Honoring Veterans across the Big Ten: BTN LiveBIG
BTN.com LiveBIG Staff via Big Ten Network

A B1G thanks to all those who have served.

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Villanova Basketball’s Jay Wright will face-off with former Big East coach Chris Holtmann
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The Wildcats will be on the road, but they’ve had a week to prepare.

By BrendanJReilly@BrendanReilly37 Nov 11, 2019, 6:30am ESTShare this on Facebook (opens in new window)

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Happy Veterans Day Nova Nation! First off, a heart-felt thank you to all of our country’s service men and women. And a special thank you to those Villanova Alumni who have served or are serving. Words are not appreciation enough for the sacrifices you have all made, or continue to make on a daily basis. Sincerely, thank you for your service. And for anyone looking to engage more with veterans from a Villanova angle, I highly suggest giving our friends at Villanova Vets a follow on Twitter. And with that said, back to the far less important distraction of basketball.

This week marks the first two of four games Villanova has scheduled against teams from Ohio this season. First up is Ohio State, a team Villanova hasn’t been matched up with since 2003. The Wildcats are 1-1 all time against the Buckeyes, with both games being decided by a single point. But it’s not the schools or the players that are the central story line in this contest, it’s the coaches.

Chris Holtmann is now in his third season at Ohio State, but before that he spent three years at Butler as a member of the Big East. Holtmann took over just one year after the Big East realigned, a milestone that has also marked Villanova’s dominance in the conference. Jay Wright hasn’t just ruled over the Big East, but has won two National Championships during that time and is arguably one of the best coaches in the country. Don’t take my word for it, Chris Holtmann agrees.

But since that 2013-14 realignment season, Holtmann holds a very unique distinction. He’s the only coach that currently has an active winning streak against Jay Wright in the last seven years. Hotlman’s Butler Bulldogs defeated Wright’s Wildcats twice in the 2017 season, and then Holtman left for Ohio State before facing Villanova again. Only Creighton’s Greg McDermott (2014) and Seton Hall’s Kevin Willard (2014-15) have managed to beat Wright in consecutive games, but neither was able to do it a third time. On Wednesday, Holtmann will get the opportunity to be the first coach to accomplish that feat since Wright has been elevated into the conversation for the nation’s best coach.

I don’t love his chances.

In other “news”, Myles Powell suffers a serious ankle injury, Jay Wright reflects on Eric Paschall’s time at Villanova, and Villanova Football returns to its winning ways with a 4th quarter comeback. Enjoy!

Villanova vs The State of Ohio
Evidence of Talented Ohio State Team in Early Stages of Development Apparent in Blowout of UMass Lowell | Eleven Warriors
There'll be more to learn on Wednesday against Villanova, but even in a blowout win over UMass Lowell, the pieces of a talented and developing Ohio State team were readily apparent.

AP poll: Minnesota up to No. 7, No. 24 Indiana ranked for first time since 1994
BTN.com staff via Big Ten Network

Ohio State is No. 2 and Minnesota is up to No. 7 in the latest AP poll, released Sunday. But, perhaps, the biggest Big Ten development in poll is that No. 24 Indiana's ranked for the first time since 1994.

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UMass Lowell goes up against Ohio State

UMass Lowell (0-1) vs. Ohio State (1-0)

Value City Arena, Columbus, Ohio; Sunday, 4 p.m. EST

BOTTOM LINE: UMass Lowell pays visit to Ohio State in an early season matchup. UMass Lowell fell short in a 79-64 game at UMass on Tuesday. Ohio State is coming off a 64-56 home win over Cincinnati on Wednesday.

DID YOU KNOW: Ohio State limited its 13 non-conference opponents to an average of just 62.5 points per game last year. The Buckeyes offense put up 75.3 points per contest on their way to an 11-2 record against competition outside the Big Ten Conference. UMass Lowell went 6-7 against non-conference schools in 2018-19.

https://apnews.com/Collegebasketball and http://twitter.com/AP—Top25

https://www.ohsaa.org/Sports-Tourna...9/2019-OHSAA-Football-State-Playoffs-Coverage

Coldwater vs Archbold

Harding vs Massillon

Also, my personal favorite

Ross Rams vs Badin Rams

Hey Buckoffs. Glad to see a BIG team lead the Playoff polls for once. And not only that... PSU is #4.

