Iowa has a home heavy schedule including one against Michigan. Better yet we get a shot at Michigan State after that. Yea! Because trips to Breslin have always gone well for the Hawks.Those two teams have done absolutely N-A-D-A convincing to prove superiority over us. Um, except beat Iowa: Michigan, convincingly; MSU without it's best player and starting front court on Iowa's home floor, no less. They're barely ahead of Iowa's 8th place in the Sag, barely behind Iowa's 5 in KP. Seriously, did anybody analyze this out loud besides the first guy?
Try Michigan; what on this planet is it that suggests they aren't just hot? Hot = 4-6 games. Undefeated, including the other 4 serious conference teams, = who they are. Let me ask you this, Is Iowa a bad free throw shooting team that has always struggled to defend the 3 or are they just in some sort of slump? Answer regarding either team ... It doesn't ******* matter as long as BOTH trends continue. Even if they really are as good as this simple scorching streak suggests, you could EASILY pick out four losses on their remaining schedule, all of which come on the road. Obviously this requires Michigan to simply be hot the past 10 days. Go on, use some logic. Does it support those stating UM supremacy? Yes, it does. After all they started out of the gates strong, lost a lottery NBA pick, beat the other 3 best B1G teams without him, and an easy stretch run will be easier when their star NBA shoe-in returns! Just kidding, they played like junk for almost two months, lost McGary, had a torrid streak against struggling teams and they face a very tough remainder with a squeezed lineup.
Michigan State? Now THIS is dominance. They're a machine playing dominant ball against teams Iowa played. And by that I mean a rusty broken down machine needing OT against OSU, Minnesota and Iowa. At least they still won. Meanwhile, Hawks have blown double digit leads in 4 of 5 losses and 6 point lead vs MSU. So, the fact that they were able to build such leads, even though they blew those leads, makes them equal to / better than the team that is mentally and physically tough enough, not to mention, well coached enough, to overcome adversity (missing 40% of it's roster and having to go to overtime) and get the W At times those 3 teams were nursing their worst stretches. Still play UM, Iowa, OSU and WIS. And again, I can't state how sluggish they look.
Iowa is playing at their low point at a time we expected a sputter, if any. We're home heavy with only two games that appear in the least intimidating against Michigan and MSU. WIS, OSU, @MIN and @PUR the next toughest. 7-2 or 8-1. We're only dropping two of those, ladies and gentlemen. We've suffered heartbreak, not performance break. The most overmatched we've been was 4 when UM started shooting FTs. The best we've been is 26 twice, 21 and 10 twice. 3 very hard home games and 1 comparable roadie. 7-2 is written all over that, fellas.
The top tier being properly analyzed, make it:
MSU-UM-IOWA
Minny-WIS-NW-IU-OSU
PUR-ILL
NEB-PSU