Big Ten

Penn State Football: Don’t Rule Out James Franklin To USC Just Yet

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James Franklin is in an interesting position right now as the head coach of the Penn State football team. On one hand, his role in bringing Penn State back to national relevance has brought him many fans in Happy Valley, who have defended the coach even after major collapses against Ohio State in back to back years, and even for the team’s underperformance this year with a roster that should have been good enough to compete for the playoffs.

But ask different sections of the fanbase what they think and you might get a different answer. While one comments section might defend Franklin vehemently, another one might call for Franklin to be replaced to help the Nittany Lions reach their true ceiling. While third in the Big Ten with three conference losses at this point in the season may have been a good result in past years, it’s particularly disappointing for a team that many, including ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit, thought would be in the race for both the Big Ten and the College Football Playoff.

But Franklin may have a chance to leave the controversy behind and head out west for a new job, one that would place him in an easier division and conference than the very difficult Big Ten East. The difficulty of that division may be the reason why Franklin doesn’t have a playoff appearance yet at Penn State, and the PAC-12 South is much more winnable. The interested team, of course, may be USC. Located in Los Angeles, they also are in a better position to recruit from California, one of the most important states to draw talent from for blue blood programs.

That’s not to say that it would be an immediate improvement. USC hasn’t met expectations during recent years, but they hit a new low this season by falling apart completely. Unless they can upset #3 Notre Dame in their closing game, they won’t even make it to a bowl game. Still, even though it will hurt Penn State fans to hear this, USC is considered by more people to be a larger program and it’s certainly a tempting offer for anyone, especially a coach coming off what will inevitably be a disappointing season.

Franklin, though, claims that he isn’t going anywhere. “Obviously [I] have all the plans in the world to be here, and be here for a long time. So I just wanted to address that because it became something that I did not want it to be or intend to be. I wanted to put that statement out there, and then obviously I would love to talk about Maryland and our practice today,” he said on Wednesday.

But realistically, what head coach would admit that they’re looking at other jobs, before their regular season ends and their team plays in a bowl game? Such a thing would be a morale killer, and it just doesn’t happen. And while Franklin isn’t in danger of being fired right now, it’s hard to deny that USC would be a step up and that few coaches who would be offered the job now will have the chance to make a move to Southern Cal later in their careers.

The fact of the matter is that USC would be a decent fit for Franklin and that it’s a very tempting job for almost any coach. Will a move definitely be made? No. But is it out of the realm of possibility yet just because Franklin has made a public statement favoring Penn State? Not at all.

It’s not the first time that a similar situation has happened, after all. Just take a look at the words of former Vanderbilt player Adam Butler, from back in 2014.

“He repeatedly told us, ‘I’m not leaving, no matter what. You guys don’t have to worry,’ he even took it as far as breaking down in tears like he always does. He was saying ‘I’m not leaving,’ and then right after the ball game, I mean no warning, no nothing, he just disappeared. He came back and said, ‘I’m sorry, I’m leaving’ and cried again.”

Did Scott Frost Secure His Job With Michigan State Victory?

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Nebraska has a signature win. If it’s possible for a team of their stature to have a signature win during a season where they’ve only won four games at this point in the season, that is. It wasn’t a pretty win, but Nebraska fans can’t ask for style points at the moment, and everyone will be proud of it because it’s a gritty win where the defense showed up and held Michigan State to six points for the entire game.

Michigan State, of course, aren’t in the best shape themselves. They came into the game with four losses, and it’s a far cry from when it seemed like they could defy some expectations and jump back into the race for the Big Ten East following a loss to Arizona State early in the season, and a scare against Central Michigan. But it just isn’t the Spartans’ season. Still, despite Michigan State struggling, it’s a big deal for Nebraska to beat them.

It’s the type of win that gets at least some momentum back going into next season, and helps prevent a rookie head coach from losing the locker room before the new regime can get off the ground.