This Husker will be pulling for you guys the rest of the way... shut the big southern mouths of the talking heads on ESPN & so forth and STAY ON TOP.

Good luck Bucks. ( I dunno what your rallying cry is, or I'd say that instead.)

Big Ten Power Rankings: Get Dave Wannstedt’s post-Week 10 list
BTN.com staff via Big Ten Network

The second November weekend of action is just days away, and it features one of the biggest cross-division game of the year: 8-0 Penn State at 8-0 Minnesota. That said, it's time to take a look at Dave Wannstedt's latest Big Ten Power Rankings.

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Robbie Hummel shares 2019-20 Big Ten basketball predictions
BTN.com staff via Big Ten Network

AP No. 1 and 2019 national semifinalist Michigan State is the overwhelming pick to win the Big Ten. BTN analyst Robbie Hummel likes the Spartans in 2019-20, as well, but he likes another team even more.

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Big Ten Power Rankings: Michigan State tops Robbie Hummel’s preseason list
BTN.com staff via Big Ten Network

With the season tipping Tuesday night, it's time to get BTN analyst Robbie Hummel's preseason Big Ten Power Rankings. See his first list of the 2019-20 season inside.

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And as if their program wasn't already a quickly disintegrating burning dumpster full of dogshit, I give you The Honorable Prophet Earlijah MuhCampbell.

Earl Campbell suggests Texas football can't win with a white quarterback

BTN Announces Coverage of the 2019 Big Ten Fall Championships & Tournaments
BTN Communications via Big Ten Network

BTN will provide extensive coverage of the 2019 Big Ten fall championships and tournaments, including live broadcasts and streams of the Big Ten Men’s and Women’s Soccer Tournaments, the Big Ten Field Hockey Tournament and the Big Ten Men’s and Women’s Cross Country Championships. The Big Ten Cross Country Championships kick off BTN’s coverage on Sunday, Nov. 3. The men’s event will air live on FloSports and BTN+ at 10:45 a.m. ET, followed by the women’s event at 11:45 a.m. ET and on television at 7 p.m. ET on Nov. 4. The Big Ten has four nationally ranked men’s teams,

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What To Watch: Holtmann unveils team with Cedarville exhibition

• by Steve Helwagen
• 12 minutes ago

Ohio State men’s basketball coach Chris Holtmann will unveil his 2019-20 team with an exhibition game against Cedarville University, an NCAA Division II program, at 7 p.m. tonight at Value City Arena.

There will be no live television for the exhibition game. It will be part of a pay-per-view webcast through the BTN-Plus platform. Click here for more information on how to access that webcast. It appears the site charges $14.95 for a monthly access pass. OSU’s Nov. 22 regular season game with Purdue-Fort Wayne is also scheduled to be available on the BTN-Plus pay-per-view service.

OSU opens the regular season against instate rival Cincinnati next Wednesday, Nov. 6, at Value City Arena. That game, set for an 8:30 p.m. tip, will be televised nationally by Fox Sports 1.

Ohio State goes into the 2019-20 season ranked 18th in the Associated Press media poll and 16th in the USA Today coaches poll. This will mark the first time OSU is ranked in the preseason since OSU was ranked 20th going into the 2014-15 season for previous coach Thad Matta.

Holtmann is beginning his third season as the OSU head coach. He brings back three starters from his 2018-19 team that went 20-15 and reached the second round of the NCAA Tournament before a loss to Houston in Tulsa. Those starters are senior wing Andre Wesson, junior center Kaleb Wesson and sophomore guard Luther Muhammad.

Anticipation is also high to see the debut of OSU’s talented four-man recruiting class, including point guard D.J. Carton, forwards E.J. Liddell and Alonzo Gaffney and center Ibrahima Diallo.

