Many college-basketball pundits figured Big Ten basketball to be “down” last season. Ohio State, Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin shared the conference title with less-than-dominating 11-5 records, and only three Big Ten teams, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio State, appeared in the final regular-season rankings.

Big Ten coaches and players expressed their displeasure over this sentiment at the Big Ten media conference last weekend.

“Who said [the Big Ten] was down, Vitale?” said the longest-tenured coach in the Big Ten, Purdue’s Gene Keady. “[If whoever said that] had to coach in this league, they wouldn’t think it was down, and the league proved we weren’t down. I really have a problem with that, because I don’t know how you judge whether we’re down or not.”

Keady and others point to Indiana’s run to the national-championship game last season as perfect evidence for why the Big Ten is still one of the premier conferences in the nation.

“There was a four-way tie, and I think any of those four teams could have been to the Final Four, and Indiana ends up in there,” Minnesota head coach Dan Monson said.

“I think this year is very similar. There are a lot of very good teams, and I don’t think there is a lot of difference between ones that are going to be predicted 11th and ones that are going to be predicted first.”

Michigan State head coach Tom Izzo agreed with Monson’s assessment of the Big Ten as the most balanced league in the country.

“I think there has been and probably are better leagues sometimes, because you judge a league usually on how many teams are ranked in the top 20 or top 10,” Izzo said. “But if you look at it top to bottom and judge it by the weakest link instead of the strongest link, I think that the Big Ten is the best conference.”

It is certainly difficult to argue this when the Big Ten has sent at least one representative to the Final Four in each of the past four seasons, with Michigan State being the last Big Ten team to win it all in 2000.

Illinois head coach Bill Self, who has overseen his program to back-to-back Big Ten titles the past two years, has a reason why the Big Ten has been so successful in the NCAA tournament.

“The Big Ten doesn’t deviate from the style it plays to enhance how it looks nationally,” he said. “The same way that some teams play isn’t the same way you can play in March to win the tournament. In our league, how many teams give up easy baskets? It all comes down to half-court offensive and defensive execution late in the game. I think that the way our league plays prepares us to play in the NCAA tournament,” he said.

Indeed, sometimes it’s easy to confuse a Big Ten basketball game with a Big Ten football game. But this rugged style of play pays dividends when every basket in March is carried out like an episode of “WWF Smackdown.”

So, in the end, coaches feel the Big Ten produces winners in March, if not in the regular-season polls.

“There will be somebody out of this league that goes to the Final Four,” Keady said.

Refs to Call More Fouls Inside

While Big Ten coaches and players talked about the physical play in the Big Ten as a reason for the conference’s success, they also talked about a preseason vow by the officials to call more fouls down low. The objective is to take some of the game away from the big men and return it to the backcourt and to cut down on the beating taken by players in the paint.

“I applaud [the powers that be] for their efforts at trying to make the game a graceful game,” Michigan head coach Tommy Amaker said. “It doesn’t necessarily always have to be a wrestling match. There are things about basketball, with the beauty of it, the grace of it, the skill level, and it shouldn’t become something where the strongest players are the best players.”

However, these rules changes may affect players like Michigan State senior forward Aloysius Anagonye, a legendary 260-pound banger who grabbed 2.65 offensive rebounds per game last year. On the other hand, as he points out, they may open up the offense in the post.

“Like any aspect of the game, you just have to take what [the officials] give you,” Anagonye said. “They may stop the banging, maybe making you look stronger than usual. Now you’ve got post position, because a guy doesn’t want to get that foul on you, and now you’ve got a better chance of scoring.”

Preseason Predictions

The coaches and the media named Michigan State as the preseason favorite in the Big Ten this season. Despite Marcus Taylor’s decision to go to the NBA after last year, the Spartans benefit from the conference’s best recruiting class.

“I think Michigan State has great talent, and there is probably not a better coach in the country as far as getting that talent ready quickly as Tom (Izzo) will,” Monson said.

“But I don’t think anybody is going to concede a league championship right now to anybody else, and I think that makes it very exciting.”

Illinois senior Brian Cook was rewarded with the preseason honor of player of the year from the media, while Minnesota sophomore Rick Rickert was chosen as preseason player of year by the coaches.

The media and the coaches agreed on the preseason All-Big Ten team, with Cook and Rickert joined by Indiana senior Tom Coverdale, Ohio State senior Brent Darby and Wisconsin senior Kirk Penney.