Purdue beats Wisconsin, and the Big Ten is officially a mess
Purdue and Wisconsin, two top-20 teams, played a basketball game Sunday that at times more closely resembled a disjointed rugby match. It was a madhouse of physicality on both ends. It was bruising. It was brutal. To some, it was beautiful; to others, it was a mess.
In so many ways, it was just like the Big Ten itself.
The Boilermakers’ 66-55 victory over the Badgers left the conference as the only one of KenPom’s top 16 conferences without an unbeaten team one week into January. It’s one of only three out of 32 overall. And while both teams are tied at the top at 3-1, giving the league some semblance of order, the rest of the standings are devoid of logic. Nebraska is also 3-1. Indiana is 1-2. Minnesota is 2-1. Ohio State is 0-2.
Despite the clutter, Purdue and Wisconsin remain the Big Ten’s two best teams, and its two regular season title favorites. Both should remain in the top 20. But compared to their league-leading peers in other major conferences, they’re as imperfect, if not more imperfect, than any.
That showed Sunday. Wisconsin’s offense was disrupted by Purdue’s size — not just at the center position, where 7-foot-2 Isaac Haas made things difficult for Ethan Happ before picking up his second foul, but on the perimeter as well. The presence of Haas and Caleb Swanigan inside ruined the Badgers’ inside-outside balance, and made their offense very horizontal. In the side-to-side offense, Bronson Koenig and Nigel Hayes couldn’t create enough off the dribble.
Open shots were scarce as a result. Wisconsin didn’t miss many good looks in the first half; it just didn’t get them. The 13th-ranked visitors scored under 0.7 points per possession in the opening 20 minutes and trailed 29-23 at halftime. A 2-for-14 mark from three-point land overall doomed them.
Wisconsin is a very good team, but a limited one. It starts four seniors and a Big Ten Player of the Year candidate, but gets next to nothing from its bench. And all of those seniors have more or less peaked as college players. Hayes, Koenig and Zak Showalter are what they are. Vitto Brown has regressed after a late-season surge last year.
Purdue, on the other hand, was impressive Sunday, and has the conference’s best player, Swanigan. But the Boilermakers sometimes struggle to support him, and Haas often isn’t the force he should be. And while their defense controlled the Badgers Sunday, it’s not an aggressive one, and therefore susceptible to opponents with shot-making guards. That was the issue in a 91-82 loss to upstart Minnesota seven days ago.
So where do these shortcomings leave us? With a conference that couldn’t be more difficult to comprehend.
Below the top two, there’s a group of 11 teams. All 11 could realistically finish in the top five; most of the 11 could realistically finish one spot away from Rutgers. They’ll pepper one another (and the top two) with quality wins and bad losses over the next two months, but it’ll be a while until we’ll be able to tell which are which. Indiana lost to Nebraska at home last Wednesday, but just 10 days later, that defeat didn’t look so damning. Michigan State survived against Minnesota on opening night, only to have the Gophers rattle off consecutive road wins at Purdue and Northwestern and add retrospective value to Sparty’s résumé.
Such is life in the Big Ten, where daily swings and bubble teams will be plentiful, and where opinions are seemingly only formed to be disproven.
