The Michigan Wolverines have had a tough time of it lately.
Michigan was undefeated for the first two months of the season. On January 12, they were 16-0 and ready to become the number one-ranked team in the nation. At that point, everyone raved about the Wolverines’ offensive efficiency, their tough defense, their talented players like Trey Burke and Tim Hardaway, Jr., and their heralded freshmen like Glenn Robinson III and Nik Stauskas.
On January 13, however, Ohio State held the high-flying Michigan offense to 53 points and beat the Wolverines in Columbus. Since then, the other coaches in the Big Ten — which some people call the best-scouted league in the country — have tried to exploit the weaknesses first exposed by the Buckeyes. Michigan ended the regular season 25-7 and lost 5 of its last 10 games. Today Michigan got knocked out of the Big Ten Tournament by Wisconsin, losing 69-58. The Wolverines lost even though they held Wisconsin to only 17 points in the first half.
Michigan fans are depressed, but college basketball is full of ups and downs. If I were a Michigan fan — and I’m not, of course — I’d be glad that the Wolverines are done with the Big Ten and can focus on the NCAA Tournament. Michigan has a lot of talent, and if they play teams that don’t play defense like they do in the Big Ten, Michigan could make a run in the Big Dance. I wouldn’t count them out.
Over the past few days, the top three teams in the conference — Indiana, Michigan State, and Michigan — all have lost. Ohio State’s victory over Michigan State on Sunday wasn’t that much of an upset, but Minnesota’s win over top-ranked Indiana last night was a real surprise, and Penn State’s victory tonight over Michigan, in a game in which Michigan frittered away a double-digit lead, is an absolute shocker. Before that game, Penn State hadn’t won a conference game all year. As a result of the upsets, Indiana leads the conference race with three losses, Michigan State and steady Wisconsin are right behind with four losses, and Ohio State and stumbling Michigan are one game farther back.
Nebraska is not a bad team. They’re 10-2 and have only lost one game in the conference — although it was a crushing loss, a 63-38 spanking at the hands of the Ohio State Buckeyes. Wisconsin, on the other hand, is a different story. The Badgers are 7-5 overall, and only 4-4 in the conference. Wisconsin lost three of its last four games, all in overtime.
Not surprisingly, there’s not a lot of interest in the game. Many tickets are for sale at a steep discount from face value, and organizers are expecting a number of empty seats. I’m confident that the Rose Bowl organizers, too, are holding their breath and hoping that Nebraska wins, so the Granddaddy of all bowl games doesn’t feature a team that barely has a winning record.
After the game, I was surprised to read some very harsh comments about this simple gesture. Fans of Michigan, Wisconsin, and other schools — many of whom think Ohio State’s domination of the Big Ten conference is the product of a dirty program that skirts the NCAA rules and cheats — depicted the ceremony as Ohio State thumbing its nose at the NCAA and displaying its contempt for the rules and sanctions that ultimately resulted in Jim Tressel’s resignation. I think that is a small, mean-spirited reaction to a desire to honor a storied Ohio State team on the 10th anniversary of its greatest achievement.
These teams have a very good rivalry going, in both football and basketball. In football, the teams have taken turns knocking each other off in recent years, often in dramatic fashion. Last year, Ohio State’s nail-biting win over the highly ranked Badgers was the lone bright spot in an otherwise dismal season, and the year before Wisconsin handed Ohio State its only loss. In basketball, Bo Ryan and Thad Matta have established a tremendous rivalry; each program has had excellent teams in recent years and the season series has been split in each of the last three seasons. Next to traditional rival Michigan, Wisconsin is Ohio State’s top adversary in the Big Ten and, I think, the team Buckeye Nation most wants to beat in the big-money sports.
Today’s game should be a classic. Wisconsin is a tough team that has lost three close games. It features the perennial punishing ground game that you expect from a Wisconsin football team; top running back Montee Ball has already rushed for more than 1200 yards and is mentioned as a Heisman Trophy candidate. The Badgers strap it up and run right at you, which means the Ohio State defensive line will need to come to play. The Wisconsin defense, on the other hand, has been terrific in keeping opponents off the scoreboard and is one of the best defenses in the country in that category. Add in the din that always is found in Camp Randall Stadium, and you have all the makings of a barnburner.
