Big Ten Basketball Roundup: Illinois loses its mind, Iowa finds its stride

BoilerUp89: My team took a nice relaxing vacation from basketball. They didn’t lose unless wisconsin winning counts as a loss.

#22 Ohio State Buckeyes 80, Indiana Hoosiers 69 (OT)

MaximumSam: The Buckeyes were chasing this game the whole way until overtime, when they finally had a decent run to put away the Hoosiers. Malaki Branham has evolved into a fully functional guard, and laid down 27 on 13 shots. Please look away, NBA scouts.

Maryland Terrapins 67, Penn State Nittany Lions 61

misdreavus: Oh look, it’s that thing where Penn State goes on the road and plays a close game for the most part but lets two guys take over the game which leads to a loss: Maryland Edition.

#25 Iowa Hawkeyes 86, Michigan State Spartans 60

Green Akers: I have never hated an MSU player’s game more than Hauser. He is an instant microwave run for the opponent every time he gets off the bench.

Fuck Izzo for mouthing off to the one ref he knows for a fact will T him, and double fuck Boroski for giving that call after ignoring Frantrums all night. At least I won’t be missing anything interesting from this team on my honeymoon the next two weeks.

Stew: Iowa mollywhopped Sparty. There appeared to be stretches where Iowa’s defense may have actually existed. Though, that may be slightly exaggerated given MSU’s offensive offense.

Keegan Murray was amazing, as we’ve come to expect.

Northwestern Wildcats 77, Nebraska Cornhuskers 65

Jesse: For recaps: a haiku.

#Nebrasketball

This used to be fun
But now when a game is on
I choose not to watch

For real though, I turned it on for three minutes, saw awful defense and dumb shots, and decided candy crush would be more worth my time.

MNW: It would have been compared to watching this game. Nebraska is bad, couldn’t control the paint, and yet Northwestern decided to just bombs-away from deep in the hopes that they’d go in.

After going 7/21 from deep IN THE FIRST HALF, the ‘Cats found their stroke in the second, finishing 13/32 from deep in a romp.

This was a bad team beating an even worse team. But a fun preview, probably, of the 11-14 matchup on the first day of the Big Ten Tournament! Hooray!

Michigan Wolverines 71, Rutgers Scarlet Knights 62

BoilerUp89: Martelli taking no credit in his postgame comments. Says it was all the players and the other two assistants.

#13 Wisconsin Badgers 68, Minnesota Gophers 67

WhiteSpeedReceiver: wisconsin beat Minnesota. I’m not sure if either team knows which golf course they’ll be going to for the 2nd weekend of the NCAA tournament, but they’re probably going to want to pick that out so they can get tee times reserved quickly.

Kind of...: Late addition here. UW did their patented cat-toys-with-mouse bit. Just like @NW, vs. Minn., and vs. PSU, it didn’t bite them, even though the upped the degree of difficulty by having Johnny Davis foul out and Brad Davison have a terrible game. Fortunately Steven Crowl and Tyler Wahl (did you know they both went to HS in Minnesota?! If you don’t you had the game muted) both came up big in multiple moments for the Badgers.

As for postseason golfing and WSR setting an OTE record for consecutive insults hurled at one’s rival without sitting an opportunity out...he’s probably right that UW isn’t sure where they’ll be golfing should they get bounced in the first round. However, I doubt Minnesota has any uncertainty. As this will be the 25th straight year they’re not playing in the second weekend of the tournament, I suspect that tee time has been written in for quite a while. In ink.

Indiana Hoosiers 74, Maryland Terrapins 64

BuffKomodo: Did you guys know that Indiana is the only Big Ten program without a winning conference record in the past 6 seasons?

#22 Ohio State Buckeyes 86, #15 Illinois Fighting Illini 83

Brad Underwood took a couple techs losing his absolute fucking mind at DJ Carstensen and crew, Illinois couldn’t find an answer for stopping Branham and Liddell on the drive, and despite giving away a 16-point lead in approximately :45 of game time, Ohio State held on for a big road win. Kofi Cockburn was not great and fouled out with just under 4 minutes to play.

Thump: It’s just like, damn. Every single Big Ten game has shit like this:

Anyway there is zero chance we win on Sunday. Absolute lock for Michigan.

But, shit, I’ll take (probably) a top 4 big ten finish. They’ve finally made their point to me after trying so hard for a couple weeks: they’re not the elite team they looked like for most of December and early January, they’re merely Fairly Good.

They might even be able to stay off the 5 line in the NCAA Tournament, which I’m also grateful to be pretty locked into. Goddamn, imagine the odds for 4 seed Illinois’ first round game.

$$$$$$$$$$$$

MaximumSam: Leeroy Jenkinsing into the lane aside, this was another game where the Buckeyes gave up a huge lead in what felt like 10 seconds. Malaki Branham was again the star, scoring 31 on 14 shots. The surprise was the Buckeyes’ ability to befuddle Kofi Cockburn despite having no one you could say was adept at guarding him.

Bracketology, coaching hot seats, and weekend previews forthcoming. Busy basketball day—thanks for making OTE one of the many tabs you keep open out of habit.