This weekend, four Big Ten teams play for their post-season lives. In a season marked by what will be commonplace for the foreseeable future, a brutally competitive Conference with no easy wins, the margin for error is now nil for Penn State, Michigan and Northwestern and getting slim for Minnesota.
The Game of Their Season
Tubby Smith takes his Gophers (19-5, 7-5) into State College to play a desperate Talor Battle and Penn State (17-8, 6-6), the first of three consecutive wounded and motivated teams on its immediate schedule (Michigan and Northwestern being the other two). After its upset of Michigan State in East Lansing, Penn State has rattled of three straight anemic performances, highlighted by Talor Battle’s much publicized zero against Purdue last Wednesday.
This is the game of the season for Penn State. The Lions need Battle to get back into the flow and for Jamelle Cornley to put the team on his back. A loss and all dreams of a March Dance are over; they simply have to win.
On the heels of its loss to the Buckeyes, Minnesota somehow managed to snag a win against Indiana and in the process looked awful. While acknowledging the Gophers should make the NCAA’s, the Daily Gopher viewed the win as an NIT worthy performance. Hopefully for Gopher fans, it was an aberration and not a harbinger for late season complacency, which would constitute a colossal disappointment to Gopher fans.
Me Must Win, Me Must Not Lose
Northwestern (13-9, 4-7) needs to come up for air on Sunday after absorbing one of the most brutal losses I’ve seen in years at the hands of Demetri McCamey and Illinois, 60-59 in Welsh-Ryan. As our friends at Welsh-Ryan Ramblings point out with the aid of photographic evidence, the no-call against Trent Meacham on Michael Thompson with 12 seconds left was bad but even more gut-wrenching was watching the Cats blow a 14 point lead in five minutes. Much as he did in the wake of the Purdue loss earlier this season, how Coach Carmody gets his team to regain any confidence lost and refocus on Michigan will be the key to the game for Northwestern.
Michigan (15-10, 5-7) comes in having been held to 42 points in their recent loss to Michigan State in Crisler and with Manny Harris still struggling to find a consistent rhythm. While Michigan and its faithful hold out a slim reed of hope for an NCAA berth, Northwestern now looks solely to the NIT. A loss at home for the Cats, however, would likely end that hope. A loss by the Wolverines would be their eighth in ten games and relegates them to the NIT provided they stop losing.
Woulda, Coulda
If you’re a Northwestern player, read no further. Stop, please. Thanks. At some point in the season with the Cats, it always seems to appropriate to lament missed opportunities: All late, blown leads, and all against ranked teams: Butler (4 point loss); Purdue (2 point loss); Illinois (1 point loss).
Ohio State - Michigan State
Just watched some great college hockey as the Spartans upset Ohio State 2-1 in a shootout.
Original Story:
http://hoopraker.com/2009/02/14/satur...
