By Blake Dowson
With the Iowa men’s basketball team’s annual media day in the rearview mirror and the start of the season only five weeks away, The Daily Iowan will take a look at each team in the Big Ten — who returns, whom the team lost, and what to expect.
The order in which the teams are analyzed is simply alphabetical, no more meaning than that.
Illinois (2015-16 record: 15-19, 5-13 Big Ten)
As hard as head coach John Groce tries and as passionate as he looks on the sidelines during games, he just hasn’t gotten the Illinois program back to where it was under Bruce Weber.
The Illini were hampered with injuries last season, one of the main reasons for the 19 losses.
Groce had 14 different starting lineups during the regular season, and seven players missed a combined 101 games. There wasn’t a single team in the country last season, and rarely ever, that could take that kind of blow and still keep its head above water.
Five weeks ahead of the 2016-17 season, the Illini don’t look to be a postseason team. To put it harshly— but correctly — Illinois just doesn’t have the talent on its roster to compete in the Big Ten.
Tracy Abrams returns this season for what seems like his 10th for the Illini; he’ll play as a graduate student. During his last healthy season, Abrams averaged 10.7 points per game and led the team with 3.2 assists per contest.
The centerpiece for the Illini will be Malcolm Hill, however. Hill was the only Big Ten player a year ago to lead his team in points, rebounds, and assists; he averaged 18.1, 6.6, and 3.3 in those categories.
Illinois will miss the production on Kendrick Nunn this season, though it is probably happy to wash its hands of him. Nunn, who averaged 15.5 points for the Illini last season, was dismissed from the team in May after being charged with domestic assault.
Indiana (2015-16 record: 27-8, 15-3 Big Ten)
The Hoosiers seem to be in a better position at this point than they were last year, and they surprised a lot of people last season.
Senior superstars in college basketball are becoming a rare thing, but Yogi Ferrell was exactly that for the Hoosiers last year. Unfortunately for head coach Tom Crean and the rest of the team, Ferrell is gone.
The good news for Crean is that sophomores Thomas Bryant and OG Anunoby decided to come back to Bloomington for another season.
Bryant, who was a top-20 recruit going into his freshman season a year ago, was a third team All-Big Ten selection last season and set an Indiana school record for single-season field goal percentage (68.3 percent).
Anunoby was somewhat quiet during the beginning of his freshman season, but when he came on, he was one of the best players in the country. He is once-in-a-generation type athlete who can jump out of the gym and defend as well as anyone in the country, and he started to shoot the 3-ball really well in February and March.
The forgotten man on the Indiana roster outside of Bloomington is James Blackmon Jr., who missed most of last season with an ACL injury. During his last healthy season, as a freshman, Blackmon averaged almost 16 points per game.