For Michigan State, though, the opposite is true. Blowing a lead in the fourth quarter and doing it by allowing three field goals to give an opponent the win is embarrassing, especially when the three field goals are the opponent’s only points of the entire game. They were without their usual starting quarterback because of injury, but that doesn’t justify Rocky Lombardi’s 3.6 yards per completion and his overall poor completion percentage. Of his 41 passes, only 15 were caught.

It’s what head coach Mark Dantonio pointed to afterwards as one of the main reasons for the loss. “We had too many drops, I felt. If you had to point to one thing in the football game, you got to look at the dropped passes,” he said after the game.

He also explained the decision to start Lombardi in the first place. “We just felt like we needed to rest Brian [Lewerke] this week until he was able to sort of settle himself a little bit, settle his shoulder. He could have played.”

Nebraska quarterback Adrian Martinez hardly had a better game, but Nebraska was able to get three more points than Michigan State at the end of the day after kicking a field goal to take the lead late in the fourth quarter. Could this be a win that helps head coach Scott Frost in keeping his job?

It seems unlikely that he would be fired after one year, but Nebraska is having their worst season in forever and adding one more win adds some more security. Especially if this isn’t the only win they pick up before the end of the season.

While things are mostly lost at this point, Nebraska would do well to fight hard for a win in their final game against rivals Iowa. Momentum is what’s important right now. And Scott Frost managed to pick up some of it by coaching the team to its best defensive performance this season… Even if that performance came much later than any Nebraska fans would have wanted.

Michigan Dismantles Villanova… Are Wolverines Being Slept On?

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Michigan defeated defending champions Villanova by a scoreline of 73-46. That’s not an error, but something that actually happened yesterday as Villanova went down in their worst loss in recent memory, and Michigan picked up a “signature” win in only their third game of the season. The Wildcats were ranked a full ten spots higher than Michigan, at #18, but that didn’t make any difference in the final scoreline.

The game wasn’t close from the beginning and Michigan went into the half with a 44-17 lead. They did especially well on turnovers and outscored Villanova in that department by a margin of 25-1. It was a dominant performance against a top ten opponent, and it could definitely be a turning point for Michigan.

After all, Villanova was the team that beat Michigan in the title game back in April. Before that, Michigan was hardly expected to make it into the tournament at all, at one point. They definitely weren’t expected to make it as far as they did and their ranking near the lower part of the top 20 shows that the media didn’t put too much faith in them compared to other teams who received higher ranks.

A win like this shows that maybe Michigan is better than their rank says. Maybe they were slept on during the preseason. It’s somewhat surprising in a way that they’re taking a step forward right now, because their lineup looks different than it did last year. There’s no Mo Wagner, no Muhammad Ali Abdur-Rahkman, no Duncan Robinson. The former went to the NBA early, with the latter two graduating.

But senior guard Charles Matthews has stepped it up as a leader with 20 points against Holy Cross and 19 against Villanova. Perhaps more unexpected is the 18 points from freshman forward Ignas Brazdeikis, who has an early average of 16.3 points per game through the first three games of the season.

Michigan was known last year as a team that could get hot and go on runs, and it was one of the things that helped them make it as far as they did. But against Villanova, they did more than shoot the ball well and they added a stronger performance in the paint, both on the offensive end and the defensive end.

It looks like Brazdeikis might add more to the Wolverines offense and defense immediately than some projected. There were times where he proved to be an influence in shutting down Villanova’s offense, and on the other end, he showed that he can finish second in scoring for the game while mostly playing in the post.

Is Michigan underrated? They very well might be. They fared better in their matchup with a top ten team than their rivals from across the state did at the beginning of the season, although it’s important to note that Villanova is ranked #8 and Kansas was ranked #1 when Michigan State faced them.

