The unbalanced schedules are so weird in the mega conferences, so I think they should just go to divisions.  The Big Ten has 18 teams, they could easily split into 2, 9-team divisions and play 8 conference games with 4 non-con games.  The winners then play for the Big Ten title. 

Or they could do something truly unique with mini-tourneys at the end.  So play 11 regular season games over 12 weeks (8 conf., 3 non-con) and then have a bunch of mini 4-team tournaments at the end i.e. 1E v. 2W, 1W v. 2E, winners play for 1st, losers play for 3rd.  3E v. 4W, 3W v. 4E, winners play for 5th, losers play for 7th.  Then you do that through 16 with the bottom 2 just playing 1 game.  If that is too many games, then maybe you just have the top 2 in each division play the tournament (I'd still do 3rd place game) and just have everyone else play just the 9th conference game against the team in the same divisional slot as them.

Something like that would be fun.  Each team would end up with 9 or 10 conference games and 3 non-con and you'd have a true idea of who the best team is because of the mini-tourney.     

So for divisions
East - Maryland, Rutgers, Penn St., Ohio St., Michigan, Michigan State, Purdue, Indiana, Illinois
West - Oregon, Washington, UCLA, USC, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Northwestern

Those seem pretty balanced and you keep almost every rivalry intact (sorry NW/ILL). 

I know they didn't play that sort of schedule this year, but the top mini-tourney would have probably been Indiana vs. Southern Cal and Ohio St. vs. Oregon.  That would have been awesome to see those games to determine the champion and as a preview of playoff-caliber football.  The next 4 if you played that mini-tourney would have been Michigan v. Washington and Iowa v. Illinois.  Fun games, though obviously not quite as interesting. 

Justin Russo: Derik Queen is the fifth rookie in the last 30 seasons to log a 30-point triple-double, joining: - Stephen Curry - Blake Griffin - Luka Dončić - Austin Reaves.
x.com

I have seen a couple of different stat takes from this game. The first one noted above. And:

(2) So they altered it from a 30pt triple double to a 25-10-10 with 4 blocks which D Queen the only rookie to collect such a stat line since they started tracking blocks in 1973-74.

(3) I saw another one where they said Queen had double digit FGM and FTM making him one of only 4 rookies every to accomplish the feat. MJ did it twice. Elgin Baylor and Oscar Robertson both did it 10 separate times in their rookie years.

It is fun seeing all the different ways they carve up the stat lines to make historical feats.

-------------------------

Oh, another one.

(4) A 30-10-10 with 4 blocks. So Queen is the only rookie ever to do this and only 10th player All-Time to accomplish. The other 9 players are Jokic (twice), MJ, LeBron (twice), Durant, Harden, Kareem, D-Rob (twice), C Barkley, and Alvan Adams.

Way to go Alvan Adams!! The Al Horford of his day.


The stat guys / trivia guys having great fun with this performance by D Queen.

It's looking like Phillip Rivers, yes, Philip Rivers could be coming out of retirement & signing with the Colts.

He's 44 years old and hasn't played in the NFL since 2020.

Should have signed Peyton Manning, haha.

Current ranking for NetRTG.  No big surprises but Boucher has a pretty good number for a bench guy, but not seeing the court at all lately.  These numbers are for the entire regular season to date.  Tillman and Garza are just killing us.

NTG   GP   PLAYER
16.1   22   Neemias Queta
13.7   20   Jordan Walsh
12.3   19   Hugo Gonz?lez
 8.9   20   Baylor Scheierman
 8.7   23   Derrick White
 8.1   24   Payton Pritchard
 6.9   23   Josh Minott
 5.7   23   Jaylen Brown
 5.0    8   Chris Boucher
 4.5   24   Anfernee Simons
 3.8   24   Sam Hauser
-4.1   11   Xavier Tillman
-7.5   19   Luka Garza

Not surprising re Luka and X but makes me feel bad - both give good effort and seem
to be good teammates.