I do think we will match up very well with Ohio State and could cause them problems so I think finishing ahead of them is possible. MSU is MSU and have our number, so there's always a psychological hump to get over. Michigan I think we'll play tough, our two games with them last year were decided by 9 pts total including overtime, all without Trevor. Finally Indiana is going to be brutal but we were the only team to beat them at Assembly Hall last year so anything can happen!
Agreed with most of what you said here, I think on the floor we match up well with most of the top teams except Indiana, who I think will be just too deep and too talented for us and for a lot of teams. I've based my fifth place finish prediction mostly off of how talented I think the teams are, I certainly don't think the Gophers are incapable of beating Michigan, Michigan State, or Ohio State, though we play OSU only once, and it's in Columbus this year. We haven't beaten Michigan State since our overtime victory in the 2010 Big Ten Tournament, but the last two times we've played them at home have been us holding a lead going into the last 5 minutes or so and then blowing it. I think in 2011 Michigan State finished the game on something like a 13-1 run. We can beat them, we just REALLY need to close out. When we tried to "take the air out of the ball" toward the end of the game this past season, I think that's what killed us. We just wanted the game to end right there, we didn't just keep our foot on the gas, keep attacking.
Like I said earlier, I'm basing my prediction on talent level, I certainly think we're capable of beating pretty much anyone except Indiana. I think we are the fifth most talented team in the conference, as I just don't see much star power in Madison this season outside of Dekker. Picturing Mike Brusewitz, Jared Berggren, Ben Brust, or Ryan Evans as "stars" just feels weird, or for that matter, that 3 star redshirt freshman point guard George Marshall from Chicago that Bucky fans seem to be so high on.
A couple other things in regards to the article, this guy pegged Florida State, our upcoming ACC Challenge opponent as a 10 seed, which seemed maybe a little low. They do lose five(!) seniors, but I saw at least one Florida State fan who said that FSU's top four scorers all return, and seemed almost insulted that they were given a lowly opponent like Minnesota (I don't think he knew that we're a likely preseason top 25 team though). I thought Minnesota and Florida State seemed like a fairly even matchup, with Florida State maybe not quite as good as we should be next season, not bad by any means, but then also getting home court advantage to offset this small difference. I think it will be a good game, but with my very limited knowledge of FSU basketball, I expected them to be in more of the 5-8 seed range, maybe a 9. Will we be significantly better than them when we play next season?
Also, I noticed Alabama listed as a 13 seed, which seemed like a very low seed for a team from one of the six power conferences. Selection Sunday, if you're reading this, would you know what the lowest seed a BCS team has gotten is? According to a guy on Yahoo answers, Georgia won their conference tournament and made it in as a 13 seed, but even with the PAC-12 as bad as it was last year, even Colorado and Cal got in as 11 and 12 seeds respectively. A 13 seed seems very low for a BCS team with an at-large bid, so I was just curious, the writer of the article probably didn't put in enough thought to realize that a BCS team likely would not get a seed that low.
I also noticed he had Purdue as one of the first four out, and no mention of Iowa. I would not be surprised to see either of them make the tourney come March.
