The lesson from this weekend: there are no days off in conference play this season.  Over the past couple of years, at least the teams at the top could count on the fact that the home floor was secure against the bottom half of the conference, or that road games against the cellar were almost surely wins.  In 2011, that’s not true.

Take, for instance, Michigan State’s 71-67 overtime win over Northwestern.  Frankly, the Wildcats seemingly had this one in hand near the end of regulation while holding the ball along with a 3-point lead.  But Draymond Green made play after play down the stretch and carried his team to a win (along with some timely shooting from Keith Appling).  Neither offense could manage a point per possession in this game, and a fair amount of that was quality defense.  Maybe Tom Izzo and Bill Carmody were sick of hearing how little defense was being played this season, but both teams locked down the defensive glass.  MSU allowed all of two offensive rebounds to the Wildcats, while Carmody’s team limited the Spartans to just 26 percent of the available offensive boards.  Michigan State also got to the line more than Northwestern, and along with the rebounding edge, this allowed MSU to prevail despite NU’s superior shooting.  Green, Appling, and Kalin Lucas combined for 53 points on 30 shots, while Drew Crawford and Michael Thompson combined for 31 points on 20 shots.  

One wonders if the Spartans are going to thumb their nose at efficiency margin again this season.  Last year, MSU was actually fourth in the conference by the metric universally adored by tempo-free enthusiasts, but Tom Izzo nonetheless guided the team to a conference championship.  With two overtime wins and another close victory in Evanston to go along with them, Michigan State appears to be re-using last year’s script.  Certainly, there’s a certain amount of skill and talent that helps win close games, but one should have respect for the random--whether MSU can continue to win close games more than they lose them has more to do with bounces of the ball than anything Izzo can draw up.  To that end, the Spartans would be wise to kickstart the offense.

At least in games against Michigan State, Northwestern looks good enough to earn a tournament bid.  But the chances to earn top-50 wins are slowly evaporating.  I’m counting four remaining top-50 possibilities, subject to any Minnesota runs and/or conference tournament matchups.  It’s especially painful to let one slip away where the Wildcats actually put up a pretty good defensive effort.  Usually, it’s not a problem for Northwestern to score, but on Saturday, they were just too careless with the ball.  It was an aberration, but an unfortunately-timed aberration.  Also, something worth watching: against Iowa and Indiana, John Shurna scored 40 points in two games.  Against MSU, Purdue, and Illinois, Shurna scored 35 points in four games.  It’s hard enough to beat the Big Ten’s best teams, but it’s not any easier when Shurna is just a guy.

Ohio State learned that the home floor isn’t safe, either, as they squeaked out a 69-66 win over Penn State.  It’s not just that OSU needed huge plays from Jared Sullinger down the stretch to pull out the win against the Nittany Lions, it’s that the Buckeyes actually played pretty well.  Thad Matta’s squad turned it over on under 10 percent of their possessions, and shot 50 percent from three point range (overall, posting a 58.8 effective field goal percentage).  In other words, the Buckeyes weren’t following the traditional upset script of careless ballhandling or cold shooting.  

So how did the Nittany Lions nearly pull off the upset?  By rebounding the heck out of the basketball.  Ed DeChellis’ team collected 40 percent of the available offensive boards, while limited the Buckeyes to under 20 percent on their end.  No matter what happens the rest of the way, the biggest story of the Big Ten season might be what the heck happened to Penn State’s frontline in the offseason.  Jeff Brooks, Andrew Jones, and David Jackson combined for 38 points on 21 shots to go with 15 rebounds.  Suddenly, Talor Battle has a pretty darn good supporting cast.  Coming into the season, it didn’t look like the Lions were going to accomplish very much in Battle’s swan song, but now at least an NIT appearance looks likely, and I wouldn’t drop PSU from the guest list for the Dance just yet either.  

Also, this game was a bit like playing a video game on the “arcade” setting, where none of the players get tired.  DeChellis’ bench saw a total of 22 minutes, while Thad Matta’s got just 20 (but I’m cheating here--Aaron Craft technically started the game on the bench, but played 35 minutes.  Big minutes too.  19 points, 7 assists, 1 turnover?  Not too shabby.).

Over the past two seasons, Indiana won 5 Big Ten games, two of them in overtime.  And the other 3 were close games as well.  But the Hoosiers blew out a Big Ten opponent for the first time since March of 2008 with a 80-61 win over Michigan.  It was also the best offensive output from Indiana against a major conference opponent since 2008 as well.  IU just could not miss against the Wolverines, posting a 74.4 effective field goal percentage.  They also rebounded the basketball (44.4 offensive rebounding percentage), and got to the free throw line (20 attempts against 43 field goal attempts).  That’s how you score 1.29 points per possession despite giving away a quarter of the possessions.  Per “effective possession,” the Hoosiers scored a unfathomable 1.74 points per possession.  In short, when IU didn’t cough it up, they scored at will against Michigan.  And hey, don’t look now, but Indiana is the 10th-best shooting team in the nation right now--just behind Duke.  A big win for Tom Crean’s team, and notice to the rest of the conference that the Hoosiers will not be pushovers in 2011.  Verdell Jones led the way with 24 points on 10 shots.  

