The scores from last week (home team listed second):

• Wisconsin 54, Michigan 77
• Northwestern 71, OSU 81
• Purdue 81, Indiana 69
• Wisconsin 60, Rutgers 54
• Wingate 58, Maryland 100
• Michigan 57, Minnesota 75
• OSU 87, Illinois 81
• Penn State 72, Purdue 80
• Iowa 96, Northwestern 73

Yes, Maryland played D-II Wingate because they didn't want to sit out the week when their game against Nebraska got postponed, and playing a lower-division team doesn't impact their NET ranking. It was a glorified scrimmage.

Ohio State is your big winner of the week, going 2-0 with an upset at Illinois despite losing their top two point guards. Purdue also went 2-0 with a rivalry win at Indiana. Northwestern is falling hard back to earth, losing both their games and continuing to plummet down the advanced rankings. Wisconsin ground out a 1-1 week by taking an ugly one at the RAC, while Iowa played only one game—against those flailing Wildcats—and continued their hot streak.

The Standings

*Torvik includes projections for games that have been postponed, KenPom only includes those that have been rescheduled.

Minnesota, courtesy of that game, is your biggest mover of the week, with Indiana nearly matching them in the opposite direction. The Boilermakers also made a significant jump. Meanwhile, OSU is close to catching Illinois in both the conference standings and the fancystats, while Wisconsin is caught between those two and the very two of Iowa and Michigan.

[Hit THE JUMP for the latest on COVID outbreaks, a blueprint for slowing Ayo Dosumnu, the question looming over Iowa, the freakiest GIF I've ever made, and more.]

The COVID Situation Is Getting Worse, Not Better

Fred Hoiberg is one of 12 members of Nebraska's program in isolation [Campredon] 

I'd love to only talk basketball. The ongoing pandemic and college basketball's attempts to play through it, however, make that difficult, as Big Ten games are increasingly dropping off the weekly schedule.

Games postponed last week:

• Rutgers at Penn State
• Illinois at Nebraska
• MSU at Iowa
• Nebraska at Maryland
• Indiana at MSU

Games postponed for this week so far:

• Minnesota at Nebraska
• Nebraska at Iowa

Penn State is just emerging from a team-wide shutdown and plays three games in five days this week to start making up for lost time. Three positive tests in Michigan State's program caused the team to pause and postpone two games last week; the status of their game against Illinois this Saturday is still unclear. (MSU's women's program also had to shut down, which postponed their scheduled rivalry game against Michigan today.)

Nebraska, meanwhile, has a scarily large outbreak:

Nebraska men's basketball coach Fred Hoiberg announced Sunday he has tested positive for COVID-19, and the program said it would continue to pause activities for a minimum of seven more days.

Nebraska said that 12 members of the program, including Hoiberg and seven players, have tested positive for the coronavirus and are in isolation. Nebraska began its pause due to COVID-19 last Monday.

Hoiberg had to retire from his playing career because of a heart condition. They'll have at least four games to make up at some point if the Big Ten is trying to have every team complete a full schedule, which looks increasingly difficult to pull off unless the NCAA adds time before the postseason.

The NBA, which managed to get through a bubble situation unscathed, has major coronavirus issues that have some coaches pleading for a temporary shutdown now that they're back to traveling to home arenas for the 2020-21 season. When a league of that size with those level of resources is having this much trouble keeping a pandemic at bay, I have no idea how college basketball is supposed to handle it. If player safety were the top concern, they wouldn't be playing.

Solving Ayo

having trouble with bigger defenders [Campredon]

Illinois has dropped their last two games and their star lead guard, Ayo Dosunmu, has hit a rough patch.

Last four games: 18.0 PPG, 21/51 2P (41%), 4/12 3P (33%), 7.9% FGs blocked, 52% FGs assisted
Previous seven games: 23.4 PPG, 50/96 2P (52%), 9/21 3P (43%), 5.1% FGs blocked, 36% FGs assisted

If you watched the Illini lose to Maryland a couple weeks ago, you saw the blueprint: put a bigger perimeter defender on Dosunmu and make him to go his left as much as possible. Robbie Hummel was hammering the latter point during the entire broadcast, and while it's always been the scout on Dosunmu, it's easier said than done. The Terps got it done with Darryl Morsell and a little bit of Donta Scott.

The struggles have been particularly pronounced these last two losses. Dosunmu went 7/18 on twos against Maryland, then 5/13 against Ohio State, which used 6'7 wing Justice Sueing as the primary defender on him. The size and skill of the perimeter defenders kept Dosumnu out of his comfort zone. On this play, Morsell doesn't allow Dosumnu to take a high screen, sending him back towards help and then forcing an ugly turnover:

When Illinois flipped the side of the screen a couple possessions later, Morsell positioned himself so Dosumnu had to take it, again putting him on his left hand. Dosumnu doesn't want to attack, passes out, and then misses a spot-up three:

Scott shut down another Dosumnu attempt to put the Illini up two baskets by making him go—you guessed it—to the left on a drive from the top of the key.

