Richey | Bonkers Big Ten basketball season coming

Oct. 2—CHAMPAIGN — I’m closing in on a decade of covering Illinois men’s basketball.

This season, in fact, is my 10th.

Never has there been this much hype surrounding the program heading into a season. And never have I had as little feel for both this Illini team and the Big Ten at large.

That made filling out my ballot for this year’s preseason Big Ten poll an exercise in frustration, second-guessing and doubt. It’s a task I approach seriously. Just like I do when voting in the Associated Press Top 25. (That preseason ballot is due Friday with the first poll dropping Oct. 14).

Part of my job is knowing what’s happening in the sport.

At Illinois. In the Big Ten. Nationally.

Yet I can say, with conviction, that going into this season I feel like I know less than ever.

The second most recent round of conference realignment dropped four new teams into the Big Ten. (Can’t blame the Pac-2 for stirring things up again. Hurt people, hurt people).

But just the idea of ranking a team 18th in the Big Ten — 18th! — was insane. That will sting more in March when some team actually finishes in that spot. Can’t be easy to sell that to a fan base.

Of course, ranking any team in the preseason in this age of college basketball is a challenge. One that I believe my fellow Big Ten beat writers also struggled with last month. A sneak preview of the preseason poll (without giving anything away, of course, before it drops late Wednesday morning) shows that my tenuous grasp on who might actually be good this season was shared league wide.

Because who really knows?

You can count on one hand — perhaps with fingers to spare — the number of Big Ten teams who bear a resemblance to their 2023-24 predecessors. Purdue might be Zach Edey-less, but the Boilermakers still return a half-dozen contributors from last season that ended with a trip to the national championship game. Michigan State is in a similar position. A couple others are at least more familiar than foreign.

Illinois is at the other end of…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/richey-bonkers-big-ten-basketball-144800483.html

Author : The News-Gazette, Champaign-Urbana, Ill.

Publish date : 2024-10-02 14:48:00

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