped in with steals too, making up for their lack of footspeed with good size, instincts, and effort. When things were rolling, Spencer was Rutgers’ shortest starter at 6-4. Everyone else was 6-7 or taller, and even sixth man Hyatt was 6-6. That sort of size was suffocating. Rutgers was 8th nationally in steal rate and second in the conference in overall turnover rate.
This year, the backcourt is Fernandes (5-11), Simpson (6-3 and still with a slight build), Davis (6-2 and 165 lbs). Griffiths (6-8) and Hyatt have size but we’ve seen Hyatt struggle defensively and “freshman who can really shoot it” is synonymous with “bad defender.” (Connor Essegian was brutally bad defensively for Wisconsin last year, for instance)
What does it mean?
Steve Pikiell is nothing if not a defensive floor-raiser, and Cliff Omoruyi and Mawot Mag are still here. Mag is not the halfcourt menace that Caleb McConnell was, but he’s about as good as a one-on-one guy defending multiple positions, and he’s great as a part of a press. Without the length they had last season to clog up the halfcourt, Rutgers should try to do more pressing and trapping. The defense’s thermal exhaust port is that they’ve allowed a lot of three-pointers. Against Big Ten offenses that hasn’t proven to be an issue, but variance can swing more easily against them than a team like Illinois. Pikiell was able to patch over Paul Mulcahy and Cam Spencer’s relative lack of footspeed to employ an elite defense last season and he should be able to patch over the lack of size to cobble together at least a pretty good one this year.
But even with the elite defense the team fell short, so clearly the offense needs to improve. The ceiling is higher, but not “top five in the conference high,” and the floor is still low — and Pikiell doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt when it comes to offense. The uncertainty at the guard position is most worrisome: Noah Fernandes is transferring up, Austin Williams is transferring way up, JaMichael Davis is a three-star freshman, and college basketball is littered with breakout candidates (which is the label Derek Simpson is getting) who never broke out. The bar for offensive success at Rutgers is not terribly high and I like that they’re mixing up the personnel with some quickness instead of big, slow guards but “Rutgers Offense Fizzles” would not exactly be a Man Bites Dog story if it comes to pass.
Rutgers has seen a string of major contributors transfer out to big schools — Jacob Young and Eugene Omoruyi to Oregon, Myles Johnson to UCLA — and there’s been no dramatic fall-off. Losing Mulcahy and Spencer so late in the process stung, but there’s enough left and enough new intrigue to live in the bubble zone all year.
They’ve yet to put together a complete effort in the non-conference under Pikiell with six losses to sub-100 KenPom teams in the past four seasons (and one of those was the abbreviated 2020-21 non-conference slate). It’s not a huge ask for a team of this quality to avoid losing such games: Indiana has six fewer Big Ten wins than the Scarlet Knights in that span, but hasn’t lost to a single sub-100 team (even counting conference games!).
Last year Rutgers took care of their cupcake problem, dismantling all the really bad teams they played. But they went 1-3 in “real” non-conference games, losing to Temple, Miami, and Seton Hall. Rutgers can make things a lot easier on themselves and end up on the right side of the bubble if they can finally take care of business in a real way: avoid a sub-100 loss and take two of three against Wake Forest, Seton Hall, and Mississippi State. None of those are at the RAC, so the new-look Knights will need to post new-look results in November and December.
Wisconsin Badgers
Projected Final KenPom Ranking: #33 (+28 from last season)
Projected Final Big Ten Rankings: 10th offense/3rd defense
What’s the same?
Connor Essegian joined the starting lineup on January 17. Max Klesmit got hurt during that game and missed the next two, returning January 28. For the final 16 games of the season, Wisconsin’s starting lineup was exactly the same: those two along with full-year starters Chucky Hepburn, Tyler Wahl, and Steven Crowl.
All five return this year to give Wisconsin the continuity it tends to thrive with. But this was an NIT team that didn’t win consecutive games once the calendar flipped to 2023 until knocking off Bradley and Liberty. The early-season success — they took Kansas to overtime and in December toppled Marquette, Maryland, and Iowa all in a row — faded and they turned into a cartoon version of themselves, playing everybody close, nutshelled by a two point loss to Purdue followed by a four point win over Minnesota to close out the regular season.
They did the typical Wisconsin thing, slowing down the game and taking great care of the ball to the frustration of their opponents. Defensively they were stout again, Greg Gard’s sixth team in eight seasons to rate in the top 25 in adjusted defensive efficiency. The best thing they did was create turnovers. Hepburn, Wahl, and Klesmit averaged better than a steal a game, and they were second-best in the conference in generating non-steal turnovers (yup, that would include taking charges). They posted the conference’s second-best turnover margin:
Those extra possessions they grinded out were useful because the offense was otherwise a mess. They shot a lot of three pointers but didn’t make enough of them (3rd in the conference in attempt rate, 10th in percentage). They didn’t get to the free throw line (13th in free throw rate) and didn’t make them once they did (12th in FT%). Only Rutgers posted a lower effective FG%, but the Scarlet Knights rebounded 30% of their missed shots while the Badgers collected only 20%.
Hepburn increased his three-point percentage to 40% but his game inside the arc cratered, particularly scoring at the rim. His midrange success rate dipped a bit — 31.6% to 29.2% — but his conversion rate at the rim fell from 58% to 46%. As a freshman he had the luxury of sharing the court with Johnny Davis and Brad Davison. Moving up the defensive scouting report proved to be a struggle and his overall two-point percentage fell to 35.7%, lowest in the conference:
What’s better?
