B5Q Blogopean Union: Jim Harbaugh is an idiot

Good morning! This is going to be a daily(ish) post that discusses the goings on of the rest of the Big Ten Conference, and the country as needed. Much like the European Union, the Big Ten is a loosely confederated group of entities that sometimes have the same goals (like free movement of people between countries or not winning national titles in football or basketball) and sometimes accept new members that they later regret (Estonia or Rutgers).

We hope that you will use this post to comment on things happening around the conference and also as a sort of daily open thread to discuss breaking news or argue about Spotted Cow.

• Averaging three points per game seems unsustainable, but I wouldn’t put it past Daryl Watts.

• Badgers still No. 1 here too.

• NEWSPAPER FIGHT!!!!!!

• A fun, little, mini-thread with some SP+ thoughts on the Badgers. In a surprise, the numbers say Wisconsin is good.

• Dani Rhodes and the women’s soccer team are making some dang noise this season.

• I have no idea why the Rose Bowl hands out a player of the week award, and I don’t want any of you to tell me if you know, but they do. And Jack Coan won it this week.

I enjoy their use of the badger emoji as a bullet point.

• The women’s volleyball RPI came out Monday and the Badgers are rated more highly there than they are in the AVCA Coaches poll.

• The more goals Cole Caufield scores the angrier I get that the Flyers didn’t draft him when they had the chance.

• Updated college wrestling rankings came out and the Badgers are looking pretty good.

Wisconsin also has the top-rated wrestler at 133 pounds, Seth Gross; the No. 7 wrestler at 141 pounds, Tristan Moran; the No. 12 wrestler at 149 pounds, Cole Martin; the No. 2 wrestler at 165 pounds, Evan Wick; the No. 19 wrestler at 184 pounds, Johnny Sebastian; and the No. 5 heavyweight wrestler, Trent Hillger.

The B1G is crazy stacked with the top-four teams in the country all coming from the conference in addition to two more in the top-10.

• Some Illinois updates before the game this weekend:

Lovie Smith’s press conference notes.

It would appear that the B1G is planning on declaring war on Ireland since they are sending Illinois and Nebraska to play football there in 2021. That’s the only reasonable explanation I can come up with for picking those two teams to showcase our product internationally.

• I did not know Purdue and Iowa were rivals!
• If you want a thorough recap of Iowa’s basketball season last year, here it is.
• A nice breakdown of the bottom third of the B1G basketball conference. Corn Nation will have a bunch of hoops coverage this week due to the football team being on the bye.
• Rutgers has hired a search firm to find an new football head coach. Search firms are bad and dumb and so is Rutgers.
• Jim Harbaugh said that Shea Patterson has been the best quarterback in every game he’s played in this year. Oh boy. Let’s pick a game at random, say...the Michigan game against Wisconsin a few weeks ago!

Shea Patterson was 14-of-32 for 219 yards, two TDs and a QBR of 36.4. Pretty awful numbers and we haven’t even taken into account that he threw an interception and lost a fumble! His counterpart, Jack Coan, was 13-of-16 for 128 yards, two TDs (both rushing) and a QBR of 87.7. Pretty pedestrian numbers, yardage wise, but he didn’t turn the ball over once and his team won by a million.

The lesson, as always, is Jim Harbaugh is a dumb man and I hope he coaches at Michigan forever.

• The Spartans had another football player enter the transfer portal (their fourth in three weeks), a 4-star basketball recruit decommit, BUT a 3-star RB for the class of 2020 verbally committed sooooooo, not too bad of a Monday?
• Jamal Mashburn Jr., a 4-star guard, chose Minnesota and Richard Pitino on Monday. His dad played for Pitino’s dad at Kentucky. Wild.
• This is a story about ice cream and Maryland athletics.