Michigan’s work in out of conference play isn’t done, however, until they take on #7 North Carolina on November 28th. It’s their last non-conference game before they have to take on a Carsen Edwards led Purdue team on December 1st, and when that game comes, we’ll see if they can repeat their performance against a top ten team.

Big Ten Highlights: Carsen Edwards In Midseason Form Already

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College basketball season is underway, and it’s time to see how some of the top players in the Big Ten are doing. Michigan State went down to Kansas on the first night of the season, but some of the other teams in the conference, including Purdue and Indiana, picked up wins. Of course, those two teams are notable for having players who are expected to contend for Player of the Year awards come the end of the season.

There’s a bit of a contrast here with Romeo Langford being the highly anticipated freshman newcomer and Edwards already having experience, as a junior who looks to take his game to the next level this year.So far, that experience has given Edwards a bit of an advantage. He put up 30 points in Purdue’s second game, a victory against Fairfield.

Edwards’ jumpshot shone specifically in the performance, as well as his shooting from deep. However, Edwards isn’t the only highly touted Big Ten player to put on a scoring performance recently. Freshman Romeo Langford scored 19 in his college debut, for state rivals Indiana. In contrast with Edwards and his range, Langford was more aggressive and scored from around the basket.

Langford didn’t put up as many points as Edwards did, but that’s reasonable considering his status as a freshman. Going into the season, he’s perhaps the most highly rated freshman that doesn’t play for the Duke Blue Devils. Langford will also be one of the most important players for second year head coach Archie Miller when Indiana faces some of their tougher non-conference opponents such as Marquette and Arkansas, and eventually, a top three Duke team.

Ohio State: “Something Isn’t Quite Right” According To Eddie George

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Ohio State is a fringe contender for the College Football Playoff at this point in the season, but school legend and Heisman winner Eddie George isn’t the happiest with the way things are going for the Buckeyes. Not just on the field this season, but for the program as a whole. Ohio State might be a powerhouse on the field, but events before this season have shown that they aren’t the most stable blue blood program in the country.

That may be where some of George’s criticisms of the school come from. “There’s something going on there that we the public don’t know. I feel like, my personal opinion, there’s a level of dysfunction there within the walls of Ohio State. Whether it’s with the coach, the administration, the coaching staff… Something is not right.”

It seems to be an allusion to the preseason troubles that Ohio State and head coach Urban Meyer dealt with earlier this year, which is the type of thing that usually rarely happens at a program like Ohio State.

While Meyer retained his job and nothing came of it in the long run, the team hasn’t been playing the best since his return and their scares caught up with them when they finally lost to Purdue, dropping them down in the division and making it much harder for them to gain easy entry into the playoffs.

“Something isn’t quite right there, especially when you’re jumping into November football. “This is when you make your claim, you know, ‘hey, we’re going to be one of the four teams in the Playoff.’ I definitely think Ohio State has regressed a lot since the beginning of the year,” George said about the team’s current play.

It’s fairly accurate. Ohio State struggled heavily against Penn State and needed a defensive collapse from their opponents to win, they lost to Purdue in a game that wasn’t very close and allowed 49 points, and they struggled and won by less than a touchdown against a Nebraska team that only had two wins going into the game.

The Buckeyes take on Michigan State tomorrow, but there’s no guarantee that they win. Considering the early phase of the season and how Michigan State struggled and Ohio State dominating, that’s not something most thought would be true at this point, in November.

But there’s only three games left for the entire season, and if Ohio State can defeat old rivals Michigan, there’s no telling whether or not they can recover to make it into the playoff at the end of the year.

The Wait For Big Ten Basketball Season Is Finally Over

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The wait is finally up. After an offseason that always feels long, college basketball is back and the Big Ten is joining the rest of the country in kicking things off today. Michigan, Purdue, and Indiana all begin their seasons on this day, but the game that everyone is looking forward to is the one pitting Michigan State against Kansas. The tenth ranked team in the country against the top ranked team.

