Week 4 of the NCAA basketball season is upon us and there is another new number 1 team in the country. The Purdue Boilermakers are going to be number 1 for the first time in program history and it has been well deserved as they have been playing like the best team in the country all season. The Sunday Mailbag is also back for the fifth installment. There has been a lot of news to unpack this week, and a lot of it will be discussed in this week’s mailbag.
The ACC Big Ten challenge has been completed and no one outside of the top teams in either league gives the league’s fans much confidence. The Big Ten is the one who should really be worried as that conference projected to have a lot of teams in contention for the National Championship.
Of course, the season is still early and a lot can change but a lot of the teams in those conferences have a ton to fix. It is also the time of year to talk about coaches who are on the hot seat. It is still to early to determine that likely but there has already been a coach fired so might as well talk about it now.
The questions this week do center around overall strengths of conferences, the decisions of a new coach, schedule strength, and then one question that I will provide about coaches who will likely be searching for jobs at the end of the season. As always thanks to everyone who has ever read the article of submitted a question for the Mailbag. It is always much appreciated.
Are Mike Woodson’s coaching decisions losing Indiana games? To take it further will his coaching keep the Hoosiers out of the NCAA Tournament? – Patrick Madden (@TheSportsJD)
The short answer is no. Coaching is a huge deal in the College Basketball world but players still need to make shots and in the case of Indiana that is the very same. They have a ton of talent and they are going to be in a position to win a ton of games if they continue to defend and make shots. The Hoosiers have finally made the right hire after two pretty dreadful ones in Tom Crean and Archie Miller, who were hired trying to replace Mike Davis and Kelvin Sampson.
Mike Woodson comes from the NBA where he was the head coach for the New York Knicks. He was able to take the Knicks to two straight playoff appearances before being fired. The College game is different as the players have to be recruited. I will withhold judgment on how good of a college coach Woodson is once he has to recruit his own players. He was able to secure a slew of great transfers and already had one of the best players in the Big Ten in Trayce Jackson-Davis to work with.
In-game coaching is going to be a learn-as-you-go situation for Woodson in the first year as the college game has different nuances that the NBA game doesn’t. One thing that is for sure is that Woodson is going to be given every opportunity as he is an Indiana grad and has an NBA pedigree. He understands what it means to play for Indiana and is going to know what it takes to get his players to the league. Those are things that matter a great deal in recruiting.
The Hoosiers are still expected to make the tournament this year, likely will make the tournament this year, and have a good enough team to finish in the top half of the league this year. The first year of the Woodson era is going well and provided they all stay healthy the in-game coaching decisions of Woodson even the questionable ones shouldn’t affect Indiana that much.
Does Virginia Tech have the toughest December schedule in the country? – Matthew (@hokiesmash_ASD)
I have not looked at everyone’s December schedule but I know that the Hokies do have a tough schedule and there are some others with a very tough stretch in the month. Nebraska for example plays Michigan, Auburn, Kansas State to close out the month. The Hokies do have an extremely tough schedule that gets harder because of the way some of the teams they play are playing.
Virginia Tech still plays Cornell, at Dayton, St. Bonaventure, at Duke, and at North Carolina to close out the month. Those last four games are brutal, and if Virginia Tech wins two of those games it would be excellent and would put the Hokies in a position to make the NCAA tournament. Already this month Virginia Tech has beaten Maryland on the road and lost to Wake Forest in Blacksburg, Maryland projects to be worse than Wake Forest right now so that was a win they had to have.
Dayton is playing fantastic basketball right now and it would be a surprise to me if the Hokies won that game. St. Bonaventure is really good but is going to be playing without their star Kyle Lofton for that game so the advantage goes to the Hokies. At least with the Duke and North Carolina games the Hokies can get those two teams out of the way early and potentially knock one of them off. Likely that won’t happen but neither of those will be a bad loss. Virginia Tech is still in a great position to make the NCAA tournament they just need to avoid the terrible losses.
Who is the second-best team in the Big Ten after Purdue? – Tristan Freeman (@hoopsnut351)
This question required the most thinking for me this week. The Big Ten has one team that is clearly above the rest and that is the Purdue Boilermakers. After the Boilers, the league is going to be extremely bunched up and anyone can finish from 2-8. The clear bottom six teams, at least through this point in the year, are Nebraska, Northwestern, Rutgers, Penn State, Minnesota, and Maryland. Aside from those teams, anyone can finish in the 2-8 spots.
