Scores from last week (home team listed second):

• OSU 73, Maryland 65
• Nebraska 61, Minnesota 79
• PSU 58, MSU 60
• Rutgers 66, Iowa 79
• Wisconsin 61, Nebraska 48
• Indiana 79, Northwestern 76 (2OT)
• Purdue 68, Minnesota 71
• Illinois 77, Nebraska 72 (OT)
• Indiana 59, OSU 78
• Iowa 88, MSU 58
• Northwestern 50, Rutgers 64
• Michigan 67, Wisconsin 59
• Nebraska 62, PSU 61
• Minnesota 59, Maryland 72

Your eyes don't deceive you: four of the 14 Big Ten games last week involved Nebraska, which not only put an overtime scare into Illinois but snapped a 25-game conference losing streak the next time out against Penn State.

With the Illini escaping an embarrassing loss, there wasn't too much of note at the top of the standings. Michigan, Iowa, and Ohio State all took care of business, while Wisconsin went 1-1 against the Wolverines and Huskers. Purdue's chances of moving into the top four for the Big Ten Tournament took a hit with a loss at Minnesota.

Most of the interesting action happened in the NCAA Tournament bubble range. Losses to Michigan State and Nebraska likely killed PSU's tourney hopes. Indiana slipped past Northwestern in overtime and got blown out by the Buckeyes. Maryland, on the other hand, moved up in the fancystats with a 13-point win over the Gophers.

The Standings

	Record			NET				KP/Torvik Avg			OFFENSE			DEFENSE
Team	OVR	B1G		RK	Q1	Q2		Nat Rk (chg)	Proj. B1G Rec.*		KP	BT		KP	BT
U-M	14-1	9-1		3rd	4-1	4-0		3.0 (--)	14.5-3		7th	7th		7th	10th
ILL	14-5	10-3		4th	6-4	4-1		7.0 (down 2.5)	13.5-5.5		8th	12th		15th	22nd
OSU	17-4	11-4		7th	8-3	2-1		6.5 (up 1)	14-6		4th	5th		61st	64th
IOWA	15-6	9-5		8th	4-5	4-1		4.5 (up 2)	12.5-7		1st	1st		108th	127th
WIS	15-7	9-6		18th	3-5	5-2		12.0 (down 1)	11.5-8.5		31st	28th		9th	9th
PUR	13-8	8-6		27th	3-7	6-0		23.0 (up 0.5)	11.5-8		28th	36th		27th	30th
RUT	12-7	8-7		30th	4-6	3-1		24.5 (down 1)	11-9		57th	59th		12th	14th
IND	11-9	6-7		51st	2-8	5-0		34.0 (down 7)	8.5-10.5		53rd	57th		24th	32nd
MIN	13-8	6-8		53rd	4-7	1-1		38.0 (--)	8.5-11		36th	33rd		54th	54th
UMD	11-10	5-9		36th	4-10	1-0		39.0 (up 8)	9-11		52nd	56th		33rd	43rd
MSU	10-8	4-8		94th	2-7	2-1		71.5 (down 4.5)	6-13		100th	125th		39th	36th
PSU	7-10	4-9		39th	3-7	2-2		38.5 (down 10)	6.5-12.5		34th	31st		49th	65th
NW	6-12	3-11		91st	2-10	0-1		72.5 (down 1)	5-14.5		89th	82nd		59th	72nd
NEB	5-12	1-9		141st	1-7	0-3		112.5 (up 3.5)	2.5-15		200th	211th		53rd	31st

*Torvik includes projections for games that have been postponed, KenPom only includes those that have been rescheduled.

Teams are settling into relatively tight ranges now—we were a Penn State away from this being the first week no team moved double-digit spots in the combined KenPom/Torvik rankings. The Nittany Lions are easily the toughest team to project at the moment because of their dearth of games played and divergent results like "beating Wisconsin two weeks before losing to Nebraska."

[Hit THE JUMP for Nebrasketball's wild ride, home/away splits and what they can tell us about the postseason, and more.]

A Brief Celebration of Nebrasketball

Nebraska led by six points with less than three minutes to play against Illinois on Friday night, giving them a 78.1% chance at victory, according to KenPom. Rather predictably, Ayo Dosunmu singlehandedly tied the game up, but the Huskers were able to take a timeout with the opportunity to win on the final possession. This is presumably not what Fred Hoiberg drew up in the huddle:

pic.twitter.com/6MiqUlr77J

— No Context College Basketball (@ContextFreeCBB) February 13, 2021

Dosunmu continued his one-man romp in overtime and the Illini pulled away.

You'd be excused for feeling a sense of deja vu when the Huskers took a 60-49 lead over Penn State on Sunday afternoon with a little over eight minutes to play, then watching as PSU went on a 12-0 run to take a one-point lead heading into another potential last-shot scenario for Nebraska. This time, there was no timeout, as Hoiberg let Teddy Allen go to work off a rebound, and he spun into the paint for what would hold up as the winning bucket.

Nebraska could've packed it in after the Illinois loss, which was their third game of the week, and certainly after Penn State rallied in a way that made one feel like the basketball gods were never going to let the Huskers win a Big Ten game again. Credit to them for hanging tough and finding a way to pull out a victory; the ensuing celebration among the jubilant and clearly relieved players and staff was one of the high points of this conference season.

