Indiana and Penn State put on a three-hour display of “basketball” and we’re all worse off for it.

Talking Points:

• Can anyone stop wisconsin or Maryland? The two only meet once (predictably, at the Clearance Rack, which is my new name for the wisconsin student section), and the only other tests on the Terrapin schedule are Saturday’s home tilt with Purdue and hosting Sparty to end the season.
• Meanwhile, the badgers travel consecutively to Ohio State and Michigan State at the end of February, and that’s looking like as tough as it gets for them. We could have two teams with 3 or fewer losses at the top of the conference.
• As bad as Ohio State has been at points, this is looking like a “What could have been” season for them. Just no consistency, game-to-game.
• Oh, rutger.
• Oh, Illinois.
• I don’t know what to make of Iowa and Nebrasketball. Do they improve next year even after losing their senior scorers?
• It’s not The Year.

#10 wisconsin 57, Illinois 43

This is an actual, serious request:

Can you write about wisconsin sports? Are you interested in the occasional recap and blog post? Email grahamfiller10 [at] gmail dot com. We’re looking.

Thumpasaurus’ Weekly Rants of Despair

Oh god I mean the bad basketball is hard enough to take
But I can see a mostly empty State Farm center in the background
God that hurts
SOMEONE CARE

He then uploaded five videos of him chugging various beers, but I didn’t get his permission to post them. Pray for Thump.

We also spent a lot of time discussing whether or not we liked Bronson Koenig. Is he punchable? Yeah, probably. But I feel like his philanthropic work in the offseason at least negates a little bit of the terribleness that is his continued choice to play for the school that is Satan reincarnate with a drinking problem.

#17 Maryland 77, Ohio State 71

DJ: Maryland won despite Mark Turgeon still experimenting with hockey line subs to his bench for long periods of time, seemingly always right after someone gets hot or they take a comfortable lead. Luckily for Maryland, Justin Jackson finished with 22 and 12, 4-7 from three point range. He is 9-12 from 3 point range in the last two games and he started out 4-4 tonight before coming back to reality.

Maryland struggled against tall guards as it was only the second time they've faced length at the guard position this year, the other coming against Pitt. At the end of the day, Ohio State handed the game to Maryland with costly turnovers while Melo Trimble did just enough after going stone cold for much of the game.

Also 20-2 is officially the best start in program history, if you want to include that. Justin Jackson has a 50/22 stat line the past two games.

It was a fun game within a game as both teams used the ball screen all night to exploit matchups on either side of the ball. The rematch in College Park will be fun to watch.

Iowa 83, rutger 63

Hey look, rutger is terrible.

Iowa also won on the road, which is “always a tough thing to do in the Big Ten,” except it’s at rutger and so that’s not actually really an accomplishment.

I guess Iowa did it without Peter Jok, which is something, as the senior scorer’s absence came at a perfect time for the Hawkeyes, who got a good performance out of Jordan Bohannon and overcame a Deshawn Freeman double-double to run the Knights out of their own gym.

Stew also wants you to know this:

He still needs to see a chiropractor about that hunchback.

Indiana 110, Penn State 102 (3 fucking overtimes)

Fuck this game. Just fuck it.

Penn State came back from 15 down, then choked it away in the extra frames, then just ran out of gas as Thomas Bryant preened his way to a 31-point night. Seriously. You’ve dunked a basketball before.

Indiana fans also booed the shit out of Lamar Stevens when he stayed down on the ground after taking a knee to the head. Fuck each and every last one of you Iowa State imitators at Assembly Hall who did that.

Anyways, I got to watch all three fucking overtimes of this horseshit basketball game while “enjoying” a BTN2Go stream of...

#23 Purdue 80, #25 Northwestern 59

Well, that was...anticlimactic.

With Scottie Lindsey out for some indefinite period with a possibly-mono illness and Nathan Taphorn out at least a week with an ankle injury, Northwestern lacked the outside game to keep Purdue honest. The Boilermakers rode the usual double-double from Caleb Swanigan, Vince Edwards could not miss from outside, and Purdue blanketed Vic Law all night, holding him to one basket.

We learned little here that we didn’t already know. Purdue is a horrible matchup for Northwestern, but the ‘Cats are prone to streaky outside shooting, which will damn them if their playmakers are blanketed/hurt. Bryant McIntosh had 22, but when the Boilers are 12/23 from deep and Isaac Haas is rolling inside, there’s not much Northwestern can do. The rematch will be closer, and a by-then-desperate NU team will be hunting for a win to get it off the bubble.

And we all know how that will go.

Michigan State 72, Nebrasketball 61

Andrew K: MSU played a solid all-around game on the road. If the offense occasionally looked a little halting, white-hot second half shooting made that irrelevant. More and more, when one guy is down, others fill the void. A scoreless night from Matt McQuaid and another no-show from Eron Harris didn't matter, as Alvin Ellis and Kenny Goins each chipped in double figures, 2 of 5 Spartans to do that.

This game could have been a nail biter if Nebraska had had better cooperation from the home rims, but them's the breaks. MSU heads into the rematch with Michigan on Tuesday with a bit of positive momentum.