The team who I think comes up with that spot is the Illinois Fighting Illini. Illinois started slow but they have since found their stride since getting their star Kofi Cockburn back from an early-season NCAA suspension. Illinois was also battling some injuries early on in the year and everyone is slowly starting to get healthy for Illinois. If Illinois continues to improve on their early-season woes they will easily take the second spot in the conference.
Heading into the year Illinois is the team I picked to win the league because of the play in the backcourt with Trent Frazier and point guard Andre Curbelo. Curbelo has not been great this year and is now out for an undisclosed period of time with an injury so he is not currently playing. Hopefully, when he comes back he can regain the form he had last season when he made Illinois the team they were. Curbelo has been a turnover machine this year and he is going to have to earn his spot when he comes back.
Alfonso Plummer is a sharpshooter who has given this offense a different look. Plummer is more than just a sharpshooter though as he just dropped 30 points and is playing a ton of minutes. He can pass, rebound and defend as well. Illinois is playing very well right now and they are going to be the team that challenges Purdue for the top spot in the Big Ten.
What are my thoughts on the resignation of Mark Turgeon? – Bryan Mauro (@threecolorbeard)
I am never a huge proponent of firing a coach mid-season. I know coach Turgeon resigned, but it was likely a forced resignation especially when it was this early in the season. Firing a coach mid season does nothing to fan the flames of the team. It doesn’t even make the team better, it usually makes them worse. It also never made any sense to me because no coach is going to talk to Maryland about the head coaching position that is open until after the tournament so it isn’t like they are getting a head start anyways.
The grass isn’t always greener, just ask Pitt and to a lesser extent the Nebraska Cornhuskers. Turgeon was not a great coach but he was doing just fine and was likely going to make a deep run in the tournament in the 2019-2020 season before it was cancelled due to Covid. Other than that year the Terrapins under Turgeon were usually a top-half team in the league and they had some trouble wining in the tournament taking some very head-scratching losses in March. The one sweet 16 he did makes was when he beat a 13 seed and a 12 seed.
Turgeon had still done enough to not warrant being fired. I am not a Maryland fan and as an outside observer, I would love to have the team I root for be as successful as the Terrapins were under Turgeon.
Another part of me sees why the administration felt like they had to make this move, the recruits were leaving and he was having a really hard time keeping the talent in College Park, and honestly with the amount of talent that is in the DMV they should be a top 2 team in the Big Ten every season. Danny Manning is the interim coach for the rest of the season and a once-promising Maryland team is now likely going to struggle this year.
What other coaches are on the hot seat? – Bryan Mauro (@threecolorbeard)
The season is still young and this list can always change but right now on December 5, 2021, the list of coaches who are absolutely on the hot seat are as follows: Bobby Hurley at Arizona State, Jeff Capel at Pittsburgh, Cuonzo Martin at Missouri, Mike Hopkins at Washington and Chris Collins at Northwestern.
Hurley had Arizona State playing really well when he first began his stint in Tempe but the magic has wore off and the Sun Devils are on the verge of two very disappointing seasons. Arizona State currently sits at 2-6 and the last time they took the floor they scored 26 points the entire game and got blasted by Washington State.
Capel has never been able to turn Pitt around after former coach Kevin Stallings left him with nothing. Lets face it, the Panthers are a dumpster fire right now, and they have so many injuries and suspensions that they are likely not going to be good at all this year. The recruiting is starting to suffer for the Panthers. There is no way they can justify keeping coach Capel.
Coach Martin is a great guy who has been coaching for a long time. He has not done a great job at Missouri overall, sans the surprise run to the NCAA tournament last season. That team lost a ton of bodies to transfer and this year has been a rocky start for Missouri. The last time out on the floor the Tigers got ran out of their own gym by Liberty. The Flames are a good team but should not be crushing Missouri at home.
Hopkins should be in a class all of his own. He took one of the premier programs in the Pac 12 and the country at the time and turned them into one of the worst Power 5 schools in the country. Washington struggles to beat non power 5 opponents at this point and Hopkins has stopped bringing in key recruits.
Coach Collins is a little bit different. He is responsible for the first NCAA tournament appearance in Northwestern history and the team even won a game. The years around that tournament appearance and after have not been great and it looks like the same Northwestern of old. Collins is the most successful coach in program history so he is likely going to be able to set his own retirement date but Northwestern can do better and should think about changing directions as the Collins hire doesn’t seem to be working anymore.
These should all be taken with a grain of salt as the calendar says December 5, 2021 and there is still a long way to go in the season to determine if these coaches can still keep their jobs.