The results of pre-conference play were not kind to the teams in the Old Conference. Michigan got pulverized by Alabama and then played badly in a loss to Notre Dame. Wisconsin lost to Oregon State and has struggled mightily against mediocre teams like Utah State and UNLV. Pre-season favorites Michigan State and Nebraska have fallen from the ranks of the unbeaten, with the Spartans getting pounded by Notre Dame and the Cornhuskers dropping a winnable game to UCLA. Iowa, Penn State, and Illinois already have two defeats. Minnesota is undefeated, but hasn’t played anybody. The best team in the conference could be Northwestern, which has knocked off Syracuse, Vanderbilt, and Boston College.
Don’t be swayed by the big plays; for much of the game the Buckeyes looked clueless on offense. Cal outgained the Buckeyes and easily won the time of possession battle. The offensive line isn’t very good right now, and the team seems to be incapable of moving the ball consistently on the ground through a traditional running game. The defense gave up a huge number of big plays and let a previously unknown, unused tailback make them look slow and stupid. The D experienced repeated failures at the most fundamental level — tackling. And the team as a whole played an undisciplined game, full of stupid penalties and cheap, embarrassingly chippy behavior. In short, the game was not a pretty sight for a Buckeyes fan.
The speech will be important, because President Obama’s supporters are doing what they can to convince us that Ryan is a dangerous extremist, a fringe politician who wants to scalp the poor and enrich the wealthy, push granny off the cliff, eviscerate the social safety net, and hurl the nation back into the dark ages. Of course, that’s what modern politics is like — we can’t just respectfully disagree with someone, we have to try to depict them as the devil incarnate.
As is often the case with such events, people want to draw sweeping inferences from this one event. We’ll see many articles about 
I also doubt that Walker’s win is going to charge Republican governors in other states with enthusiasm for taking on public employee unions and pushing sweeping reforms — at least, no more so than is absolutely necessary to achieve balanced budgets and govern responsibly. Walker prevailed, but his actions precipitated a bruising political battle, sidetracked his term with a recall campaign and election, and ultimately resulted in more than $60 million in campaign spending, much of it by organizations outside of Wisconsin. It’s therefore no surprise that Walker was playing the pipes of peace after yesterday’s result. Although politicians love to talk about “fighting” for voters, one way or another, most of them are inveterate compromisers who aren’t looking to pick a knife fight, especially when they know they can’t count on advocacy groups supporting their efforts to the same extent that occurred in Wisconsin.
The recall election is the result of a petition drive that began after Walker pushed through reforms to address Wisconsin’s fiscal problems — reforms that public employee unions didn’t like, but that appear to be working and allowing the state and local governments to get their budgets under control.
Many people will focus on the game at East Lansing, where Ohio State seeks revenge for the Spartans’ win last month. The Buckeyes’ dreadful showing in that contest triggered several inconsistent performances that have tested Ohio State’s mettle and raised questions about its NCAA Tournament hopes. A win against a top 10 team, coached by legendary Tom Izzo, in a brutal venue — and on Michigan State’s senior day, to boot — would answer those questions. Ohio State will need to shoot a lot better and rebound a lot better if they hope to do so.
The stories aren’t so pretty at the bottom of the conference. Minnesota’s season has been crippled by injuries, but Illinois has experienced an outright collapse that probably will result in the ouster of coach Bruce Weber. The Illini are baffling because they have one of the best big men in the conference in Meyers Leonard and a great scorer in Brandon Paul, but they play poor defense and lack the leadership and chemistry needed to win consistently. Nebraska’s coach, too, is likely on the chopping block; the Cornhuskers look to be far away from being competitive in the conference. And Penn State, which has a new coach this year, always seems to be rebuilding, but never quite getting to the top.
That’s a big “if” right now. The Buckeyes have lost two out of three at home and three of their last five. In Sunday’s grim loss to Wisconsin, Ohio State had silly turnovers and couldn’t hit free throws, allowing the Badgers to stay in the game and pull out a last-second win. The team seemed disorganized and undisciplined at crunch time. These aren’t the kinds of qualities you want to see as tournament time arrives. If a team can’t figure out to gut out close games, their season is likely to come to an early end.
For Ohio State fans, there was joy in seeing the Buckeyes shoot the ball well. As Uncle Mack has (gleefully) pointed out in his last few basketball-related posts, Ohio State has thrown up its share of bricks in the losses to Michigan State and Michigan. Against Illinois — which, admittedly, is not one of the toughest defensive teams in the Big Ten — the Buckeyes shot 65 percent from the field and better than 50 percent from beyond the three-point arc. Getting some fast-break baskets and dunks certainly helped.