Hepburn wasn’t the only one to suffer inside the arc. Tyler Wahl battled an ankle injury for most of the year and saw his two-point percentage drop from 57% to 44%. With another year of experience, better health, and plain-ol’ statistical regression, I’m confident both guys will bounce back and put the ball in the basket at a higher rate.
Something else that can’t get much worse? The bench. Jordan Davis filled the sixth man role once Essegian began to start. He’s transferred down to Illinois State and that slot is filled by St. John’s transfer AJ Storr, who, once he gets over the shock of moving from New York to Wisconsin and from Mike Anderson to Greg Gard, will represent an upgrade.
Storr is able and willing to do more than Davis. He’s also two inches taller. Hepburn, Klesmit, Essegian, and Storr gives them a very solid outside shooting core, so even if Wahl and Crowl continue to be shot-attempters rather than shot-makers (they shot 30% on 127 tries last year and are a combined 28% on 306 attempts in their careers) the Badgers will be better in this regard than a year ago.
How big of a contributor Storr can be will depend on his adaption to Wisconsin’s system. His freshman year was spent running up and down in St. John’s high-tempo offense, the fifth-fastest in the country. He’s not going to be able to get the same chances in transition he did a season ago. His spot-up shooting skills will translate to the halfcourt, but how much of a threat he is to get to the hoop and put pressure on a defense is an open question. On the Johnnies last year, his rim rate lagged far behind the players he was backing up.
The rest of the bench should also be better, but that’s like picking a wrapped Christmas gift over the ugly sweater you already opened from your aunt. Wisconsin leaned almost entirely on a seven-man rotation, and when someone got hurt it spelled doom. They went 0-3 without Wahl and 0-2 without Klesmit because the options behind them were not up to the task. In the Badgers’ NIT run, the bench scored a total of 24 points in four games (and 12 of those belonged to Davis).
It’s still a point of concern. Kamari McGee returns as Hepburn’s backup, and, well, there’s a reason Hepburn was playing 35+ minutes in tight games. But at least there’s another option this year in freshman John Blackwell, even if he’s ranked outside the top 200 in this year’s class.
Nolan Winter arrives at Wisconsin from the Lakeville North High School pipeline that carried Nate Reuvers and Tyler Wahl. The 6-11 freshman is set for real minutes right away and gives the Badgers depth up front and means that Wahl won’t have to cover the 5 while Crowl needs to sit.
Speaking of Crowl, he took some nice steps forward in his second year as a starter and as the league continues to churn over at the center spot he should get more attention this season. He’s a legit 7-footer who can step out and shoot, though as previously mentioned it’s more of the threat of it than the actual success rate that’s an asset. He became a better passer, something that the offense needs to keep up because Hepburn isn’t, yet, a great table-setter for others.
What’s worse?
It shouldn’t be much. That’s how it goes when you return your entire starting lineup, especially because Wahl had such a down season. The addition of Storr helps the overall shooting, but the trio of Hepburn, Essegian, and Klesmit combined to shoot 38% on 480 attempts. That could drop down to 35%, but it’s not crazy to see it repeating or even improving (especially Essegian… what if he simply follows Hepburn’s sophomore jump in that department?).
The fact is last year is just about as bad it gets for Wisconsin. They’ve had two worse years since 1997 and bounced back immediately both times: They were 95th in KenPom in 1998 and 13th the next season, and they were 70th in KenPom in 2017 and 16th the following year.
Crowl doesn’t bring anything to the table in terms of rim protection outside of his body. Which, at 7-0 245 is enough to bang with anybody (non-Edey division, of course) but Wisconsin’s conference block rate of 3.5% was the lowest of any Big Ten team since at least 1999, which is far back as KenPom goes. And their two-point defense with Crowl patrolling the paint has ranked 11th each of the past two seasons, after it was 5th and 7th in the Micah Potter/Nate Reuvers era and 2nd in Ethan Happ’s senior season. Winter being playable helps this — and they’ll block more shots just from happenstance unless you think they’ll post another historic low — but not in a major way.
What does it mean?
Wisconsin improving from last season is the surest bet on the board. They hit their floor last season and it doesn’t take mental gymnastics to imagine Tyler Wahl returning to his junior year form, or Chucky Hepburn combining the good parts of his freshman and sophomore seasons. The limits of the athleticism and shooting are real — it’s no mystery why the two-point percentage fell off without Johnny Davis bending opposing defenses — and sot he bounceback isn’t going to spring them to the top of the league. But when bottoming out means a 9-11 conference record and an NIT Final Four, there’s a very soft landing to make.
The thing that could bite them is what happened last year. They didn’t lose many actual games to injury, but Wahl’s ankle was a problem and Max Klesmit needed 16 stitches in his face. No team makes it through the season unscathed and Wisconsin is less equipped to weather an injury than most in the conference. They’ve got Tennessee, Arizona, Marquette, Providence, and Virginia on the non-conference docket, which means there’s not much wiggle room to get the bench developed before conference play starts. How far Wisconsin goes will ultimately depend on just how much better some extremely Wisconsin players in Wahl and Hepburn are, and what sort of impact a decidedly-not Wisconsin player in AJ Storr can make.