Big Ten Basketball Weekend Recap: Oh no, Penn State is bad again?

Ten games, ten wins.

At its most basic level, the weekend in Big Ten basketball was a success: When you have teams like Northwestern and Nebraska, who have lost to luminaries like Merrimack, Radford, CSU-Riverside, and Southern Utah, merely winning is a success.

Yet you could be forgiven for assuming fans of the ‘Cats, Huskers, and even Penn State might not be as thrilled. Here’s what happened:

Friday, November 22

#6 Maryland Terrapins 86, George Mason Patriots 63

DJ Carver: Didn’t watch last night, apparently we stayed consistent with a slow start the first 10 minutes before locking in. Turgeon apparently broke his clipboard in a timeout, which is very out of character for him

#10 Ohio State Buckeyes 85, Purdue Fort Wayne Mastodons 46

Michigan Wolverines 111, Houston Baptist Huskies 68

Northwestern Wildcats 70, Norfolk State Spartans 59

MNW: I had the pleasure of enjoying the dulcet tones of Dave Eanet on the drive down to a football game I don’t recall attending, and it was pleasant to hear Nathan Taphorn on the call as the analyst. Nice job, Nate.

On the basketball side of things, Ryan Young is going to have his growing pains as the new Northwestern center, but Northwestern (1) committed to throwing him the ball inside—where he was 4/7 from the field but more importantly 11/12(!!!) from the FT line—and (2) got Pete Nance started (the sophomore was 5/10 from the field and ³⁄₄ from deep for 17). NU still struggles to shoot, but against an undersized Norfolk, they crashed the basket and made things happen. These days, that’s enough.

Nebraska Cornhuskers 93, Southern Jaguars 86 (OT)

Andrew K: The problem with being as bad as Northwestern this early in the season is now even the tomato cans come in with belief and bad intent.

BRT: I listened to part of Nebraska’s game, and it was an odd one. I think they were up by 13 at one point in the first half, and then in the second half they were down by eight, and managed to tie it and hold off Southern from scoring on their last possession.

They had a nice night shooting from three-point range, which is cool, but they were below 50% on their free throws, which was less cool. Still a lot of problems for this team, it looks like, but one bright spot was that several different players appeared to step up at various crucial points in the game—it’s kind of nice that perhaps there will be more than one or two players who can get things done.

Against Southern, anyway.

Jesse: Only thing to add to BRT from above is that rebounding is the only reason southern was in that game, but that’s also sort of a continuation on a theme for Nebrasketball. 54-28 was Southern’s advantage on the boards. They had more offensive rebounds than we had defensive rebounds. That’s... not great.

We shoot 57% from the field and from three. They were held to 41%. There’s a not awful team here if they can solve rebounding. Otherwise, every game will be a struggle.

Saturday, November 23

Penn State Nittany Lions 58, Yale Bulldogs 56

Aaron Yorke: Penn State trailed Yale 56-46 with four minutes left and closed on a 12-0 run to win. Magical season so far.

Purdue Boilermakers 81, Jacksonville State Gamecocks 49

Boilerman31: Purdue did what a B1G team is supposed to do to bad teams. The Boilers didn’t mess around with Jacksonville State. They were effective shooting 55% from the field while showing their willingness to share the ball with 23 assists. Matt Haarms stated in the postgame that Matt Painter told him to be more aggressive and he did just that finishing with 17 points in 22 minutes.

Time to head into Thanksgiving tourney time. Let’s feast.

Illinois Fighting Illini 120, Hampton Pirates 71

Thump: We scored a hundred twenty points :) :) :) :) :) :) :)

Let’s hope Trent Frazier remembers how to shoot before we have to play good teams again. Kofi Cockburn’s game is basically when you’re 9 and you play your dad in one-on-one.

Sunday, November 24

Iowa Hawkeyes 85, Cal Poly Mustangs 59

Stewmonkey13: Iowa dispatched Cal Poly with yet another run at the beginning of the second half that put the game out of reach.

Iowa’s defense looked halfway decent for the first time in quite a while. On the perimeter, the trio of Connor McCaffery, C.J. Fredrick, and Joe Toussaint have been pleasantly competent in that area. Fredrick also had a great game on the offensive end as well, with a game high 25 points on 5/5 from 3. Meanwhile, Patrick McCaffery and Jordan Bohannon did not play as a precaution, and Joe Wieskamp, Jack Nunge, and Fredrick all took nasty spills.

At any rate, still don’t trust this team much, but they’re showing some growth. Which is something.

Minnesota Golden Gophers 79, North Dakota Fighting Hawks 56

WhiteSpeedReceiver: The big difference was just that we shot 45% from 3 while they only shot 26%. The frontcourt showed up with Jarvis Omersa playing a feisty game and ending up 11 points 9 boards 3 assists and 2 steals, while Daniel Oturu had 15 points 6 rebounds and 2 blocks.

Good solid effort, and North Dakota was never really in it.

We’ll have the Big Ten Basketball Stock Report with Boilerman, the Blocking Chargecast, and some Feast Week previews coming your way tomorrow! Thanks for reading Big Ten basketball coverage on OTE.