Big Ten Basketball Preview: #7 Michigan State Spartans

It feels very weird putting the Spartans this low in the conference rankings, but losing Adreian Payne, Gary Harris, and Keith Appling will do that.  Michigan State has suffered heavy and significant defections before, but this time the holdovers and replacements aren't strong enough to bring Sparty back to the top of the conference.  They should still be in the mix for an NCAA bid and will likely get one, it'll just be more of a struggle than years past when it was basically locked up by February, especially since Kenny Kaminski was dismissed from the team, leaving Sparty extremely thin in the bigs department.

Without Kaminski the big men are Branden Dawson, who is awesome, Matt Costello, who isn't, and Gavin Schillling, who is untested at best but being Shane Schilling's brother doesn't bode well for him, and that's it.  Dawsen they don't have to worry about assuming he doesn't break his hand punching a wall again or doing something else stupid.  Usually when a player is thrust into a position to go from supporting player to go-to guy like Dawsen I'd consider it a big question, but Dawsen is totally awesome and should be a monster this year.  It would probably help if he could develop any kind of jump shot, but he'll be just fine and be in the running for conference player of the year.  Beyond him?  It's dicey.

Matt Costello is the leading returnee at 14.7 minutes per game last year, and he was pretty productive in that time averaging 4.0 points and 3.3 rebounds per game while shooting 60% from the field.  He doesn't seem like the type to blossom into a star, but the Big Ten specializes in the whole Big White Stiff to Star transformation - look no further than Frank Kaminsky last year - so nothing would really surprise me.  The other legit option in the front court is Gavin Schilling, younger brother of Shane and Cody   He played sparingly last year, just 238 total minutes.  He gives them size (6-9, 240) and a complete inability to make free throws (11-21 last year) if nothing else.  Other than that the only size is a collection of unknowns, most of which are pretty underwhelming, though freshman Marvin Clark is at least interesting, in a hasn't been disappointing yet way.

As unsettled as the bigs are, the littles are in about as good of shape as they could be after losing both starting guards.  Travis Trice is back and should be able to slide into Appling's role with no issue whatsoever.  He's a better shooter than Appling was, if not quite as good a creator.  Should be an easy transition.  Denzel Valentine is also back on the wing, and he's one of the more underrated all around players in the conference, probably because he's so depressingly ugly.  He averaged 8 points, 6 rebs, nearly 4 assists, and 1 steal per game last year and I'm guessing there wouldn't be more than a handful of players who hit all those marks last season.  Fun Fact:  In our Fantasy Big Ten league he finished third in the league in scoring among returning players behind Frank Kaminsky and Rayvonte Rice, and he should better his numbers with more opportunity this year.  Sparty also adds two interesting freshmen on the perimeter on Lourawls Nairn (traitor) and Javon Bess, and has almost Gopher Alvin Ellis who looked good in a limited role last year, so the perimeter is really not a concern.

Michigan State has as many unanswered questions as anybody in the conference this year, yet I saw one magazine preview had them ranked as high as second in the conference.  That makes no sense to me, and I have pretty close to blind faith in Izzo, but somewhere from 5-8 feels about right.  That should put them in line to pick up a bid with a low single digit seed and then inevitably march to the Elite 8 because Izzo is a complete wizard in March.  Hate him.


OTHER PREVIEWS
#8 IOWA HAWKEYES
#9 MARYLAND TERRAPINS
#10 INDIANA HOOSIERS
#11 PENN STATE NITTANY LIONS
#12 NORTHWESTERN WILDCATS
#13 PURDUE BOILERMAKERS
#14 RUTGERS SCARLET KNIGHTS

Monday Musings (gopher football, stupid Wisconsin, and Gopher hoops recruits)

Some thoughts from the weekend:

-  Gopher football was pretty awesome this weekend.  Well, awesome is probably a bit strong considering all they did was beat a Division II team, but since the Gophers were 0-2 in their last two against D-2 teams I'd say this is a step in the right direction.  Even more impressive was how they won, because this wasn't some squeaker like against UNLV, they came out and and put a whooping on New Hampshire, leading 30-7 at half en route to a 44-7 victory.  Honestly, it was an even bigger ass-kicking than that.  Now, a pessimist could say that the only reason they beat them was because New Hampshire's QB got knocked out with an injury after throwing just two passes and his back-up had only thrown 8 career passes going into this game, but I'm going to choose not to go down that path which I admit is not the way I would have predicted I'd go.  But I mean, of the top 50 athletes/players in that game the Gophers had 49.  They also had the two best quarterbacks and probably three if Philip Nelson had gotten into the game.  Is it impressive they beat New Hampshire?  No.  Is it impressive they beat them by 37?  No, not really.  Is it a sign that maybe the program is finally moving back towards respectability after Brewster tried to kill it, perhaps intentionally?  Well, that's the way I'm going to choose to interpret this.  As Bob Wiley once said, "Baby-steppin."  And also "New Hampshire??!!??"