For Michigan, the offense just didn’t shoot very well, posting a 42.7 effective field goal percentage.  The perimeter shooting was ugly (29 percent from three), but the Wolverines weren’t exactly great on two pointers either (42 percent).  The rest of Beilein ball was actually working, as UM leveraged a low turnover percentage into 0.98 points per possession, which isn’t bad considering they couldn’t make a shot.  But on a night when IU shot like they did, that isn’t enough.  Of course, Michigan’s defense, or lack thereof, contributed to the shooting numbers.  IU was nearly 80 percent on two pointers, after all.  It’s hard to claim great defense when the other team does that.  The Wolverines’ defense this season has been a case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  In non-conference play, it was Dr. Jekyll, as John Beilein’s team shut down opponents, even major conference opponents like Kansas and Syracuse.  In conference play, however, it’s been ugly, as they’re giving up about 1.2 points per possession against Big Ten foes.  I can’t explain how Michigan can shut down Kansas and Syrance and struggle mightily against Indiana.  I don’t think I’m alone.

Also on Saturday, Wisconsin and Illinois ostensibly played a basketball game, but it was really more akin to a free throw shooting contest.  The Badgers and Illini combined for 77 free throw attempts in UW’s 76-66 win.  I’m not usually one to complain about officiating, and the truth was is that Illinois fans can’t point to officiating as a cause for the loss.  But less whistles are blown by a drill sergeant.  This game was rendered uglier by the fact that neither team could shoot.  The Badgers posted an eFG of just 45.6, but that was red-hot compared to Illinois.  Bruce Weber’s team shot 32 percent on twos and 25 percent on threes.  In light of that, it would normally be a small miracle that the Illini nonetheless posted 1.06 points per possession.  But I’m not ready to bestow miracle status on the crossing-guard-like performance from the refs on Saturday.

Demetri McCamey leveraged 21 free throw attempts into 23 points, while Jordan Taylor turned his 18 free throw attempts into 22 points.  

Purdue came up just short to West Virginia in a 68-64 road loss.  This game went wire to wire, and was a coming out party of sorts for JaJuan Johnson.  The truth is that Johnson’s been on another level this season, mostly because he’s sliced his turnover rate while increasing his usage.  The end result is that he’s been every bit as good as Jared Sullinger and Jon Leuer this season.  His 26 point, 7 rebound effort against WVU might not be his best statistical effort of his career, but the way in which he scored was certainly eye-opening.  Johnson put the ball on the floor, hit fadeaway jumpers, and generally was creating his own shots.  In the past, he’s been one part post player, and one part spot-up shooter.  If he can bring this newfound mobility into Big Ten play, he’ll be a force to be reckoned with.  

It’s no shameful thing to lose in Morgantown, but a loss is a loss.  And right now, Purdue’s best win is still an overtime road win over Virginia Tech, and it’s still hard to know what to make of them.  The computers still love the Boilers, obviously, but it’s a bit too early to trust the computers entirely.  This was a big “prove it” week for Purdue.  If they won both, it would have been easy to declare the computers correct.  Conversely, a blowout loss would have been illuminating as well.  Instead, we got two close losses, which really doesn’t tell us much either way.  Purdue remains the TBD team of the Big Ten.

Minnesota held on for a 69-59 win after a furious Iowa rally to begin the second half in Sunday’s finale.  The Hawkeyes were down 11 at the break, but rallied with hot shooting out of the break to make this a game.  But ultimately, Minnesota’s rebounding was just too good, and the Gophers were aggressive in going to the hoop, attempting 37 free throws (against just 46 field goal attempts).  As usual, Trevor Mbakwe was a force, as he finished with 16 points and 12 rebounds.  But he was actually outplayed by Iowa freshman Melsahn Basabe, who posted a 20/13 double double.  

With the loss, Iowa exits the weekend as the Big Ten’s only winless team.  There’s only a small chance the Hawkeyes fail to get on the board, but Iowa has to improve the defense in order for that to happen.  In every conference game this season, Fran McCaffrey’s squad has allowed at least 1.1 points per possession (Minnesota posted 1.13).  Like Michigan, Iowa played much tougher defense in the non-conference season, but the Wolverines did so against a tougher schedule.  

As for Minnesota, they avoided a letdown game after the big win over Purdue.  But I was very surprised to see Tubby’s rotation tonight.  The conference’s closest thing to a Little League coach (“everybody plays!”), tonight four players saw at least 35 minutes of action (and Rodney Williams saw 32 minutes himself).  I don’t know if this is an isolated incident, but I hope not.  Frankly, a deep bench is nice to have but not necessarily easy to utilize.  Every minute a backup is in the game is another minute a better player is on the bench.  Sure, players need rest, but at some point there are diminishing returns, like an 8-man pitching staff.  And so far, the only coach I’ve seen that pulls off great deep bench utilization is Tom Izzo.  As for the Gophers, if Colton Iverson, Austin Hollins, Chip Armelin et al. want to play more, they would be wise to cut down on the turnovers.  

As usual, the conference is taking Monday off (Happy MLK day, everyone!), and gets back to it on Tuesday with a doubleheader, headlined by Michigan State’s visit to Champaign.  It’s a big game for the Illini, who will try to snap a 2-game losing streak.  If they can’t, it might be time to use the dreaded B-word (that rhymes with “hubble”).