Thought we should have a thread for the happenings with our conference rivals.
Very early impressions after watching some games...
Illinois, unfortunately, is loaded again. Their Euro additions are looking very good. Will Riley looks worthy of his 5-star ranking even though he classed up. Bench is deep. I am very curious what their operating NIL budget is for this year.
scUM looks good, too. Lot of pieces on that team, Danny Wolf currently looks like he will make an All-B1G team, and Dusty can coach (and has a nice 2025 class, headlined by 5-star Trey McKenney). Their football program decline seems precipitous but I think their basketball will be back on the rise.
UCLA does not look as good as I thought they might, though I am sure they will get better. They really struggled in their loss to New Mexico (though New Mexico is good).
Nebraska played an extremely ugly game against Bethune-Cookman. They look like a much more plodding team than I am used to seeing from Hoiberg. Could be a rough year for them after their strong season last season.
Purdue looks like Purdue, just with a different 7-footer who isn't as good as Edey yet. I'm tired of them, haha.
Wisconsin hasn't looked very convincing so far. Ugly basketball.
Penn State might be a sleeper team. Haven't played anyone noteworthy yet, but decimated Binghamton and UMBC and scored over 100 points in both games. I think they hit the mid-major upscale jackpot with Niederhauser as their starting center (with Xavier transfer Nzeh a very solid backup) and Tenn transfer Dillione is a nice complement to Baldwin. Returned a pretty solid core with Baldwin, Hicks, Kerns, Dunn, and Puff Johnson. Could be a deep team.
Northwestern looks pretty promising to me with how Martinelli is playing for them now (currently averaging 29 and 12, lol), but they really need Barnhizer back from injury. Martinelli scored half NW's points at Dayton last night in a game they should have won, but just not enough contribution from other guys down the stretch. (Sidenote: Zed Key is having a decent season so far for Dayton. 12.5 and 4.5 and efficient).
Indiana has bought themselves a very good roster and so far have not looked very impressive. Woodson's coaching is being called into question and he just let go of one of his best connections to Indiana basketball in Adam Howard. They haven't lost yet but you wouldn't know that based on their fan disposition at the moment.
MSU seems to be similar to a lot of recent Izzo teams: good, but maybe missing a little extra something to put them back on top.
Don't have any real thoughts on Maryland yet other than that 5-star frosh big Derik Queen is very good at the game of basketball.
Rutgers is a very weird team. Partly feels like your typical Pikiell team and partly doesn't with how they're relying a little more on their young talent and not as much on experience and defense. Not sure what to make of them other than they need Ace Bailey back from his undisclosed injury, pretty big drop-off from him to their other forwards.
Watched Washington against UC Davis in a fairly close game. Yeah, no clue how things are going to go for them this season. But Danny Sprinkle is a good coach and Great Osobor is, uh, great. If they're a B1G bottom-feeder this season, they're still not gonna be a push-over. This is a roster that also includes Franck Kepnang, DJ Davis, and Zoom Diallo.
I haven't watched any Minnesota, USC, Iowa, or Oregon yet. Gah, so many teams! It really is difficult to even conceptualize the B1G at this point. So big, so disparate. Going to be a very strange conference race.
