Feast Week is shaping up to be interesting around Big Ten Country this season.
For teams participating in MTE’s, Purdue made a pretty big statement in the Bahamas while others are gearing up for other tournaments
like the Players Era Festival. For others, the past week contained some less than ideal results.
Let’s go through them.
Winners
- Purdue played a game against Memphis that looked questionable at first glance but was in honesty a weird matchup more than anything. The Boilers proved as much by absolutely punking Texas Tech 86-56 in the championship game. There wasn’t a time, from tip to buzzer, that Purdue wasn’t thoroughly in control of the Red Raiders on both ends of the floor. Tech’s a good team that could make some noise in the big tournament this season! That was a really good neutral site win.
- Michigan State gave Kentucky fans more reasons to complain and others fewer reasons to ever doubt Tom Izzo with a dominant 83-66 win over the Wildcats in Madison Square Garden. Are the Spartans going to shoot 50% from deep every game? No, but they beat the ‘Cats in every other facet as well with Jeremy Fears looking masterful in dicing up the Kentucky defense to the tune of 13 assists and just two turnovers.
- Nebraska, owner of the nation’s longest winning streak, kept it up with an 86-85 win over Kansas State in the Hall of Fame Classic. Don’t look now, but the Huskers are putting together a pretty solid at-large resume with an opportunity at home against Creighton looming. Could this be the group that truly breaks out for Fred Hoiberg in Lincoln and finally notches that elusive NCAA Tournament victory?
Losers
- Rutgers is in rebuild mode after the short-lived failure of the Ace Bailey/Dylan Harper era in New Jersey. Steve Pikiell, the best coach the program has had in quite some time, is looking to get back to his previous winning ways. Losing to Central Connecticut will not help with that. It’s among the program’s worst losses in recent memory. Pikiell has earned a shot to pull Rutgers out of the spiral it’s in, but he can’t have this loss turn into losses.
- Wisconsin is a good team. Wisconsin will be in the NCAA Tournament and beat several Big Ten teams in the process of getting there. The Badgers still looked outclassed out west in a 98-70 loss to potential No. 1 overall pick AJ Dybantsa and BYU, showing there’s still a gap between Wisconsin and the sport’s true national contenders. I don’t think the Badgers should be dinged too much for this at all, but man, that’s still rough.
- Minnesota looks bad. Really bad. The Golden Gophers are in year one under Niko Medved, a good coach, but should probably be better than this? It took overtime for them to dispatch Doug Gottlieb’s 298th-ranked Green Bay group, they were outclassed on the road against Mizzou and now they’ve fallen to San Francisco. Now, the Dons are a Serious Program and Chris Gerlufsen could very well be a riser in the coaching profession. But Medved is a riser. He’s usually taken time to get programs going, but rebuilding in 2025 isn’t what it was in 2019. This isn’t me at all questioning his long-term viability in the job, I think he’ll do quite well, I’m just curious about this start, to his tenure and inaugural season. Maybe they finish better, but this isn’t great.
