Sunday Funday Pt. I

Well I think it's abundantly clear that I should just stay away from picking NBA games.  I guess you could say it's for professionals, and I'm certainly the furthest thing from that.  Hopefully I can rebound from my NBA slide and keep the heater alive in college basketball.

In this series of posts, I'm going to pick every Big Ten game (four games) in preparation for the conference tournament.  Just to give my reader's a heads up, I do plan on picking every single game of the Big Ten tournament.  There is still seeding yet to be determined based on the outcomes of the games tomorrow, so I expect some extremely entertaining games tomorrow.

Game:  Michigan @ Penn State
Spread:  Michigan -5.5


Michigan has an outside chance to earn a share of the regular season Big Ten championship if they can take care of business on the road and with a little bit of help from, ironically, Ohio State (will be discussed later on). Tim Hardaway, Jr. may have found his swagger after coming off of his best performance of the season at Illinois, scoring 26 points on an amazingly efficient 6 of 7 shooting (4 of 4 from beyond the arc; 9 of 10 from the charity stripe).  I think Inside the Hall founder / writer Alex Bozich said it best on twitter when he said that when Hardaway plays with that kind of confidence, "Michigan goes from good to scary."  This is purely based on position by position match-ups and the fact that Penn State's home court advantage is negligible, or possibly non-existent.

Pick:  Michigan -5.5


Game:  Illinois @ Wisconsin
Spread:  Wisconsin -10.5


Here's the deal, the Illini have a lot of talent and when they play as a team, they're one of the best teams in the conference.  You don't beat both Ohio State and Michigan State without having some talented players.  At this point, Illinois seems to be playing for themselves as Bruce Weber all but fired himself during the Purdue post game conference five games ago.  Remember Penn State's run in the Big Ten tournament last year?  I think this Illini team has that kind of run in them.  Also, compared to the last couple of years, Wisconsin has been "human" at home this season with four losses(also only had a 5 point win at home against lowly Nebraska).  Now I'm not trying to predict an Illinois upset at the Kohl Center, but I do think that Illinois can start to build some momentum heading into the conference tourney by having a competitive game on the road.

Pick:  Illinois +10.5

Blogger's Note: This has nothing to do with my analysis, but if you're Meyers Leonard, or even one of his teammates, how could you not play inspired after the surprise Leonard received after a practice last week.  If you're unfamiliar with Meyers Leonard or his story, I highly recommend you read the piece that was written on him in early January.