Welcome (again!) to Off Tackle Empire’s 2019-2020 Big Ten basketball coverage! As we begin the death slog of 20 conference games toward the Big Ten Tournament, NCAA Tournament, and beyond, your favorite amateur sportsblogyellers are back by unpopular demand with more Big Ten shootyhoops coverage.
Here we plan to answer all the questions you could possibly have about what to expect from OTE’s basketball coverage in 2019-20:
Who writes your basketball stuff?
In all honesty, I’m not quite sure.
Andrew Kraszewski will be manning our new Blocking Chargecast podcast series, and any number of our regular writers will poke their heads in at some point to offer half-baked takes on Big Ten basketball. Just based on names already on our predictions spreadsheet:
- Aaron Yorke (Penn State Nittany Lions)
- Andrew Kraszewski (Michigan State Spartans)
- Boilerman31 (Purdue Boilermakers)
- BrianB2 and DJ Carver (Maryland Terrapins)
- Candystripes for Breakfast (Indiana Hoosiers)
- MNWildcat (Northwestern Wildcats, Marquette Golden Eagles, Drake Bulldogs)
- Creighton M and Stewmonkey13 (Iowa Hawkeyes)
- Thumpasaurus is being coy but is totally in (Illinois Fighting Illini)
- WhiteSpeedReceiver (Minnesota Golden Gophers)
You can no doubt expect cameos from “BTN talking head Tim Miles” fangirl BigRedTwice (Nebraska Cornhuskers) and beez and MC ClapYoHandz (wisconsin badgers), and at some point Zu will explain how the Rutgers Scarlet Knights are going to the NCAA Tournament.
As for the rest? We are always open to reading Fanposts and taking on basketball content.
Can I expect deep dives on Top 100 recruits coming to Big Ten schools?
Reader, you cannot.
Instead, my coverage of basketball surrounds the things I actually enjoy: occasionally Northwestern Wildcats doing stupid things, my lifelong team the Drake Bulldogs, and non-conference college basketball tournaments played on a makeshift court set up on the stage of the Sioux Falls Community Auditorium—hopefully this year the 7th-place game doesn’t happen at the same time as their production of Annie (though Idaho State Bengals Ryan Looney made a remarkable Daddy Warbucks).
A 10-star point guard playing at a diploma mill prep school in rural Virginia does not garner even a second of my interest. I will rely on you, the reader, to tell me who that is and why I should care.
OK, but will there be Power Polls?
Not unless you decide to write them each week. (And we welcome that and will front-page them! Hit the Fanposts!)
You see, Power Polls are an intricate and hard things to write week-in, week-out; while slapping crude analogies to your favorite Cannibal Corpse songs might be fun as a one-off, the process of coordinating, voting, wrangling, writing, photoshopping, and posting is something that burns up most of BRT’s limited free time in the fall as it is. Asking her—or anyone else, let alone me, who is usually busy deep-diving the T.J. Maxx Ouachita Springs Fall Tip-Off field—to do that every week in the winter as well would be insanity.
Who knows, though—maybe there’ll be the occasional Power Poll before Big Ten play starts, or after Feast Week tournaments. Just don’t expect them with regularity.
What will your content consist of?
Honestly? A really well-done podcast, Stock Reports from Boilerman, some occasional ratings pieces from Stew, and then semi-regular preview/review pieces of the weekdays’ and weekends’ action from all hands on deck. Maybe a piece a day, if we’re lucky.
If there’s other stuff—Bracketology, team-specific pieces, etc.—that you’d like, we can’t emphasize this enough: Join the community! Contribute in a Fanpost, and we’ll front-page/promote/tweet as best we can!
Let us know in the comments what you’re looking forward to for Big Ten basketball in 2019-20! Have article ideas, questions, or suggestions? We’re all ears! Otherwise welcome to Off Brickle Empire, long live the 1-3-1 zone, and we’re so sorry.