The Madness Is Upon Us; Big Ten Tourney Starts Wednesday
College basketball’s regular season concluded this weekend and now the fun part begins.
It’s March Madness!
The time of the year that drives teams, players, coaches and particularly fan bases to the brink.
Our first dose of March Madness will begin later this week when the Power Five conference tournaments tip off their post-season tournaments. Some of the smaller conference tournaments are already well underway and even a few have crowned champions.
These conference tournaments are made for TV events to generate lots of revenue for conferences like the Big Ten. And that they certainly do.
Sure, they carry some clout with the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee, particularly if you’re on the bubble. However, rest assured, these are not make or break events for say the top 16 teams in the Big Dance (seeds Nos. 1-4). There might be some maneuvering slightly with some teams, but a team isn’t going to greatly enhance its seed thanks to how it plays in the upcoming week. Yes, a team could conceivably go up or down one seed, but that’s pretty much it.
Naturally if you are one of those bubble teams, winning your conference tournament is the only way you can eliminate the stress of sweating things out come Selection Sunday.
Bubble teams hope and pray for as few upsets as possible in the lesser tournaments. They want the favorites to win because the last thing they want is someone “stealing” a bid that wasn’t going to make it.
Ask the bracketologists who the Big Ten bubble teams are and they will rattle off a few.
The Big Ten locks are Purdue, Northwestern, Indiana, Michigan State, Illinois, Iowa and Maryland. It’s after that where things get interested. Some believe Penn State punched its ticket thanks to its last-season home win over Maryland on Sunday. Michigan, Rutgers and Wisconsin are likely on the outside looking in right now and need a good weekend in Chicago to get in … perhaps a great weekend.
The Boilermakers won their league-leading 25th Big Ten Championship by a staggering three game, going 15-5 in conference action. Three teams tied for second with eight Big Ten defeats and another four had nine league setbacks and two others had 10 (you can see the official Big Ten Tournament bracket above).
The parity in the Big Ten this season was flat out insane as were so many finishes.
Get this, nine of the league’s final 10 regular-season games were decided by a total of 28 points. Think about that. That’s a margin of victory of 3.1 points so nine of those 10 games were basically one-possession games.
You think the Big Ten Tournament is going to be crazy?
Prepare yourself. The madness is just beginning!
Special thanks to Five Star Marketplace in Knox for being one of our loyal sponsors. Please give their Facebook page a visit by going to https://www.facebook.com/supermarketfivestar/?fref=ts
You can follow me on my personal Twitter page – @DougGriffMAX983 – as well as keep an eye on his posts on Twitter @Maxsports983 and on Facebook (facebook.com/wymrradio) and MAX’s website – MAX983.net.
