Who will be the 10th and 11th place teams?
Penn State, Indiana, Northwestern the bottom three. Michigan, Illinois, Iowa & Wisky all have a shot at finishing 5th, and most of them will play in the NIT.
Mich State easily wings again, no one else comes close in ability, coaching, talent, experience, game savvy.
Purdue is vastly over-rated, though Johnson will have dominating games, but the guard play is nothing special--and needs to be to be really successful in the NCAA.
Ohio State probably edges Purdue for second--more talent, more speed, much better guards, more depth...but a year, most likely two away from Final Four prospects.
Minnie finishes fourth--but only because the Big Ten is still a long way short of what most of the posters seem to assume. Tubby is no Izzo or Ryan (probably not even on a par with Crean or Carmody--or, I might add, Lickliter as a COACH, not a recruiter), but Nolan is a shot-limited mediocre PG, and Iverson & Sampson are at best average in a Big Ten that doesn't have many solid PF-C combinations inside (Minnie would struggle to finish 8th in the ACC or Big East).
The necessary presumptions to give rational basis to all these contentions that the Hawkeyes are doomed to 10th or 11th are (1) that coaching doesn't matter a great deal in college basketball (or overlooks or cannot grasp that Lickliter is an outstanding teacher of basketball skills and very astute as a tactician & strategist); (2) that the opinions of non-coaches with little or no actual background in college basketball aare somehow or other accurate about the developmental potential of high school kids they have never (or at most rarely seen), and (3) are assuming that these wannabees despite their lack of background somehow intuitively have an uneering sense of how these players they don't know will develop as much or more in college play under coaches who recruit well (Matta, Painter, Tubby, Weber) as they will under the guys with outstanding teaching & development skills (Izzo, Ryan, Carmody, Crean, Lickliter).
