Big Ten Hoops Weekly: B1G bigs come up big

The Big Ten has a lot of wonderful basketball players capable of scoring 20, 25, 30 points in a game.

If before the season you'd been asked to pick the one most-likely to drop 43 on someone, there's Austin Hollins, Devyn Marble, Sam Dekker, Gary Harris, Tim Frazier ...

But Frank Kaminsky?

Frank the Tank, as he is known in Madison, made 16 of 19 field goal tries and was 6-of-6 from 3-point range Tuesday in the Badgers' 103-85 win over North Dakota. That's right, a Bo Ryan team scored 103 points.

Kaminsky, a 7-foot-junior, had a previous career-high of 19 points. Now he owns Wisconsin's single-game scoring record.

"When those first couple of shots went in I said to myself: 'I'm feeling it,'" Kaminsky said. "I kept shooting and it kept going in."

He got the record because of Ryan, who had removed Kaminsky from the game with 4:37 left and Kaminsky sitting on 41 points. The record was 42. Wisconsin's student-section booed the benching. Some Badger players urged Ryan to put Kaminsky back in, and he did.

"I said one more possession," Ryan said. "If the team didn't get him the ball, that was it. And guess what? They got him the ball."

"I was curious as to why he kept taking me out and putting me back in. I figured it out after. It was fun."

Illinois 6-11  junior center Nnanna Egwu is consistent. The Illini have played four games, and he scored exactly 10 points in each of them.

Egwu also has 13 blocked shots. That's all I've got on Egwu this week.

The theme this week is big men, I guess. Indiana 6-10 freshman Noah Vonleh has been everything he was advertised to be so far, and more.

Before Thursday's play, Vonleh had four double-doubles in four games, averaging 14.8 points and a league-best 12.5 rebounds.

“(Vonleh) really wants to be great,” Crean said. “He's got a tremendous humility. I wouldn't trade him for anybody in that (freshman) class and there's a lot of great players and all that kind of stuff. But I'm talking about upside of what he  is capable of, what he's willing to do to get there and how much he knows he doesn't know at this point.”

Before Thursday's games, Iowa was 10th in the nation and first in the Big Ten with 94.3 points a game.

The Hawkeyes are sixth in the nation in rebounds with 49.5 a game and eighth in assists with 20.0 per game. They are 15th in assists-to-turnovers ratio.

Yes, the best team they've played is Nebraska-Omaha.

If Michigan State is going to doze through games against Columbia and American University, it will lose to a Penn State or Northwestern.

The Spartans trailed Columbia 26-22 at halftime, and didn't take over until the last couple of minutes in last Friday's game before prevailing, 62-53. Wednesday, MSU led American by just 36-32 at halftime en route to an 82-67 win.

After the American game, MSU Coach Tom Izzo said he was disappointed by the size of the crowd. The game was sold out, but a noticeable number of empty seats were visible.

"I've got thousands of people who are dying to come," Izzo said.

He said the small crowd "had an effect on a lot of people, including me."

Michigan State is ranked No. 1 in the country.

College basketball scoring is way up. Way, way up.

A lot of examples can be given. Wisconsin scoring 103 points in a game, any game, is airtight evidence.

Thursday afternoon in Charleston, S.C., Massachusetts beat Nebraska, 96-90.

The Huskers didn't reach 70 points in any of their final 22 games last season.