Big Ten basketball media days — women and men — descend on Target Center

For the second consecutive year, the kickoff event for Big Ten men's and women's basketball will be in Minneapolis when the conference's media days are being held at Target Center.

The women's teams will take the stage Monday morning, with all 14 coaches holding news conferences. Select players from each team will also meet with the media into the afternoon. The men's teams will do the same on Tuesday.

Big Ten Network will run coverage on both days from 8:30 a.m. to about 2 p.m. First-year Gophers women's coach Dawn Plitzuweit and Gophers men's coach Ben Johnson will meet the media at 10:40 a.m., Monday and Tuesday, respectively.

Target Center is also the site of the Big Ten women's and men's basketball tournaments this spring after hosting the women's tournament last year. This year's women's tournament is from March 6-10, with the men's tournament March 13-17.

Who has done more for the popularity of women's college basketball lately than Clark? Still waiting. Nobody. The most prolific scorer in the nation, Clark is back at Iowa for her fourth year, but we still don't know if it will be her last. She led the Hawkeyes to the NCAA title game last year, logging back-to-back 41-point games in the process. Entering the season having scored 2,717 points, Clark will likely need only four years to set the NCAA career scoring record. She needs only 811 to pass former University of Washington star Kelsey Plum in that category. The question, though, is this: Can Clark and Iowa do it all again, given that both Monika Czinano and McKenna Warnock are gone? The play of Hannah Stuelke, last season's Big Ten sixth player of the year, will be key.

Indiana lost Grace Berger. But Mackenzie Holmes, a first-team All-America player last year, is back, as are three other starters and a top reserve, former Gophers player Sara Scalia. Last year the Hoosiers won the Big Ten regular-season title, earned a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament … and lost, in the second round, to a Miami (Fla.) team that made it to the regional finals before losing to eventual national champion LSU. Can Indiana repeat as conference champs? Can they make a deeper run in the NCAA tournament?

Illinois isn't necessarily one of the favorites to contend for a conference title. But consider: The Illini finished sixth in the conference before advancing to the quarterfinals of the conference tournament and received their first NCAA tournament bid in 20 years. Quick, fast and athletic, Illinois returns all five starters from last year's team, including Makira Cook, who was a first-team all-conference player last year, Kendall Bostic and Genesis Bryant (both second team) and former Park Center star Adalia McKenzie (honorable mention).

Purdue is expected to be the preseason pick to win the Big Ten. The Boilermakers, who return national player of the year and preseason Big Ten player of the year Zach Edey, were ranked No. 1 in the nation for eight weeks last season. They were No. 3 in the final Associated Press poll, the highest program finish since 1993-94. But the season ended with a major disappointment, as the Boilermakers became the second No. 1 seed to ever lose in the NCAA tournament first round, falling to Farleigh Dickinson.

A year after the Big Ten produced five AP All-Americas (Keegan Murray, Johnny Davis, Kofi Cockburn, Jaden Ivey, and E.J. Liddell), the league delivered again with four All-Americas in 2022-23 with Purdue's Edey, Indiana's Trayce Jackson-Davis, Penn State's Jalen Pickett (second team) and Iowa's Kris Murray (third team). Edey is the only one back from that bunch. Also lost was Michigan's All-Big Ten center Hunter Dickinson, who transferred to Kansas. But seven of the 15 players on the All-Big Ten teams are back, including Illinois' Terrence Shannon Jr., Maryland's Jahmir Young and Northwestern's Boo Buie.

There aren't many teams that look to be deep enough to challenge the Boilermakers at the top of the Big Ten. In fact, there seems to be only one entering the season: Michigan State. The Spartans have arguably coach Tom Izzo's most talented team since the 2018-19 Final Four team in Minneapolis. Izzo's program had surprisingly been down, going unranked in the preseason in back-to-back years for the first time since the mid-1990s. But five of the top six scores return from a surprise Sweet 16 run last season, including All-Big Ten guards Tyson Walker and A.J. Hoggard.