Big Ten teams don’t deserve media scorn

In the midst of Illinois and Penn State supposedly setting college basketball back 25 years with their atrocious game on Wednesday night (38-33 Penn State at No. 16 Illinois), the play of the Big Ten has been attacked by the national media over the last 48 hours or so.
Change that. The media has been dogging the Big Ten all season.
I am so tired of hearing the same rhetoric that Big Ten hoops is awful and that it doesn’t deserve the notion of being the second best conference in the country, ahead of the Big East and the Big 12.
Guess what folks, the Big Ten is good.
No, they may not be as flashy and full of potential NBA players like Duke and North Carolina, but the Big Ten has good teams.
Notice I didn’t mention the players, I put the team first.
That is what it’s about in the Big Ten. Good coaching first, getting the win at all costs second, the talent of the players down the line.
If the national media wants to pile on the Big Ten for not having a clear-cut dominate team, so what?
Michigan State, Purdue, Illinois and Ohio State are going to slug each other around so hard that by the time the tournament committee gets a hold of them, no matter what team is thrown in the way, it’s going to be a tickle compared to the hard pressure defense and in-your-face plays that are a staple of the Big Ten.
The road to the National Championship isn’t a fashion show or a beauty contest. It’s a boxing match.
The pretty boys with a glass jaw will fall to the wayside by mid-March and the bruised and bloodied dude that is missing a few teeth, has a black eye, smells bad and looks worse is the one that can take a few pops on the chin and dish it out twice as heavy.
Purdue has one guy with a broken back (Robbie Hummel), another wearing a face mask from a broken nose (Chris Kramer) and a few more than have twinges and tweaks.
Some even throw up in a bucket on one possession, then go and play face-to-face man defense the next time down the court a la Lewis Jackson in Tuesday’s win over Michigan State. Guess which puke-breath team won that one?
This kid sees his two mentors, Hummel and Kramer, playing with worse conditions, you don’t think that he’s learning how to be a leader ... as just a freshman?
You know he is thinking, “If they can play, so can I,” and he did, finishing with seven points, six rebounds, three assists and just two turnovers while playing half the game with the flu.
It’s not how pretty you are, its how ugly you get on the way to winning.