Meanwhile, the Huskers don't get any sort of breather after their four-game week. They play at Maryland tonight and tomorrow in a COVID-prompted road back-to-back, then return home for a Saturday tilt against Purdue. They've now played ten conference games, the same number as Michigan, but the Wolverines aren't keen on the idea of cramming in a bunch of back-to-backs this late in the season so every Big Ten team has played 20 league games:

"That would be very challenging,” [Juwan] Howard said. “It would be challenging on a lot of levels. Let's start with school. We'd miss a ton of classes. Let's also look at the mental health standpoint. This is our guys' team, their schedule and their college experience. Would they want to play 11 games in 22 days? And then from a health standpoint, I'm not sure if it would be smart because of the long layoff. Rushing and playing that many games in a short amount of time doesn't give the human body time to recover.

“At the end of the day, we're not machines. We are humans.["]

Good. The game the team seems intent on rescheduling is Illinois, which Isaiah Livers has "circled"—they want revenge for last year. That's a make-up worth playing; second games against the likes of Northwestern and Penn State, not so much. The conference can easily determine the regular season champion by win percentage if Michigan doesn't wind up with the most wins in fewer games than the other contenders, which they may very well pull off.

Home vs. Away, or: The Gopher Split

Minnesota's two games against Michigan were totally, and typically, different contests [Campredon]

After seeing Minnesota beat Purdue at home and then get rocked by Maryland on the road—and also Michigan's two wildly different games against the Gophers this year—I decided to take a look at Bart Torvik's adjusted efficiency margins for each team at home and in road/neutral settings. This is a useful exercise as we close in on the postseason, when every team is forced out of their home routine.

Since Torvik adjusts for venue, there theoretically shouldn't be a significant gap between how teams perform in these home/away splits. That isn't how it works in reality, of course. Most Big Ten teams have performed better at home this year—with a couple notable exceptions—and there are some huge gaps, led by the team that inspired this exercise:

TEAM	Home W/L	Home Adj. EM	Road/Neutral W/L	Road/Neutral Adj. EM	Home/Away EM Gap
MN	13-1	+21.8	0-7	+4.2	+17.6
UW	11-3	+27.9	4-4	+14.8	+13.1
MSU	8-3	+14.6	2-5	+3.5	+11.1
NEB	3-7	+9.9	1-5	+0.2	+9.7
U-M	10-0	+30.2	4-1	+23.9	+6.3
RU	9-3	+20.3	3-4	+14.6	+5.7
MD	7-5	+16.8	3-5	+12.1	+4.7
PU	8-1	+19.4	5-7	+16.0	+3.4
PSU	6-3	+17.6	1-7	+14.9	+2.7
ILL	9-2	+24.5	5-3	+22.7	+1.8
OSU	10-1	+25.6	7-3	+25.0	+0.6
NW	4-5	+10.5	1-7	+10.5	0.0
IA	11-2	+26.0	4-4	+29.8	-3.8
IU	5-4	+13.3	6-5	+18.0	-4.7

A few takeaways:

Being much better at home seems foreboding. The four teams that are around ten points better or more at home (Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan State, and Nebraska) have all been disappointing, or just bad, to certain degrees this season. At this point, Purdue looks more likely to make an NCAA Tournament run than the Badgers with a better chance of sneaking into the top four of the Big Ten Tournament seeding if Iowa succumbs to a brutal closing schedule.

Iowa and Indiana are the exceptions. It's important to have fans in Assembly Hall. Who knew? Meanwhile, Iowa's offense travels remarkably well, though their defense and Fran-ness are still going to scare me off from predicting postseason success.

Yes, Michigan is better at home. I'm not too worried about this particular gap. First, M's home efficiency margin is exceptional. Second, their road/neutral EM is impacted by the Minnesota game played without Eli Brooks, and it's still very good. Remove that game—which isn't entirely fair since M is far from the only team to deal with absences—and they'd be among the elite teams in the country again.

Northwestern is the same team no matter where they play. Congrats?

The dangers to Michigan are who you'd expect. Iowa's road improvement may be a surprise but I don't think anyone was doubting that they could beat the Wolverines—the doubt is whether they're consistent enough to even get to that matchup in the BTT. Illinois and Ohio State are the two other teams that play high-level ball away from home, while Wisconsin falls well off the pace of the leaders. This matches the eye test.

Updated Tiers

Last week's:

Tier I: Michigan, Illinois
Tier II: Ohio State, Iowa, Wisconsin
Tier III: Purdue, Rutgers
Tier IV: Indiana, Penn State, Minnesota, Maryland
Tier V: Michigan State, Northwestern
Tier VI: Nebraska :(

I'm doing it this time.

Tier I: Michigan
Tier II: Illinois, Ohio State, Iowa, Wisconsin
Tier III: Purdue, Rutgers
Tier IV: Indiana, Minnesota, Maryland
Tier V: Penn State, Michigan State, Northwestern
Tier VI: Nebraska

This Week's Schedule

All times Eastern, Subject to change.

Tonight: MSU at Purdue (7, ESPN), Nebraska at Maryland (7, BTN), Northwestern at Illinois (9, BTN)
Wednesday: Nebraska at Maryland (7, BTN), Minnesota at Indiana (9, BTN)
Thursday: Iowa at Wisconsin (7, ESPN), OSU at PSU (8, BTN), Rutgers at Michigan (9, FS1)
Saturday: MSU at Indiana (noon, ESPN), Illinois at Minnesota (3:30, FOX), Purdue at Nebraska (5:30, BTN)
Sunday: Michigan at OSU (1, CBS), Maryland at Rutgers (3, BTN), PSU at Iowa (5, FS1), Wisconsin at Northwestern (7, BTN)