Both teams have experienced tournament disappointments in recent years and are looking to turn it around. Both teams also have big expectations that would suffer a setback with a loss in the opening game. Only one team can walk away victorious, however, and that’s what makes these early season out of conference matchups as interesting as they are. No matter what happens, highly ranked teams will walk away with losses in the opening weeks of the season.

Of course, there’s also big name players to watch, even if their teams aren’t playing in huge games. Purdue, Indiana, and Michigan also play today. Purdue’s Carsen Edwards is projected to be the conference player of the year, and with a matchup against Fairfield, it wouldn’t be surprising if Edwards got the season off to a flying start.

Indiana’s Romeo Langford is one of the most highly anticipated freshman players from the state in a number of years, and he begins his Hoosiers career against Chicago State. Even if these games aren’t the biggest, and even if the final scores most likely won’t be the most exciting, it’s safe to say that there’s plenty of reasons why the first days of the season are worth watching anyway.

After all, it’s something we’ve all been waiting months for.

Big Ten Games On Tuesday (Eastern Time)

  • #1 Kansas vs #10 Michigan State, 7:00 PM on ESPN
  • Indiana vs Chicago State, 6:30 PM on BTN
  • #24 Purdue vs Fairfield, 7:00 PM on BTN+
  • #19 Michigan vs Norfolk State, 8:30 on BTN

Penn State Loss Leaves Fans Hoping For Basketball Season

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This is a bizarre thing to write at this time of year, but Penn State is officially a basketball school for the rest of the year. There’s really not much to be said that can justify their 42-7 loss in Ann Arbor, against a Michigan team that was favored to win but not in this manor. Most fans would have accepted a loss to the Wolverines. But like this? These are the kinds of results that ruin the mood for the rest of a season.

“Trace at 100%? Yeah, I think helps us, there’s no doubt about it. But we’ve got to give them credit. They’re the number one defense in the country for a reason. That was the bigger difference tonight,” said Penn State head coach James Franklin. But blaming any part of this loss on Trace McSorley not being 100% is a bit absurd.

It’s not that McSorley played a perfect game or even a good game, but there’s many other problems to look at, such as the defense allowing 42 points. The entire team played poorly and it’s hard to believe that even a good game from McSorley would have prevented the final scoreline from being something like this.

You can make an argument that Penn State quit, not during this game but after losing to Ohio State and Michigan State in succession. None of us can be completely sure what caused it, but at least a large portion of the blame has to go on the coaching staff. After all, motivation is one of the main jobs of a coach.

That’s not to take away from Michigan, as they entered as a top five team, but Penn State should have at least kept it competitive for a bit going down the stretch. The team played like one that gave up, and because of it, Penn State is not only eliminated from the conference race but from the hunt for a good bowl game.

No Fiesta Bowl, this year. At this rate, they would be lucky to beat Wisconsin, win out, and maybe make the Citrus Bowl.

There is one good team in Happy Valley right now, however. The basketball team defeated kind-of-sort-of rivals West Virginia in an exhibition leading up to the start of the season, by a score of 84-82. Of course, the game doesn’t mean anything, but it’s an interesting result against the 13th ranked team in the nation,

Forward Lamar Stevens is the top player on the team going into the season, and he managed 20 points and 11 rebounds in what could be a preview of things to come during the regular season. The Penn State basketball program actually has more prestige than you may think, capturing its second NIT title last season by defeating Utah in the title game.

Head coach Pat Chambers also performed well enough to earn himself an extension through 2022. So while the Penn State football team is playing like a team that has quit, that’s not true of the basketball team. The basketball team is the one that won a title last season, and one that might overachieve this season instead of underachieving. Then again, the expectations on basketball are far lower, while the football team was expected to at least compete for the Playoff.

The basketball team will begin their regular season November 9th, against North Florida. They’ll play a slate of easy games against small conference opposition before meeting nationally ranked Virginia Tech on the 27th. The football team, on the other hand, takes on Wisconsin next Saturday before finishing their season with two more games against Rutgers and Maryland.

