" title="Spartans Weblog">Spartans Weblog

CBS Sportsline has a well-crafted round-up of offseason basketball events around the conference.  A particularly apt analogy regarding the Hoosiers:
Remember when the original Cleveland Browns skulked out of town to become the Baltimore Ravens, then a few years later the NFL granted Cleveland a brand-new franchise that retained the Browns’ name, colors and history?
That’s essentially [...]

In the midst of ESPN.com’s non-step preseason college football coverage (led by their new Big Ten blogger, Adam Rittenberg), they’ve found the time to compile a quality preseason round-up for the 2008-09 Big Ten basketball season.  Highlights:

Michigan State is picked to finish second behind Purdue.
MSU has the second highest returning scorer in the conference (Morgan) [...]

Drew Naymick is going to play pro ball in Poland.  How do you say “blocked shot” in Polish?
Chris Allen is working hard this summer, knowing he’ll need to be a more consistent scorer next season (video clip).
Mark Hollis must have a really good PR guy.  After the piece in the Lansing State Journal last week, [...]

Well, the unanimous conclusion of this blog’s readers is that Wisconsin is our main rival.  And I can’t argue with that conclusion.  Chalk this week’s Coffee Talk question up as non-debate-inducing.
The one caveat readers offered about Wisconsin being our biggest rival is the one-sidedness of the rivalry in recent years.  Wisconsin has beaten MSU in [...]

Most of our Big Ten blogging brethren are devoting all their attention to that sport with the oblong ball these days, but there have been a few interesting basketball-related posts:
Black Heart Gold Pants posted a nice rundown of Iowa’s basketball roster for next season.  My take after reading the post: Iowa will have players who [...]

Here are the depth ratios for the 11 Big Ten teams during this past conference season:

Purdue
2.28

Penn St.
2.34

Minnesota
2.57

Michigan
2.63

Michigan St.
2.90

Illinois
3.03

Northwestern
3.32

Indiana
5.43

Wisconsin
6.53

Ohio St.
8.53

Iowa
11.35

This would further illustrate that, while depth appears to be a preqrequisite to success for Izzo-led teams, that’s not necessarily true for all college basketball teams. Of the four NCAA Tournament teams from top four [...]