After IU hosts Northeastern and Lipscomb over winter break, conference play will be upon us. January 3rd at Iowa will be the Hoosiers first conference game and then its all conference opponents from there on out for IU. Here's a quick look at the current state of the Big Ten, some of the statistics below came as a bit of a surprise to yours truly:
* Minnesota sits atop the Big Ten at 9-0. The only other undefeated team is Ohio State at 6-0. Overall the conference has an 83-19 record, IU's 5-5 puts them in last place.
* Preseason favorite Michigan State is 6-2, currently sitting second to last. * On the other hand, schools from Illinois are off to strong starts - Illinois is 9-1 while Northwestern is 7-1.
* Individually, Michigan sophomore Manny Harris is the conference leader in scoring, averaging 20.9 points per game. IU leading scorer Devan Dumes is 15th in the conference, averaging 13.2 points per game.
* Illinois's Mike Davis leads the conference in rebounding, averaging 8.7 a game. Hoosier freshman Tom Pritchard is third in the conference with his 7.6 rebounds per game.
* Spartan point guard Kalin Lucas averages a conference best 6.6 assists per game, while freshman walk-on Daniel Moore comes in 6th with his 4.1 assists per.
* The Hoosiers average the least amount of points per game in the conference and give up the most points per game. (yikes.) Michigan State is the highest scoring team in the conference, averaging almost 5 more points a game than second place Purdue. Ohio State gives up the least amount of points, holding teams to an average of 50.3 points per game.
* So far one of the biggest strengths for the Hoosiers has been their ability to get to the charity stripe - They rank third in the conference in free throw attempts. However, their 65.9 percent shooting percentage from the line comes in 9th in the league.
- So looking purely at the numbers it would appear that Minnesota and Ohio State are the two best teams heading into conference play, and Manny Harris is the top player in the league. Of course, game footage could tell a completely different story. I haven't really been able to catch much of the rest of the conference, how about you? What teams or players have looked impressive? Has any team looked particularly soft?