Michigan State Will Try To Avoid Falling “A Little Short” This Season

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Michigan State will start the season off with a big challenge. They have to face the number one team in the country in their opening game, and a loss wouldn’t start things off on a very good note. They’d lose their place in the top ten, and miss out on whatever chance they had to move up from their current number ten ranking. With a win, they can surprise some people and help establish the Big Ten as one of the better conferences early on.

But MSU isn’t just thinking about their season opener, they’re thinking about the way last season ended. And the way the season before that ended. Both times, the Spartans were out in the second round and went out to teams that they were supposed to beat, on paper at least.

“Our expectations haven’t changed any from previous years. Last year, it’s hard to look at a 30-win season and say we fell a little short, but we did… But coming off one of the best regular seasons in the history of this school and winning 30 games, I think there’s a lot of things we could build from there,” said head coach Tom Izzo, recently.

Junior guard Joshua Langford was there for both disappointments. As a sophomore, he had 22 points in the Spartans’ opening tournament win against Bucknell, but only 3 in the loss to Syracuse. And the seniors? They’ll have some not so fond memories of losing to Middle Tennessee State as a two seed going up against a fourteen seed. The last years haven’t been kind to Michigan State in the postseason.

“I try not to think about it anymore, because I don’t have a time machine, so I can’t go back in the past and change anything. But I still say it doesn’t take away the great season we had as a team, because we did do some things,” Langford said.

Those things included a conference championship in the regular season, but MSU fans expect more than that. This is a school that has competed for titles in recent memory, reaching the Final Four for the 2014-15 season and the Elite Eight the year before. And then, they seemed to hit a brick wall with the Middle Tennessee State loss, although running into top seeded Kansas the year after didn’t exactly help the Spartans.

Where will they finish this year? We’ll have some idea of what kind of quality this team has soon, when they face the number one team in the nation, Kansas. But then again, Michigan State could get it done against top teams last year. They just couldn’t hang on when the pressure to get a win was at its highest.

Carsen Edwards Leads Big Ten In Preseason All-American Team

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Love it or hate it, analysts love to compare college basketball players and teams before the season even begins. It’s not always the best way to determine who will actually be the last one standing come April, but preseason All-American teams are an annual tradition anyway and ESPN has released theirs for this upcoming season, which begins in a matter of days.

The ACC predictably dominated again with three players in the first team, but fans of the Big Ten can find comfort in the fact that the conference has one player in the first team in addition to one each in the second and third teams. The Big Ten’s one first team player is more than the Big Twelve and PAC-12 after all, as both of those conferences couldn’t get a single player into the first team.

Carsen Edwards is the one that made it, with ESPN effectively projecting him as the best player in the conference. Predictably, Edwards is a junior who should have an experience based edge on some of the younger star players this year, such as rival Indiana’s big name freshman Remeo Langford. He’s also one of the high scoring players whose offensive performances will likely stand out to awards voters at the end of the year.

Edwards averaged roughly 18 points per game after all, and made the second most single season three point shots in Purdue history as a sophomore. His average went up to 20.5 in the postseason and Edwards also scored double digits in 35 out of the 37 games that he played in. In other words, he was one of the most reliable options for the Boilermakers and that was as a sophomore.

Some are saying Edwards can compete to win some of the national player of the year awards, and that’s not entirely unreasonable. However, Edwards isn’t the only Big Ten player represented in the preseason All-American teams.

On ESPN’s second team, one of the forward positions is occupied by Wisconsin’s Ethan Happ. Like Edwards, Happ is an experienced player that will be expected to be a leader for his team. Happ is going into his senior year and is more of an all around player than Edwards is, scoring 17.9 points per game but also adding 8 rebounds per game on top of that. He had a pretty good amount of minutes per game last season, with 30, and was one of the three players that led Wisconsin in playing time.

