College Hoops 2nd Best Conference History - Big Ten

The second greatest conference so far in our Value Add Basketball Game is the Big Ten - which has had 21 National Champions, and Maryland won the title in 2002 before joining the Big Ten. Here is the list by school - Chicago 1907-1909; Illinois 1915; Indiana 1940, 1953, 1976, 1981,1987; Maryland 2002; Michigan 1989; Michigan State 1979, 2000; Minnesota 1902, 1919; Northwestern 1931; Ohio State 1960; Purdue 1932; Wisconsin 1912, 1914, 1916, 1941.

The conference is led so far by the last undefeated team in basketball, Bobby Knight's 1976 squad, followed by the last actual Big Ten Champion, the 2000 Michigan State Spartans.

It truly is amazing the Big Ten has technically not won a title this century (2000 is technically is the last year of the 20th century). Consider that Frank Kaminsky led Wisconsin to a 2015 Final Four upset against the Kentucky team that was considered by some the greatest ever until that game. Further only a bizarre final few seconds cost Purdue a win over eventual national champ Virginia in 2018.  Michigan State is constantly on the verge of a title.

So far the top 6 teams in the conference are 15-6 against the other greatest teams, and rank second with a 5.8 rating - which estimates they are about 6 points better than the average great team in the game - or about 27 points better than the average team.

Rnk	Great Team	Year	Key Player	W	L	Pts	Allow	Rate
	Top 6 Other Conf			15	6	73.7	68.2	5.8
1	Indiana	1976	Scott May	3	1	71.3	59.8	9.6
2	Michigan St.	2000	Mateen Cleaves	3	0	88.3	78.3	7.3
3	Purdue	2018	Carsen Edwards	4	1	71.2	68.8	5.0
4	Michigan	1989	Glen Rice	0	1	69.0	70.0	4.6
5	Illinois	2005	Deron Williams	3	2	72.0	69.6	4.3
6	Michigan St.	1979	Magic Johnson	2	1	70.3	62.7	4.1
7	Wisconsin	2015	Frank Kaminsky	2	2	65.0	63.3	3.4
8	Michigan	1965	Cazzie Russell	1	1	81.0	71.5	2.5
9	Iowa	2021	Luka Garza	1	0	88.0	69.0	2.4
10	Ohio St.	1960	Jerry Lucas	0	1	78.0	79.0	2.2
11	Illinois	1989	Nick Anderson	1	1	78.0	77.0	2.0
12	Indiana	1981	Isaiah Thomas	1	1	73.0	73.0	1.3
13	Michigan St.	2009	Draymond Green	6	3	71.3	71.9	0.9
14	Michigan	2013	Trey Burke	1	2	70.3	69.7	0.3
15	Ohio St.	2007	Greg Oden	2	3	70.2	71.4	-0.4
16	Purdue	1969	Rick Mount	0	1	86.0	87.0	-0.8
17	Maryland	1984	Len Bias	1	1	69.5	68.5	-3.2
18	Indiana	2002	Jared Jeffries	1	3	67.3	72.8	-3.9
19	Maryland	2002	Juan Dixon	1	3	67.0	76.3	-4.0
20	Iowa	2001	Reggie Evans	1	2	71.0	75.3	-5.3

We invented the Value Add Basketball Game, and since then have grown it to to 135 teams of all-time great teams and players. We have played 188 games to date, and 63,000 unique visitors have clicked on the game. 

Seven current conferences have at least six all-time great teams in the game. We decided to rank those conferences based on the average rating of their top six teams so far in our games against other teams.

Click on the game to play yourself - it contains everything you need to play the Value Add Basketball game, which lets you pit any of 136 great all-time college teams against each other. To pick your two teams it is best to click on this Google doc and print the pages of the teams you want (each team is one page). I track my games on this google sheet, but play your own for free!

Elite 8 Set: Michigan State 2000 Dominates (as always) Len Bias

People are more familiar with the Michigan State teams of Magic Johnson and Draymond Green, but the 2000 Spartans were not only the last Big Ten team to win the NCAA title - but very few teams in history have so dominated their tournament runs. In their last 9 games of the year to run through the Big Ten and NCAA - their closest win was by 9 points against Wisconsin.

In our tournament going up against one of the greatest front courts of all time - Adrian Branch, Len Bias and Ben Coleman or Maryland 1984 - they cruised to a 73-65 win to advance and play the 1998 UNC team in the Elite 8 - which is now set.

Morris Peterson led the way with 23 points, most importantly drawing Branch's fifth foul with 8:54 to go in the game on a 3-point shot, and then hitting all three free throws to make it 58-52 Spartans. With 2:07 to play Peterson hit another 3-pointer and then came up with a steal and scored at the other end to make it 73-64 - en route to the 73-65 win. Double digit scoring by the backcourt with Mateen Cleaves (12 points, 2 steals) and Charlie Bell (16,3) offset the combined domination around the basket by Bias and Coleman (combined 34 points and 21 rebounds to only 17,11 for the Spartans counterparts).

Here is the complete scoresheet for the game.

The log of all games is here.