The Purdue basketball team clinched the 2016-17 outright Big Ten Championship last night after Iowa upset Wisconsin in a hideously ugly contest at the Kohl Center. The Badgers are indeed in free fall almost as badly as Indiana right now. The Boilermakers also secured the #1 seed in next week’s Big Ten Tournament with their win over their in-state rival.
Purdue has now won a conference-record 23 Big Ten Championships. Here’s a link to more of the details, facts and figures, news and notes on that. And at this link you can see some of the Purdue basketball sights, sounds, videos and photos from the B1G title celebration on the floor of Mackey Arena.
It remains to be seen how motivated the Boilers will be for their visit to Northwestern and how Purdue basketball coach Matt Painter manages minutes of his starters for this one.
In the postgame press conference on Tuesday night, the players were of course asked about being motivated for this one and their answer was of course, pointless pablum. It’s worth mentioning though that whether it’s Indiana, or a preseason exhibition against a nobody, you’ll always get the same Boilermaker boilerplate responses for those kinds of queries.
Purdue has partied, and they’ve wrapped up what they needed to accomplish pre-B1G tournament.
Thus, your guess is as good as mine as to what kind of effort they will put in on Chicago’s suburban north shore.
TV: CBS at Welsh Ryan Arena!!!! Take a moment to remember where you are, because this is rare. The Northwestern narrative has has had such a strong effect on the national media that CBS is coming to a venue that is, let’s say quite distinct from the kinds of venues that they usually visit for these types of games.
Tip-off is at 3:30 CST/4:30 EST. Jim Nantz is on the call with analysts Bill Raftery and Grant Hill. Seeing CBS Sports set up shop at W-R will be a surreal site.
SPREAD: TBA
Television Preview Segment: Just visited WGN TV studios to join CLTV “Sports Feed” with Jarrett Payton (son of Walter himself) to talk college hoops, preview this game in detail and we spent a good deal of time talking B1G and Purdue basketball. View the video at this link.
https://twitter.com/PaulMBanks/status/837519052931280896
Northwestern basketball is almost certainly making their first NCAA Tournament in the entire history of their program, and 99.999% of the media coverage will take/has already taken the same tone.
It’s the feel good, underdog Cinderella story angle. The 0.001% is the hater angle, it belongs to Will Leitch of Sports on Earth, who wrote a piece we will cover in detail in just a bit. Personally, I don’t have very strong feelings either way.
I guess I’m more of a moderate, a centrist perhaps. Here’s a link to much much more on all that.
I’d rather NU make the big dance than not; I guess. Maybe. Probably.
I don’t know. Whatever.
Moving on to the Leitch article:
I disagree with quite a bit of it, but he’s totally on point about how NU’s signature win, at Wisconsin, keeps losing value by the day and that Northwestern should be better next season than they are this year. As you are about to get inundated with the “NU making their first ever NCAA Tournament” story line, here are a couple of things to consider:
First read the in-depth piece I did on this last night and then
I. The Next Duke/Duke Jr./”Duke Light” Hot Take is Coming
Exactly like Duke, Northwestern is an incredibly expensive, upper-tier, elite-class private school (as Leitch put it) that is totally different from the rest of the universities in their conference.
Although Wake Forest has some Dukeness to it. With Chris Collins having served as Coach K’s right-hand man for many years, and the similarities in high academic standards for players, the Duke-Northwestern analogies will be coming fast and furious soon.
You also have the old, tiny, over-cramped home arenas in common. As of Wednesday night, NU even has the Christian Laettner style signature moment to boot. (I seriously would not be surprised if the NCAA selection committee does whatever they can to set up a Duke-Northwestern second round match-up)
https://twitter.com/PaulMBanks/status/837121527946612736
Here's the play that will go down in #Northwestern lore, likely securing the program's first NCAA Tournament berth. @NUMensBball @WGNNews pic.twitter.com/Oil41KSezv
— Josh Frydman (@Josh_Frydman) March 2, 2017
II. Limits of the Chicago Cubs Comparisons
The Chicago Cubs analogy is a natural one, and there is some merit to it.
The Cubs drought was 108 years while Northwestern is currently at 78. The Cubs and NU have several business ties, with the school’s Athletic Director Jim Phillips literally neighbors with Cubs Chairman Tom Ricketts. Northwestern is in the heart of hard core Cubs territory too.
Also, the 2016-17 Northwestern hoops team is similar to the 2016 Cubs in that you don’t have a ton of interesting and colorful characters on the roster. While both teams will make Chicago sports history, neither team is anything remotely close to the ’85 Bears in terms of fun, entertaining public personas.
Then again, so few teams in any sport have ever had personalities like that.
The most interesting thing about Northwestern coach Chris Collins, in a non-basketball sense, is how he likes to say “fight” a lot in his media opportunities. Sometimes it can get like the Itchy & Scratchy theme on The Simpsons– “they fight and fight, fight and fight and fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight.”
In this contest on Sunday, I think Collins’ team will have a little more fight, because they have more left to prove than this Purdue basketball team.
The NU-Cubs analogies have limits though when you look at the history of Northwestern basketball. They haven’t come within inches of the pinnacle, and then snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, ever. There are no Leon Durham 1984, Steve Bartman 2003, black cats in 1969, billy goats etc. in Northwestern lore.
Also, they haven’t made their imprint in pop culture as a star-crossed franchise like the Cubs have. Even non-sports fans knew of the Cubs hard luck and elongated suffering. Can’t say the same for NU basketball.
Prediction: Northwestern 71, Purdue basketball 68
The last meeting was an absolute obliteration by the Boilermakers, but really, hardly anyone ever wins at Mackey Arena. NU was also without their best player, Scottie Lindsey, for that contest. The Boilers are an absolute nightmare match-up for Northwestern, given the size disparity, so maybe this prediction is just total rubbish.
Or not, because there’s a reason Chris Collin is a semifinalist for Naismith coach of the years. In his four seasons at the helm in Evanston, Collins has guided the Wildcats to an increased win total each year.
This year, Collins’ squad ranks among the nation’s leaders in assist-to-turnover ratio (eighth), fewest turnovers per game (ninth), blocked shots per game (16th), field goal percentage defense (20th) and scoring defense (31st).
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, partnered with FOX Sports Engage Network. and News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times and NBC Chicago.com, contributes to Chicago Tribune.com, Bold, WGN CLTV and KOZN.
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