Morning Power Bar: Draft Lottery; Big Ten Assistant Coach Rankings

This is a new weekly column for BTPowerhouse that will cover a variety of Big Ten topics that might not deserve a detailed breakdown, but deserve mention. It will be similar to a news roundup with more thoughts and analysis.

So, let’s jump into our Morning Power Bar.

1. NBA Draft Lottery results.

While this is a college basketball blog, we do try to keep tabs on the NBA and what’s going on at the next level every once in awhile. And there was some big news this week on that front, as the NBA Draft Lottery took place Thursday night. Here were the results:

From a Big Ten perspective, I don’t think this will change much. Most of the league’s prospects are slated as late 1st Round picks at best, so how the Lottery goes won’t mean much. Nonetheless, it is still interesting to check out. Notably, this is the second time Minnesota has grabbed the top pick since 2015, when they took Karl Anthony-Towns. Golden State also found its way to second overall after winning three of the last five titles.

Additionally, while we’re on this topic, here’s hoping the NBA looks at reforming the Lottery in the years ahead. The current system has done little to achieve its purported goals of discouraging tanking and increasing parity. The NBA has more tankers than ever before and has locked teams like Detroit, Phoenix, and Sacramento into perpetual mediocrity. It’s time for a change.

2. Michigan State announces remote fall semester.

Most Big Ten fans have spent the last two weeks focused on the gridiron and the disastrous announcement of a postponed (in reality, cancelled) 2020 football season. By any reasonable evaluation, Kevin Warren and the university presidents thoroughly embarrassed the league through their bungled announcement.

However, big things have been happening elsewhere and one of them came from East Lansing, as Michigan State University announced its fall semester would be solely remote this year. That’s huge news on the basketball front, as the Big Ten is still scheduled to tip-off its season in November, with practice starting in October.

How things unfold elsewhere remains to be seen, but this is just another sign that fans should start expecting a delay to the upcoming college basketball season. Personally, I’m guessing we see an announcement sometime next month delaying the Big Ten season to January, 2021—at the earliest. Let’s keep our fingers crossed the league office has a better plan for hoops than they did for football.

3. Stadium ranks the top five assistants in the Big Ten.

College coach rankings are pretty common to see nationally, but it’s not often you see someone focus on the assistants. However, that’s exactly what Stadium’s Jeff Goodman did recently, putting together a list of the top five Big Ten assistant coaches. Michigan State’s Dwayne Stephens led the list with Ohio State’s Ryan Pedon grabbing the runner-up spot.

It’s hard to disagree with any of the inclusions on the list. Michigan State’s coaching staff is fantastic and you’ve seen them continue to do work on the recruiting trail recently as well. Ohio State’s coaching staff also gets overlooked a lot nationally. They’ve done a great job with inconsistent talent. Other names that probably should have been mentioned were Michigan’s Phil Martelli, Minnesota’s Ed Conroy, and Nebraska’s Doc Sadler.

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