There’s one Big Ten freshman that made the ESPN preseason All-American teams, but you’ll have to look all the way to the third team to find him. This is none other than Indiana’s Romeo Langford, the biggest name recruit for the Hoosiers in a long time. Lanford really needs no introduction and any time a player has so much hype for their high school games and for their college commitment, you expect them to carry the momentum into college.

The Big Ten Conference as a whole wasn’t the top one in terms of getting players onto these teams, but it was certainly represented and its three players are better than the Big Twelve and the PAC-12, as well as the Big East. But preseason predictions don’t always come true, so it will be interesting to see just how accurate this preseason team is when everything is said and done.

Northwestern Is In Control Of The West For The First Time In Forever

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The best football team in Chicago isn’t the Bears. No, it’s the Northwestern Wildcats, who have sometimes been an alright team and have sometimes been an afterthought, but haven’t often been a contender. Northwestern is an academics school, they say. Not one of the Big Ten’s football schools, where sports are just as important as classes and where big time recruits end up every summer.

Somehow, though, this academics school is in the first place in the Big Ten West, and thanks to the results from this latest Saturday of action, they have fewer losses than anyone. Only one loss, while Wisconsin and Iowa both have two. They could have held the position with Iowa right at their heels, or lost it depending on how things went, but Penn State helped the Wildcats out big time by holding on and avoiding another fourth quarter collapse.

Their win over Iowa dealt the Hawkeyes their second loss of the season and gave Northwestern some room to breathe. The Wildcats, though, had their own game to worry about. One against a nationally ranked team, Wisconsin, while Northwestern entered without a rank.

At the beginning of the season, Clayton Thorson was projected to be one of the make or break players for Northwestern. Maybe even the make or break player that would decide whether they were mediocre or whether they made noise on the national scene. Thorson was quietly one of the best quarterbacks in the conference last season but didn’t get attention because he didn’t play for one of the more successful teams. Now, however, Thorson took the spotlight.

Northwestern went down with the first score of the game but it was Thorson who used his legs to give them the lead with two touchdowns on the ground. The first came after three straight quarterback sneaks finally moved the ball into the end zone, and the second one was a longer scramble where Thorson carefully juked around a Wisconsin defender before running the rest of the way and getting across the goal line.

Pretty impressive for a quarterback that entered the season after an ACL tear brought his starting status into question. His legs weren’t the only thing that helped Northwestern win the game, however. Thorson connected with his receiver in the end zone for a deep pass in the third quarter that extended the lead from the four points it was at when the pass happened. The deep pass was nearly ruled as out-of-bounds and had a very low margin for error, but Thorson was able to place the ball well enough to keep it just inside the lines.

The Northwestern defense held Wisconsin to 17 points, linebacker Blake Gallagher having the biggest day with seven tackles and three assists. Wisconsin was, admittedly, missing quarterback Alex Hornibrook. But Wisconsin has never relied entirely on their quarterback and their best player on offense this year is running back Jonathan Taylor, who Northwestern impressively held to 46 yards on 11 carries. That’s a big deal for a player that was one of the Heisman favorites in addition to being one centerpiece of the opponent’s offense.

Northwestern is in a position to play for the Big Ten title if they win out, but their next challenge isn’t against a conference opponent. They face Notre Dame next, the number three team in the country. Winning or losing here doesn’t put them out of the hunt for the Big Ten, but it is a major test against a highly ranked team that will help to prepare them for the stretch. Other than Notre Dame next Saturday, they still have to face Iowa, Minnesota, and Illinois.

Win out, and they shock everyone and get a shot at the East winner. Lose a conference game, and things get dicey. If that happens, the division is back to a four team race.

The Big Ten West might not be the best division in college football, but it sure is one of the most interesting this year. And somehow, despite being unheralded coming into the season, Northwestern is the team that’s jumped out in front of everyone with four games left to play.