2024-25 Conference Previews: Big Ten
2024-25 Conference Previews: Big Ten
The biggest ten we've ever seen in human history
Hello! As laid out in the season preview for this newsletter, we’re changing up preview season a little. Previews will be released in alphabetical order, but somewhat differently than usual: one P5 a day, one two-bid(ish) conference a day, and one grab bag of one-bid leagues a day. One of each will be free for all to read. This one is a paid piece, and there’s a link to sign up below.
You can find all of these in the 2024-25 previews section of this website. On with the show.
The Conference With the Maps Commercial
Tier 1
Purdue
Tier 2
Michigan State
UCLA
Michigan
Illinois
Indiana
Tier 3
Iowa
Wisconsin
Oregon
Ohio State
Maryland
USC
Rutgers
Northwestern
Nebraska
Tier 4
Penn State
Minnesota
Washington
18 teams with three of a possible four time zones represented. This, truly, is Conference USA. Maybe in the next cycle they can add Colorado to get all four in. Why stop there? I hear Montana is nice this time of year.
We have had extremely odd bedfellows in sport before - think West Virginia and Texas Tech now being a yearly conference game - but this really did set a land speed record in how depraved we’re willing to be. I was with my grandfather in Michigan in September and had to explain to him multiple times that, yes, Indiana-UCLA is now a Big Ten conference matchup. Not just a weird non-conference thing. An actual game that has actual stakes.
It hasn’t gotten less strange. I’m supposed to accept that at least once a season, USC has to play Minnesota? Rutgers has to play Washington? There are atrocities and war crimes everywhere for those to see. I can recall a time where the biggest threat to college conference alignment was Texas leaving for the SEC. And yet.
But, anyway, here we are. In football this is a bizarre conference split between schools that play the way I personally enjoy (ground and pound, run the ball or get off the field) and schools that play TikTok football (aka, USC). In basketball, every single school has a projected top-80 defense at KenPom and all 18 are inside the top-75 nationally. It’s a very good conference with a lot of interesting-if-fraught basketball teams.
This will be another identity test season for a conference going through lots of changes. The Big Ten has generally, in my lifetime, played pretty conservative basketball with a lot of drop coverage, few turnovers, and a lot of good big men. This year, the infiltrators all have at least one great frontcourt player. It’s the returning 14 Big Ten schools that have the more interesting mix, with the best team in the conference being led by its backcourt. Storylines! I do love storylines.
I debated about this for a while, and I’m well aware fans of the other 17 schools won’t like it, but whatever: Purdue gets its own tier. They have the best returning player, the best coach in the conference, the best offensive system, and the best all-around setup of good offense and good defense. “But they don’t have Zach Edey!” Well, they didn’t have Zach Edey from 2010 through 2021 and finished top-15 at KenPom six times. Outside of a pair of transitional #24 and #25 finishes during COVID Painter’s finished in the top-15 six of a possible nine tries. The seventh: 19th.
I just know what I’ve got and what I’m getting here, which is more than what I can say about a good-but-flawed Tier 2 and a mish-mash of gold and trash in Tier 3. The floor and ceiling for Purdue are simply higher than anybody else. And, yes, it’s time to defend Braden Smith from the haters because I already got to defend Painter.
Smith’s numbers last year benefitted from playing with Zach Edey. Obviously. I would imagine that’s as unsurprising as it gets. When Smith shared the floor with Edey, he was dominant: a 121 ORtg on 22% USG, a 38% Assist%, 43% from three. All those things. And yes, in limited action without Edey, Smith’s own efficiency suffered and he committed more turnovers. But it wasn’t catastrophic. He still had a high assist rate, hit 44% of his threes, hit 44% of his midrange twos. It could be time for the average Joe to admit he’s just a really good player. His +8.2 BPM leads all Big Ten players with 2023-24 stats.
If you believe that’s controversial and/or hurtful, please stand for my Fletcher Loyer take. Loyer is good. Great? No, but Fletcher Loyer knows his role and does what he needs to do. Loyer sits at 38% 3PT for his career and shot 44% last year. I’d normally advise against expecting a 44% repeat, but Loyer also had a 7% FT% jump from freshman to sophomore yet. It could simply be that he’s becoming a better shooter. Perhaps 40% is in the books.
Both of these guys, particularly Loyer, have been endlessly slandered for weak performances against the best team in college basketball in the national title game. Loyer’s 0-fer was pretty brutal, obviously. Does one game erase an entire season’s body of work? If it does, Illinois fans who kept telling us how perfect Terrence Shannon was might be in trouble after his 8-point, 2-12, 2-8 at the rim performance against UConn. Or Northwestern God Boo Buie going 2-15 against UConn. Perhaps it was just really freaking hard to beat UConn?
I think those two establish a high, very efficient level of play. It’s in the frontcourt where questions must be answered, and fast. The likely frontcourt pair to start the year is Camden Heide and Trey Kaufman-Renn. Heide had a nice freshman year as a low-usage stretch 4/large wing where he got to knock down a pretty large portion of uncontested threes. He went 17-33 on unguarded threes, per Synergy. I’ll wager his 81/19 Unguarded/Guarded split doesn’t last this year, but we’ve met a lot of wings/stretch bigs over the years that can’t hit these shots. I think there’s something there, along with some ability to drive.
TKR is the ultimate Rorschach test of what you see in a basketball player this season. Playing functionally the same way as Edey last year (Synergy even classifies them both as post-up bigs), TKR was the obvious lesser, a guy with good numbers (113 ORtg on 20% USG) but nothing elite. When split up as the primary center, TKR’s efficiency predictably suffered, though I’ll note in a limited sample size of ~250 possessions he drew a monstrous amount of fouls. Anyone playing with Edey is obviously going to be less efficient without.
But: what if TKR is actually good? I find this not that difficult to believe. Kaufman-Renn has a fledgling jumper and has 13 made threes in college. Not nothing! Mostly, he’s flashed solid work on post-ups, is a good rebounder, and has held up well defensively through two seasons. I’d also wager we just don’t know that much about him yet. We think we do, but this is a former top-40 recruit who’s entering the year when a lot of these guys have previously broken out. What if it’s him?
The other pieces here are admittedly sketchy. Myles Colvin must take a leap from Just A Shooter (24-58 threes last year) to Just A Starting Shooter With Benefits. Can you be Justin Ahrens? All they need you to be is Justin Ahrens. Caleb Furst is in year four and still has yet to really find the court consistently, but is generally a well-liked guy. Will Berg and Daniel Jacobsen are prospective Future Centers without much in the way of proof of concept yet.
Frankly, skepticism is earned, but it’s Matt Painter and it’s Purdue. Until I have a reason to not believe, I will believe, because the belief has paid off in spades for over a decade now.
Tier 2 contains five teams. I believe that all five here are making the NCAA Tournament. I also believe that none of them are finishing top-15 nationally, but all of them are finishing top-35. If I’m stupid enough to think Purdue might be a 2-seed, and I am, I think these teams are all, like…4-8 seeds? Something of that sort. If Purdue falters, or if a door is opened in the conference tournament, one of these teams can steal a title.
BEHIND THE WALL ($): An argument for both Michigans, an argument against Rutgers for once