Hey folks,
As promised, here is a post meant to be a guide for the first couple of rounds of the Big Ten Tournament, which begins in less that two days.
As the irreverently witty title of this post suggests, the tournament is going to be nearly impossible to predict this year. All the top team's in the conference have at least one loss to a team not in the top five (it should also be noted that IU has defeated four of the top five teams in the conference, all but Iowa). Conference co-champions Ohio State and Iowa each finished with five Big Ten losses.
This isn't to say the Hoosiers are going to rise up and win the Big Ten. More broadly, I mean to say that there are several teams capable of making a run. The top three seeds outside the top five, IU, Michigan and Wisconsin, were all once tournament bubble teams that now likely need to win the conference tournament to get to the Dance. But Michigan has beating Iowa this year, IU has wins over Ohio State and West Virginia - a top-15 team most of this year - and Wisconsin finished the conference slate 8-3 after starting a horrid 1-6.
Inside the top five, Ohio State and Iowa are obvious favorites after winning the regular season title. Purdue has never begun the Big Ten Tournament outside the top five, and Minnesota and Michigan State are both bubble teams whose strong finishes likely landed them in the NCAAs.
All of this pontification is simply meant to illustrate how even the Big Ten has been this year, and how unsurprising it would be (and should be) were a team outside the top five in the conference - whether it is IU or someone else - holding the Big Ten championship trophy at center court at Conseco on Sunday.
Random assorted links and other pertinent info: -Click here to see the Big Ten's press release - complete with link to a pdf of the tournament bracket - concerning the upcoming Big Ten Tournament. -Senior Jolene Anderson and freshman Jantel Lavender (Ohio State) split conference player of the year honors, with Anderson taking the media vote and Lavender winning over the coaches. The honor is the first for either player, and Lavender is the first freshman to win the award. Iowa coach Lisa Bluder was coach of the year. -This year marks the first of five years Indianapolis will host the tournament, and it's the fourth straight year Ohio State is the No. 1 seed. -Ten of the 13 tournament championship games have featured at least one Indiana team, and IU and Purdue have combined for four of the last six titles. IU took it in 2002 under then-coach Kathi Bennett, and Purdue took home top honors in 2003, 2004 and 2007.
That's about it from here. Our good friend Mike Carmin with the Lafayette Journal and Courier took an unofficial e-mail poll of media voters who will win the tournament, and he said he'd get me those results sometime tomorrow, at which time I will obviously bring them to you in this space.
Until then, take it easy.