2nd best Bill Murray movie of all-time

- Suck it, Wisconsin.  Awesome.  Just awesome.  Sea-son's-ov-er *clap clap clap-clap-clap*.   Not only did they lose already this early in the season, but they lost to a Pac-10 team, and as everybody knows the Pac-10 sucks at everything that matters.  Seriously, nobody cares about fencing or water polo, but congrats on winning whatever that thing is called that goes to the school that wins the most total championships to you Stanford.  Way to rock at discus.  My favorite part of Wisconsin losing is how Danny O'Brien, who was supposed to be all like Russell Wilson 2.0 and come in with an established pedigree of being awesome but taking advantage of the transfer rules in order to make Wisconsin a National Title contender just sucked.  Completed just 20 of 38 passes - and a couple I saw were just awful throws (not MarQueis Gray vs. UNLV awful, but plenty awful).  Who am I kidding, I didn't have a favorite part.  The whole thing was my favorite part.  Iowa losing to Iowa State was just the gravy on the thanksgiving taters.

Interestingly, I don't feel nearly so gleeful about the Packers losing.   Yeah they lost at home but it was to another Super Bowl contender and they could easily rip off 15 straight wins now and probably will because why not, whereas Wisconsin is now doomed.  DOOMED!  Hopefully the basketball team is this shitty too, and they should be considering they'll be relying on Jared Berggren and Josh Gasser, but then again I'm pretty sure we've been here with the Badgers before.  That deal with the devil Bo Ryan made has to be expiring soon, right?

-  Three potential future Gopher hoopsters visited campus this weekend, including watching the Gophers thrash New Hampshire.  The visitors, in no particular order:

• Cedric Hankerson, a 6-3 shooting guard from Miami who is unranked by either Rivals or ESPN.  Also holds high major offers from Oklahoma State and Virginia Tech, as well as a smattering of offers from smaller nerd schools like Penn, Boston U., and Brown.  Smart kid who had a 25 on his ACT and comes from a basketball family (dad is all-time assist leader at Hampton or Wagner I forget which, brother played at Alabama and is now at Wyoming) so he's probably got a good basketball IQ, which would be sweet if the Gophers were putting together a team for the Knowledge Bowl.
• Gavin Schilling, a 6-9 center who also comes from a basketball family as he's the younger brother of former Gopher Shane Schilling and Cody Schilling, Gavin is unranked at Rivals and comes in at a 79, good enough for three stars, according to ESPN.  His best offers are from Illinois, Kansas State, and Vandy.  Notable that he is attending Findlay Prep this year, the same school where Gopher recruits Devoe and Cory Joseph attended.  You know, the guys where one would rather reduce his senior season by half rather than stay at the U and the other who never came here at all.  Fingers crossed you guys.
• Nigel Hayes, the most highly regarded of the group, is a power forward from Ohio who ranks as the 100th best recruit in the class of 2013 according to ESPN and gets 3-stars from Rivals.  He's also being chased by Ohio State, Wisconsin, and Stanford, although his brother played football for the Buckeyes but just transferred so I'm not sure what that means.  His post game is ok but needs work, however he's already got a jumper out to 19-feet and is athletic, although he needs to gain strength.

So there you go.  Pretty underwhelming.  Other than Hayes, who would be a great get with Mbakwe graduating, these other two guys would just be depth which is fine sometimes however I'm pretty sure that would describe this year's incoming class as well and when you do that too many years in a row you end up as Penn State.  No thanks.  I'm starting to wonder if they're going to sign anyone at all.

-  I was going to put some NFL stuff in here too but I gotta say something for the rest of the week.  Plus I spent most of Sunday at Chuck E. Cheese, so what do I know?