| Big Ten Blogger Predicted vs. Actual Standings | |||
| Team | Actual | Blogger Predicted | Diff. |
| Michigan St. | 14-4 | 14-4 | 0 |
| Purdue | 14-4 | 14-4 | 0 |
| Ohio State | 14-4 | 13-5 | +1 |
| Wisconsin | 12-5 | 10-8 | +3 |
| Illinois | 10-8 | 11-7 | -1 |
| Minnesota | 9-9 | 12-6 | -3 |
| Northwestern | 7-11 | 9-9 | -2 |
| Michigan | 7-11 | ||
| Indiana | 4-14 | 6-12 | -2 |
| Iowa | 4-14 | 5-13 | -1 |
| Penn State | 3-15 | 7-11 | -4 |
Well this is the part where we see which bloggers are worth their weight. Before the season started I interviewed bloggers and writers from each school to participate in a preview interview that included a predicted record.
Optimism was rampart, considering that the overall predicted record for the 10 other conference schools was 101-79. The season didn’t go quite as well as expected for a number of teams in the conference. A league that was predicted to get as many as 7 or 8 tournament bids has turned into a 4 bid league — three of which go to co-champions Ohio State, Purdue, and Michigan State.
So now is the time to see who was on the right track and who wasn’t close.
KJ from The Only Colors (MSU) and the folks at Boiled Sports (Purdue) were right on point, both hitting their conference record perfectly. Bob Baptist (OSU) wasn’t quite as confident in the Buckeyes, going with 13-5, and imagine how that prediction would have changed if you told him Turner would miss a few Big Ten games.
Hoops Marinara (Wisconsin) fell for the same trap that non-Wisconsin fans fall for every year: underestimating the Badgers. Wisconsin finished 3 games ahead of Phil’s predicted 10-8 record. When will we learn?
Paint the Town Orange was just a little too confident in the Illini, giving them the one more win they probably needed to make the tournament. Minnesota has to be the home of the most disappointed blogger (well, ok, the second most disappointed Big Ten hoops blogger). Jonathan predicted a 12-6 record for the Gophers and they came in three wins short at 9-9.
As I predicted at the time, the bottom of the conference would be worse than originally predicted. I don’t think I could have seen a Talor Battle led Penn State team winning 3 conference games though so I can’t blame Eric from Battle Does It Again (PSU).
Perhaps the most ridiculous part of the interview was the question the interviewees nominated “most feared player”. Manny Harris recieved the most votes with 4 while Evan Turner notched 3. Lucas (2) and Moore (1) shared the final three votes. If you were to give this survey now I would fully expect Turner to win unanimously. There’s a reason that he looks to be a shoe-in to win National Player of the Year.
Then you have Michigan. I didn’t provide a prediction but I did say that I predicted Michigan to end up with a winning record. My basic arithmetic skills tell me that 7-11 isn’t quite a winning record. Michigan’s season was painfully disappointing on a number of levels and there will be plenty of time to discuss them, beginning with my postmortem thoughts on the debacle in East Lansing, but I had a couple respects to wrap up this feature and thought it’d be interesting.
