This Big Ten basketball season was all set to look like Big Ten football seasons in the past. You know, two redwoods and nine weeds.
The big trees this basketball season were Michigan State and Purdue. However, that expected runaway has turned into a logjam, with five teams entering the weekend within a half game of each other for second place. Few thought Penn State, Minnesota and Illinois would be among them.
That’s why the Big Ten is the most surprising league in the country with three of my five most surprising teams in the country. They are below, in order of shock value:
1. Providence. When Keno Davis took over a Drake team that finished 6-12 in league in 2007, he lifted the Bulldogs to the league title in his first and only year. He inherited a Providence team that went 6-12 last year and entering the weekend was already 6-4 (14-8 overall).
Providence won’t win the nation’s toughest conference but it was picked for 11th and is now tied for sixth. It should get its first NCAA bid in five years.
Davis’ up-tempo style has turned a crop of stumbling Friars into the second-highest scoring team in the Big East at 79.7 points per game, with point guard Sharaud Curry, finally healthy, pouring in 22 to beat No. 15 Syracuse.
2. Penn State. Suddenly, it’s cool to go to basketball games in Happy Valley. In his sixth year, Ed DeChellis has the Nittany Lions 17-6 and tied for third in the Big Ten at 6-4 with a win at Michigan State last Sunday.
Sophomore guard Talor Battle, a recruiting coup out of Albany, N.Y., who struggled his freshman year, is a contender for Big Ten player of the year with 18.5 ppg and 5.3 apg. Combined with senior guard Stanley Pringle, PSU’s backcourt has hit 112 threes.
3. Minnesota. There’s a sports revival in Minneapolis. Shortly after Tim Brewster turned around the Gophers football team in his second year, Tubby Smith has done the same with the basketball program. Picked middle of the pack, the Gophers are 18-3 and ranked 19th, their first ranking since November 2002. They’ve beaten Illinois and Louisville.
Smith lost his three top scorers from last season, but he has a terrific backcourt in Lawrence Westbrook (13.5 ppg) and Al Nolen (5.0 assists per game). Minnesota is 10th nationally in assist-to-turnover ratio (plus-3.0). And with 6-foot-11 freshman Ralph Sampson III (yes, he’s THAT Sampson’s son), Minnesota is sixth nationally with 6.6 blocks a game.
Smith shouldn’t mimic the football team too much, though. It lost its last five games.
4. Missouri. Finally, this is the Mike Anderson for whom rabid Mizzou fans have waited. Picked seventh in the Big 12, Anderson has the Tigers in third place at 6-2 (19-4 overall) and appear ready to end a three-year postseason drought.
With seven new players to finally produce his up-tempo offense, the Tigers are second nationally in assists (19.1), fourth in scoring (84.5), second in scoring margin (17.8) and third in assist-to-turnover ratio (plus-1.50).
It also helped that forwards DeMarre Carroll and Leo Lyons pulled their names from last year’s NBA draft.
5. Illinois. This team has found its shooting eye. Illini foul shooting jumped from .608 to .731; shooting from .435 to .464. No wonder they’ve gone from last year’s 5-13 Big Ten mark (16-19 overall) to 6-4 (18-5).
Last year’s struggling freshmen have grown up. Mike Davis, Demetri McCamey and 7-1 Mike Tisdale are their three leading scorers and guards Chester Frazier and McCamey are both in the top five in the league in assists.
