You know the drill -- it's Sunday Morning Coming Down in the B1G, your place to comment on the Saturday that was for Jim Delany's favorite conference. Since I'm jumping on a plane in a little bit for a work trip, I'll keep this short and sweet with 12 bullet points, one for each team:
- Indiana won a B1G game! Congrats to Kevin Wilson and the Hoosier players...I'm really excited to see where this team ends up going under his tenure. I'm going to be VERY tempted to pick the Hoosiers for a bowl next season.
- Then again, and not to rain on Indiana's parade or anything, but maybe a win over Illinois shouldn't count as a B1G win. Tim Beckman is completely in over his head....just a terrible team, that one appears to be getting worse.
- Kirk Ferentz finally managed to do it. He killed offensive football at Iowa. Greg Davis took who I thought was one of the best pro-style QBs in the conference (Vandeberg) and found a way to get him to regress as a senior.
- Northwestern finally did what it should have done against Penn State and Nebraska -- stick with Kain Colter at QB and let him run. The result? Over 300 yards team rushing, both Venric Mark and Kain Colter surpassed 100 yards rushing, and the Cats won in relative easy fashion over Iowa. The great unanswerable question of this season for Wildcats fans is whether they'd be 9-0 had they stuck with Colter and the option running game.
- Ohio State is really kicking itself that it didn't take a voluntary bowl ban last year, huh? Braxton Miller didn't look any worse for wear after getting knocked out last week.
- Penn State's nice run came to an end at the hands of Braxton Miller, but the White-Out sure looked awesome, and Bill O'Brien has the Nittany Lions playing hard every week.
- Nebraska's in the driver's seat for the Legends division title, thanks to their defense stepping up and stopping the Wolverines. The fact that the Cornhuskers have tiebreakers over Michigan and Northwestern could end up being huge.
- Michigan's overreliance on Denard Robinson finally caught up to them in Lincoln, and Russell Bellomy isn't ready for primetime. Michigan might be in trouble if Denard doesn't come back soon.
- If it weren't for Michigan State, Purdue would unquestionably be the most disappointing team in the conference. Is Danny Hope gone after this season?
- Good work by the Gophers, getting one step closer to bowl eligibility. And Philip Nelson looks like the real deal, with an impressive showing throwing for 246 yards and 3 TDs.
- Wisconsin got nipped at the end by Michigan State....again. And yet, despite being a total disappointment, the Badgers will end up in Indianapolis, since no one else in the division is eligible or even remotely good.
- Impressive work by Michigan State, holding the Badgers to just 190 total yards of offense, and just 19 yards rushing. I suppose the Spartan season is a disappointment, but the defense is still as good as we imagined it would be preseason.