I thought about that, but in that alignment, but travel issues could cause some consternation for the ADs and presidents, I’d think…especially if they carried the divisional alignment over to the lesser sports.

Regardless, I think they need to do some type of divisional alignment soon. Or let’s just throw caution to the wind and add two more teams. That way, we could have four divisions of four teams each: IU, PU, ILL and NW. boom.

You could possibly do some sort of North vs South (it’s a stretch) –

North – MSU, UM, UW, Minn, Neb, NW, Iowa
South – IU, PU, PSU, OSU, ILL, MD, RU

There’s some room to shake that up a bit.

Indiana Football. By all accounts, it could be an interesting year.

I completely think this season rests on two things:

1. Will HMP be able to contribute as a “solid” big man. I’m not asking him to break out and be a star. I just want him to be able to log 22-25 min and contribute 8 or 10 points and 6-8 boards without fouling every 2 minutes.

2. Will Troy Williams emerge as a star who can get in there and battle on the glass and help keep this Hoosier team in physical games. I thought rebounding was an overall strength in last year’s team, but without a dominate post presence this team is going to need guys like DD and TW to rebound or we’ll get dominated on the glass by teams like Wiscy, Minnesota, and MSU!

There is your first mistake—NEVER feel sorry for Ohio State about anything.

Phew, aren’t you glad we don’t play Northwestern at home? LOL.

It vaguely rings a bell. That shows how into IU soccer I’ve been, ha. What sticks in my mind is the losing season we had in 2013, the first ever. But you and Mr. Mitchell make me want to follow our team again!

Playing Georgetown late (Dec. 27) is going to be either really good or really bad.

I don’t want to get used to saying we are young, lol. We have five amazing veterans, and another (Nick) who is seasoned as well, and a freshman who is a burger guy.

I didn’t do my prediction based on particular wins/losses but holistically in terms of the kind of team we are (maybe highest or second highest scoring team in the B1G) and the fact that we meet some of the better teams only once. But if I do have to predict, I say we lose in four of the following: at Nebraska, at MSU, at Illinois, at Wisconsin, at Ohio State.

If we start out losing in the non-conference it may carry into those early tough matchups in the B1G. Hopefully the young team can stay consistent after bumps in the road.

Rutgers x 2, Penn State at home, and at Northwestern.

Who are your four losses to?

My bad, I thought your proposed divisions were basketball-only changes. Yeah, my biggest problem with the football divisions is that they are unbalanced right now and even more unbalanced when history is taken into account. Anyway, I like what you propose and it makes a lot of sense (which means there is no chance it happens).

I think they would have to have some continuity in the divisions between different sports. It would be foolish to do otherwise. Truthfully, separating the divisions based on competition level is ridiculous in the long haul. You don’t want to put 5 of the top 6 in one division, but it will even out.

In the divisions I propose (same as above except switch IU and NW), most would suggest the East is much tougher than the West, and this year that would be accurate. But over the span of 20 years, it typically evens out. Just separate them based on geography and stop messing around with it.

The football divisions are dreadfully unbalanced and if they did move to divisions in basketball, I don’t think they would have separate alignments for the two sports.

Plus, the B1G has shown no desire to protect any rivalries in basketball (or consider the sport at all) when making recent decisions.

Totally agree with this. One extra game isn’t going to kill the teams. The problem is how do you split the divisions? If you do an East West split, the split happens in Indiana, and I think splitting IU and PU would be a bad idea.

Simply going on geography and nothing else:
East – Rutgers, MD, PSU, OSU, UM, MSU and IU
West – PU, NW, ILL, UW, Iowa, Minny and Neb

I just don’t think that would fly. I think they’d have to move IU to the West and move a team like NW to the East. It would be more competitively fair and would insure the IU/PU rivalry would be home and home.

12-6, maybe 13-5 if we take care of MSU at home to close out the B1G. But the tail end of this schedule looks very winnable. After our game at MD, I could see us winning out (again, if we take care of MSU at home). I think that gets us at least tied for 3rd in the conference.

We did win a championship in 2012 remember? Won the Big Ten Tournament last year. Lost some good talent off that championship team.