Indiana almost gave us back that game in the Big Ten standings–barely fending off Illinois 62-58 at home. The team stats are remarkably even for FG shooting, rebounding, and turnovers. The difference, perhaps, was the Hoosiers knocking down five more free throws than the Illini. I watched most of this game down the stretch. Illinois deserves credit for playing with Indiana right down to the end, given the obvious disparity in offensive talent. But Illinois couldn’t get the one or two key shots they needed to drop in the last couple minutes. The Illini drop to 0-4 in Big Ten play. Their NCAA tournament hopes appear to have dissolved at this early date.
Cool new stats website: StatSheet.com. Among other nifty things, they’ve got individual tempo-free stats by conference. For example, Goran Suton continues to lead the conference in offensive rebounding percentage. And to make things even better, they’ve got data going back all the way to 1996-97–covering all but the first year of the Izzo era! Check out Antonio Smith’s defensive rebounding percentage in 1996-97: 25.9%.
A glimmer of hope on the BTN-Comcast front.
MSU drops all the way to #5 in the Big Ten Bloggers Poll posted at Black Hearts Gold Pants (it’s an Iowa blog, so be forewarned that their recap of last night’s game will make you want to vomit). The Robert Goulet theme is a bit odd. But the advice is sound:
Now stop turning the ball over, Sparty.
MSU has turned the ball over 17-19 times in each of their first three conference games. I can’t bear to update my graph.
I also watched the UI/IU game last night and was hoping for the same. Illinois played really well for 30 minutes or so, which is the best I’ve seen them play all year.
The StatSheet site is a good one that I’ve been visiting for a while. Interesting stuff.
I won’t even bother with the Iowa blog site. I’ve already read enough misguided sensationalism and heroics that have somehow been gleaned from a lousy team playing lousily beating a good team that played just a tad more lousily.
I’ve wondered about that graph as well. Lots of things are skewed and screwed into new directions, as of late.