Big Ten Basketball: Way-too-early power rankings for 2019-2020 season
The Big Ten Basketball conference saw a major improvement after this past season as they sent eight teams to the NCAA Tournament with two elite eight teams and one in the final four. What do the way-too-early power rankings look like?
The Big Ten had its lowest number of teams in the NCAA Tournament in ten years two season’s ago with just four. The response this past season was the most representatives the conference has ever seen in the NCAA Tournament. Big Ten Basketball sent eight teams and at one point, there were 10 teams in discussion. Thanks to winning a lot of games and playing some tough non-conference opponents, the Big Ten barely had one team outside the top-100 in the metrics.
Michigan State lost two lottery picks and still won a share of the regular season title and ultimately won the tournament with a trip to the final four. Purdue lost four starters from a sweet 16 team. The Boilermakers won a share with Michigan State and made the elite eight. Michigan looked like the best team in the non-conference slate, but lost five conference games. That goes to show you how tough it was to play on the road in the conference this season. Wisconsin missed the Tournament all together and ended up landing a double-bye.
Rutgers, Illinois and Penn State all won less than 10 non-conference games, but still managed to win seven Big Ten games. Nebraska and Indiana were both projected to finish top-five, but ended up landing in the bottom half of the conference. Yet the Cornhuskers and Hoosiers were still on the bubble up until the final weeks of the season.
The Big Ten will be losing half of their leading scorers, but there is so much potential coming back. That includes reigning Big Ten Player of the year, Cassius Winston. Right now Lamar Stevens, Amir Coffey and Anthony Cowan are all figuring out what their NBA reports are saying, but I expect all three will be back. Joshua Langford should recover just fine and be a reason why Michigan State is going to be the preseason number one team overall team.
Only one five-star is coming to the Big Ten and once again it’s the Hoosiers who landed him. Trayce Jackson-Davis is hoping to have more success in winning games than Romeo Langford. The Big Ten has 13 names testing NBA draft waters. Three will be gone for sure with another four up in the air. Nine scholarship players intend to transfer. Not many teams are losing a lot of rotation players to graduation. Look for the Big Ten to be right up there as the best conference in the country.