JonDMiller
Publisher/Founder
With the announcement that Iowa would host Notre Dame in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge, Jeff Goodman of CBS, their college hoops guru, ranked the games in the challenge.
He pegged ND at Iowa as the 6th best game in the challenge, and he also has Notre Dame 18th in his early preseason poll. He doesn’t rank Iowa and he is on a very short list of writers who have left Iowa out of their early season rankings, at least among the group of writers I have seen. That would also go for ESPN’s Andy Katz, but ESPN’s Jason King has them at 25th. In case you missed this from earlier this spring, here is a running list I have of writers and rankings.
Here are the games:
Tuesday, Dec. 3
Florida State at Minnesota
Illinois at Georgia Tech
Indiana at Syracuse
Michigan at Duke
Notre Dame at Iowa
Penn State at Pittsburgh
Wednesday, Dec. 4
Boston College at Purdue
Maryland at Ohio State
Miami at Nebraska
North Carolina at Michigan State
Northwestern at NC State
Wisconsin at Virginia
Doesn’t it seem like Duke has a home game in this event every year? How many true road games has Duke played in the B1G/ACC challenge? Ahh, but I digress. Here are some of my thoughts, having only read what Goodman had to say about ND v Iowa.
Michigan v Duke and North Carolina v Michigan State are two great games of possible final four caliber. Indiana at Syracuse won’t include as many great players as their NCAA tournament game. Penn State at Pitt could be sneaky good for the Nits if Tim Frazier can be back to 100 percent.
Right now, I would pick the Big Ten to be 5-7 in this year’s event. There is one big swing game here and that is FSU at Minnesota. If Andrew Wiggins chooses FSU, then the Seminoles win that one. If he doesn’t, I might be convinced to pick the Gophers. Wiggins is the best recruit in the nation and the player who might have been the #1 pick in this year’s NBA draft if high school kids could still go straight to the pros.
Here are the games I am aware of that will comprise much of Iowa’s non-conference slate:
v Drake (at Wells Fargo)
at Iowa State
Three games against this field: Kansas, Tennessee, Xavier, UTEP, USC, Villanova and Wake Forest
v Notre Dame
That will yield a much better out of conference RPI number than we saw last year.
He pegged ND at Iowa as the 6th best game in the challenge, and he also has Notre Dame 18th in his early preseason poll. He doesn’t rank Iowa and he is on a very short list of writers who have left Iowa out of their early season rankings, at least among the group of writers I have seen. That would also go for ESPN’s Andy Katz, but ESPN’s Jason King has them at 25th. In case you missed this from earlier this spring, here is a running list I have of writers and rankings.
Here are the games:
Tuesday, Dec. 3
Florida State at Minnesota
Illinois at Georgia Tech
Indiana at Syracuse
Michigan at Duke
Notre Dame at Iowa
Penn State at Pittsburgh
Wednesday, Dec. 4
Boston College at Purdue
Maryland at Ohio State
Miami at Nebraska
North Carolina at Michigan State
Northwestern at NC State
Wisconsin at Virginia
Doesn’t it seem like Duke has a home game in this event every year? How many true road games has Duke played in the B1G/ACC challenge? Ahh, but I digress. Here are some of my thoughts, having only read what Goodman had to say about ND v Iowa.
Michigan v Duke and North Carolina v Michigan State are two great games of possible final four caliber. Indiana at Syracuse won’t include as many great players as their NCAA tournament game. Penn State at Pitt could be sneaky good for the Nits if Tim Frazier can be back to 100 percent.
Right now, I would pick the Big Ten to be 5-7 in this year’s event. There is one big swing game here and that is FSU at Minnesota. If Andrew Wiggins chooses FSU, then the Seminoles win that one. If he doesn’t, I might be convinced to pick the Gophers. Wiggins is the best recruit in the nation and the player who might have been the #1 pick in this year’s NBA draft if high school kids could still go straight to the pros.
Here are the games I am aware of that will comprise much of Iowa’s non-conference slate:
v Drake (at Wells Fargo)
at Iowa State
Three games against this field: Kansas, Tennessee, Xavier, UTEP, USC, Villanova and Wake Forest
v Notre Dame
That will yield a much better out of conference RPI number than we saw last year.