(Check out comments from Holtmann from Tuesday above; check out comments from guards C.J. Walker and Duane Washington Jr. below.)

“We are excited about our second scrimmage-slash-exhibition here and playing somebody else before we get started for real here against a really good Cincinnati team,” Holtmann said. “With Cedarville, Pat had talked to me for a couple of years about playing. We always want to play Ohio schools with this exhibition. We had a unique situation last year with the chance to play a former coach (UNC-Pembroke with Eldon Miller).

“We will typically play one and it will be a different one every year. (Coach) Pat (Estepp) does a great job. He has a veteran team that is picked third in their league. They have a veteran team coming back off a team that won over 20 games last year.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/247spo...hosts-Cedarville-in-exhibition-137736491/Amp/

I want to start off by saying that in principle this is probably a good thing. If these athletes are going to be the sources of incredible income for various institutions, they should probably have recourse to profit from their own image.

In practice? Well, we don't really know yet. Maybe it will work smoothly and equitably. But "smoothly and equitably" rarely seems the case with anything involving the NCAA and college athletics, though. I am envisioning a multitude of legal fiascos every season, imbalance in regulation, animosity within teams over how certain players profit more than others, high school stars hiring legal teams to maximize their profits and those legal teams being yet another middle man in recruitments (and another point of access for shoe companies, agents, and boosters)... you know, the usual human crap, but maybe just another level of it as far as college sports is concerned, and a level that will be more public than the under-the-table dealings that define the current state of corruption.

As a huge blue-blood football program with all sort of resources at its disposal and a huge and impassioned fanbase, this change probably doesn't hurt OSU Football much. It might even further the separation between programs like OSU, Alabama, Clemson, etc. and the likes of the mid-tier P5 teams (not necessarily a good thing for the sport in general, mind you).

I don't know that this change will hurt OSU basketball much as it currently stands... but it's no secret that basketball is a distant second fiddle to football at Ohio State. With athletes now looking at situations where their likeness can be or become the most profitable, the blue-blood basketball programs like Duke, UK, Kansas, UNC are only going to get reinforced even more, but I think the high major programs where basketball is first and foremost and with zealous fan and alumni bases are probably also going to benefit from this change, as they are going to look like pretty lucrative environments for good basketball players. So UL, UCLA, IU, Syracuse, etcetera.

While he said he supports the change, Holtmann has had a lot of talks with Gene Smith about this change and the complexity of it, so it's going to be an extra layer of administrative oversight for him and his staff and I'm sure there will be some headaches involved at certain points. I don't overall think it is going to change how the team is run much, but recruiting could be impacted a little. I think it is going to get more difficult for programs like OSU to get T50 players. Now, if the fan support really starts to visibly increase the next couple years, then maybe that won't be the case. But at the level fan support has been at for quite a few years now, I think our recruiting is going to fall behind some programs it is currently more even with when players are looking at other environments that will offer a lot more boosters interested in endorsements and the like.

What do you guys think?

BTN Announces Men’s and Women’s Hoops Talent for 2019-20 Season
BTN Communications via Big Ten Network

With exhibition games getting underway on BTN+ and the 2019-20 Big Ten basketball season officially tipping off on Nov. 5, BTN today announced its on-air talent for an enticing lineup of 200 men’s and women’s games. Play-by-play announcers Kevin Kugler, Brian Anderson, Brandon Gaudin, Cory Provus and Dave Revsine will be on the call all season long for BTN, with Revsine continuing to serve as lead studio host. They accompany an experienced lineup of analysts including Robbie Hummel, Andy Katz, Stephen Bardo, Mike DeCourcy, Shon Morris, Seth Davis, Nick Bahe, Brian Butch, Bob Wenzel, Dan Bonner, Ben Brust and Jess

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Big Ten Power Rankings: View Dave Wannstedt’s post-Week 9 list
BTN.com staff via Big Ten Network

It's time for Dave Wannstedt's latest Big Ten Power Rankings. Not much changed following Week 9 action, but Big Ten West leader and undefeated Minnesota moved up one spot, to No. 3, and Illinois continues its ascent, up to No. 8.