OSU wasn't able to replicate all of MD's defensive success—Dosumnu at least went 9/10 from the line—but they still made life hard on him while also limiting how much damage Kofi Cockburn could do against their undersized, defensively overmatched big men. Sueing is able to use his length and Dosunmu's relative discomfort as a spot-up shooter to double down on Cockburn, force him to give up the ball, and then close on Dosumnu hard enough to force a step-in long two as the shot clock is about to expire:

Cockburn has been dominant. In this same four-game stretch, he's 30/35 from the field with 15 offensive rebounds and only seven turnovers. He'd been averaging 13 attempts per game over the previous five contests, however, and that has number dipped below nine with him only getting double-digit shots up once over the last four games.

Unless Dosunmu and Brad Underwood can make some adjustments, the Illini may fall out of contention for the conference title. This four-game stretch—Purdue, NW, MD, OSU—hasn't featured a particularly strong post defender, but they only have a few more games with that luxury (PSU, MSU, Iowa) before a three-game stretch of Indiana-Wisconsin-Michigan. The Wolverines, in particular, seem to have the right combination to defend the Dosumnu/Cockburn duo in Chaundee Brown and Hunter Dickinson.

Is Chris Holtmann A Literal Sorceror?

The evidence is mounting.

In addition to the above, OSU managed to push inside the top 20 on KenPom/Torvik with only Meechie Johnson Jr., who should be a senior in high school and just started seeing minutes, as a true point guard following injuries to CJ Walker and Jimmy Sotos. Duane Washington Jr. and Justice Sueing handled most of the lead playmaking duties; Johnson is seeing an increase in minutes each game but mostly sticking to shooting (and hitting) three-pointers.

6'7 stretch big EJ Liddell has been up-and-down in January and the Illinois game was a peak. With Cockburn anchored to the paint, Liddell hit four three-pointers after entering the game with three all season:

Can't leave him all alone, evidently.

OSU has one of the toughest schedules left in the Big Ten, so I'm not sure this push for a double-bye will last, but that it's even occurring in the first place is more evidence that Holtmann is really good at getting his teams to play above their talent level, even when the roster isn't well-constructed. Sure, he should probably be doing something about both of those issues, but given they lost a transfer point guard to a heart issue over this offseason, this particular issue is hard to hold against him, and he's doing a remarkable job of coaching through it.

I'm Just Saying

With their second win over Northwestern, Iowa has now played the following teams in Big Ten play—the number in parentheses is their rank out of 14 B1G teams in offensive efficiency:

Purdue (10)
Minnesota x2 (8)
Northwestern x2 (11)
Rutgers (9)
Maryland (12)

There are legitimate reasons to believe the Hawkeyes are a potential Final Four team and Big Ten favorites. I'm not convinced a defense that's moved up to seventh in unadjusted defensive efficiency in the conference is one of those reasons. We might not find out how good they really are for a little bit, as they play Indiana (#7 offense in the league and coached by Archie Miller) in their only game this week before finally catching a top-end offense next Friday when they travel to Illinois.

That all said, if Jordan Bohannon continues to shoot over 50% from three in Big Ten games, the defense might not matter at all.

Updated Tiers

From last week:

Tier I: Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa, Illinois
Tier II: Ohio State, Purdue, Minnesota, Rutgers
Tier III: Indiana, Northwestern, Maryland
Tier IV: Michigan State, Penn State
Tier V: Nebraska :(

This week's:

Tier I: Iowa, Michigan
Tier II: Wisconsin, Illinois
Tier III: Ohio State, Purdue, Minnesota
Tier IV: Indiana, Rutgers, Maryland
Tier V: Michigan State, Penn State, Northwestern
Tier VI: Nebraska :(

I'm not quite ready to put OSU up in the second tier but that was this week's toughest decision aside, perhaps, from splitting the top four teams down the middle.

This Week's Schedule

Or what's left of it, anyway. All times Eastern.

Tuesday: Purdue at OSU (6:30, BTN), Maryland at Michigan (7, FS1), PSU at Illinois (8:30, BTN)
Wednesday: Northwestern at Wisconsin (9, BTN)
Thursday: Rutgers at PSU (7, BTN), Indiana at Iowa (9, FS1)
Friday: Michigan at Purdue (7, FS1)
Saturday: Maryland at Minnesota (2, BTN), OSU at Wisconsin (4, CBS), Northwestern at PSU (7, BTN)
Sunday: Rutgers at Indiana (noon, BTN)