A Look Back at Last Season in the Big Ten
A lot of teams were good, and Maryland was Maryland
Before we go team by team previewing what this upcoming season will look like in the Big Ten, let’s return to the vastly entertaining 2020-21 year in women’s basketball for one more broad overview.
While last week was meant as a sales pitch to get you invested in the Monday posts, now I will just hope you are on board and talk about some more of the interesting information from a season ago.
Let’s start by looking at the standings.
Obviously with COVID-19, the records are a little hard to compare, with nearly every team having a different total number of games played. Funny enough, only Wisconsin, the worst team in the Big Ten, played out the full 20-game conference slate. I think that is what some would call ironic.
The teams with records in light green were the ones to make the NCAA tournament. Ohio State would have joined the other seven if it weren’t for a self-imposed postseason ban as a result of the Patrick Klein investigation.
Maryland is in a darker green because, as Maryland has done so many times since joining the conference, it won the Big Ten title, both in the regular season and in the conference tournament. The Terrapins only conference loss was to that same Buckeyes team that was robbed of postseason play, and a team that likely would have had a much stronger conference record if it had something to play for at the end of the season.
The problem with Maryland playing well this year compared to every other year is that, well, this was supposed to be the season the Terrapins take at least a slight misstep.
Of the 13 players on the 2019-20 roster that also won the Big Ten and was set to be a low 1 or high 2 seed before the NCAA tournament was canceled, seven did not return for next season (four seniors, three transfers). Of the six that did come back, only three had any time last year, a trio of talented true freshmen in Faith Masonius, Diamond Miller and conference freshman of the year Ashley Owusu.
Those three were the No. 3, 7 and 8 scorers in 2019-20 for the team, and yet, none of that mattered. The Terrapins did what they do, this time with a mix of young talent and veteran transfers, almost all of which will be back for 2021-22 thanks to a free year of eligibility.
But there was still much more to the Big Ten than Maryland. There’s also Indiana, who also lost one to Ohio State, as well as one to the Terrapins 84-80 in the early portion of the schedule. Aside from those slip ups, this group won 16 conference games that, like Maryland, returns almost everyone for a chance to run it back.
These two at the top succeeded through big team efforts, utilizing a handful of star players instead of one true superstar. Rutgers had more of a specific main contributor in Arella Guirantes, but she also had a strong supporting cast led by forward Tekia Mack and guard Diamond Johnson. But those three, along with a whole lot else, are now gone, and legendary coach C. Vivian Stringer is looking for a Terrapin-style rebuild with the six transfers she is bringing in for the Scarlet Knights this season.
Now, let’s look past the top three teams in the conference by looking at the scoring offenses and defenses from last season.
Not surprisingly, the top three teams in the conference make up the top three spots here. Maryland’s obscene offensive output more than made up for what was a more average defense, while Rutgers' painfully effective D paved the way for an efficient offense.
Indiana was also somewhat of a defense-first team, ranking seventh in scoring while being the only other team outside of Rutgers to allow less than 60 in the conference.
Some other areas to note:
Ohio State rode its offense to a fairly strong record in 2020-21, but it should be noted how impressive the Buckeyes were at stopping the three ball. Their 24.9 percent three-point defense was the best in the Big Ten by over six percentage points and ranked fourth in the country.
Iowa was very clear in its goals: score a lot. Defense was not a priority and the Hawkeyes still did rather well despite of it. This point was proven the furthest from a Feb. 23 matchup against Maryland, where Iowa scored 93 points – a lot of points! – and lost by 18. Please don’t change, Hawkeyes.
Nebraska is the closest to true neutral, and that is not even remotely a surprise. The Cornhuskers thrived on creating slow, grind-it-out games regardless of the opponent. Over half of their games in the conference were decided by single-digits, and they were far closer to taking out the Terrapins in the Big Ten tournament than they ever should have been because of this style.
Illinois was bad last year, but that overshadowed what was apparently a pretty damn good defense that could not get anything going on the other side of the ball. Holding teams to 70 points per game while you shoot just 36.6 percent of the field is no easy task.
There is plenty more to talk about with each and every one of these teams, and that is exactly what I will do over the next 12 weeks. It will only be 12 for 14 teams in order to get every team preview out before November, when the season starts. That means the teams I ranked 14-11 will each be talked about over the next two weeks, two at a time.
After that, the top 10 will get individual previews on what to watch for as we get closer and closer to that beautiful month of November.
Next week, we begin the Big Ten team previews. Before that, I will have a new post on a random topic for you this Thursday.
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