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Week 11 will be first time in poll era to feature two games involving 8-0 teams



While the Week 10 slate in college football is borderline atrocious on the whole, the sport is making up for it the next weekend with what appears to be a historic set of games on Nov. 9.

According to ESPN Stats & Info, the combination of No. 1 Alabama hosting No. 2 LSU and No. 5 Penn State traveling to No. 13 Minnesota will be the first time in the AP Poll era (dating back to 1936) that two games will take place on a single day involving both teams with a record of 8-0 or better. This is a lock to actually happen with all four teams on their off week so history will indeed be made on Saturday, Nov. 9.

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As The Athletic’s Matt Brown points out, we’ve come close to hitting that rare accomplishment before several years ago but it’s still not to the level of what we’ll see in two weeks.

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So let this post serve as a reminder to get your affairs in order over the coming weeks. The Tigers-Tide tilt in Tuscaloosa will be at 3:30 ET on CBS while the Gophers-Nittany Lions game likely is ticketed to primetime on ABC or the early noon ET window on Fox. That means no overlap and plenty of time to focus on a truly historic set of games in college football.

Entire article: https://collegefootballtalk.nbcspor...era-to-feature-two-games-involving-8-0-teams/

Ok, this attempts to predict how the committee will rank teams at the end of the year. It does NOT try to predict the outcomes of the remaining games or which scenarios will actually occur. But if you have a scenario in mind that includes all the results, scrolling from top down until you find teams that match your results will find what I'm guessing will be the 4 seeds, in order.

I had to avoid scenarios which are extremely unlikely, like LSU beating Bama but losing to both Ole Miss and aTm, or tOSU beating Penn State but losing 2 other regular season games; in order to keep from having a huge number of possible outcomes.

NOTE - most scenarios cannot co-exist, so the first 9 teams listed are believed to control their own destiny. And if I'm correct, number 10 (heaven forbid) would result in a Buckeye playoff appearance since only the SEC Champ, Clemson, and Baylor could be above tOSU in that scenario.

#01. LSU undefeated thru CCG
#02. tOSU undefeated thru CCG
#03. Bama undefeated thru CCG
#04. Penn St undefeated thru CCG (I think they'd jump Clemson)
#05. Clemson undefeated thru CCG
#06. Minnesota undefeated thru CCG (very unlikely, but they'd be in)
#07. Baylor undefeated thru CCG (same as Minn)
#08. Florida wins out thru CCG, has 1 loss to LSU
#09. Georgia wins out thru CCG, has 1 loss to USCe
#10. tOSU 1-loss to TTUN, wins CCG over Minn/Wiscy
#11. LSU 1-loss to Fla/UGA in CCG (non-champion)
#12. Bama 1-loss to Fla/UGA in CCG (non-champion)
#13. LSU 1-loss to Bama, no CCG appearance
#14. tOSU 1-loss to Penn St, no CCG appearance
#15. Bama 1-loss to LSU, no CCG appearance
#16. Oregon wins out thru CCG, 1-loss vs Auburn
#17. tOSU 1-loss in CCG to Minn/Wiscy
#18. Oklahoma wins out, CCG is second win over Baylor
#19. Utah beats Oregon in CCG, 1-loss at USC
#20. Penn St 1-loss at tOSU, no CCG appearance
#21. Florida 2-loss SEC Champ, loses to UGA, but UGA loses 2 of Auburn/Mizzou/aTm
#22. Minnesota 1-loss B1G Champ
#23. Baylor 1-loss Big12 Champ
#24. Penn St 1-loss in CCG

So the Pac12 champ needs help, and any team not winning it's CCG needs help, except for #10 (again, heaven forbid).

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Big Ten West leader Minnesota moves up to No. 13 in latest AP poll
BTN.com staff via Big Ten Network

Six Big Ten teams remain ranked in the latest AP poll, released Sunday afternoon. Big Ten East co-leaders Ohio State and Penn State continue to pace the conference, coming in at No. 3 and No. 5, respectively.

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