Freshmen are beginning to make their marks across Big Ten

The Badgers came into the Big House with one of the best resumes in the country, including a win over LSU and a road victory in East Lansing. Oh, there’s also no quarterback quandary with J.T. Barrett taking full command of the offense. Redshirt junior goalkeeper Caitlyn Clem has allowed an average of 1.06 goals this season on top of her shutouts. Instead, you get MI fans who want to argue that they’ve played a tougher schedule than Ohio State.

Penn State safety Marcus Allen made a career-high 22 tackles in last week’s overtime win over Minnesota, the most stops by a PSU player since Paul Posluszny in 2005 and the most by a Big Ten player since 2011.

All that leads up to this: people believing that Nebraska can be a College Football Playoff contender. The Spartans, who were picked last in the preseason coaches’ poll, play Denver, Michigan Tech and North Dakota before the holiday break.

Brenna Lovera is leading the Wildcats with 12 points on six goals.

When you break down both schedules, the resumes of MI and Ohio State look very similar.

The Hoosiers do have some momentum, having won three straight Big Ten games, stretching back to previous year, for the first time since 1993. In three meetings between the schools since the Scarlet Knights joined the Big Ten, the Buckeyes have won them all by a combined score of 163-24 after the shutout over the weekend. This should be a great game between two evenly-matched teams. The first round would have three best-of-three series, with the semifinals and final both single games.

The Hawkeyes may be reeling right now, but they will still be a tough matchup for Nebraska. The running game struggled as well, with MI running for only 3 yards per carry.

Remember, a year ago they finished the non-conference slate 9-3. Her five kills Wednesday night led the team, though Fletcher was not exactly impressed with her own performance or the teams, for that matter. Not that it mattered, since they gave up chewing tobacco in 2007. “We’re always looking to create as difficult of schedule as we can, [but] it’s hard to predict that two and three years away”. The Hoosiers are America’s chaos team. This week is a bit of a calmer week in the Big Ten with Northwestern, Nebraska and Wisconsin on bye along with Michigan State playing a non-conference game, but there is some stuff still worth watching.

We can all agree that these teams are good.

The Gophers are off to a decent start in their first full year under head coach Tracy Claeys.

Four games into the season, second-ranked Ohio State is 4-0 and has looked absolutely dominant. Ohio State has the 40th ranked passing attack, according to Football Study Hall’s S&P+ metric that combines efficiency and explosiveness. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t some very intriguing games this week, including Maryland putting their undefeated record on the line and a game that will likely eliminate the loser from conference championship game contention. Indiana’s last win at Ohio State came in 1987. If Ohio State or MI predictably come out of the East, those two are going to be ranked in the top 5 without a doubt. Even Michigan’s sole Power 5 opponent, Colorado, finished with just one conference win.

Darrell Hazell has struggled to do anything productive yet in his tenure at Purdue, and his seat is incredibly hot this year. It comes down to whether having two wins over ranked teams at home is more impressive than one win over a ranked team on the road.

The defense has been a ball-hawking group that is stonewalling everyone, and there’s more speed across the roster and on the bench than you can shake a Buckeye leaf at. Nebraska should have no problem avenging last season’s loss.