B10 MBB is just plain tough

I'm old enough to remember.   Those were the halcyon years of college basketball (in my eyes).  The Big East ruled.  Jerome Lane breaking backboards.   Epic Georgetown-St. Johns battles.   Even Providence (Pitino and Billy Donovan) was a tough nut back then.   Michigan in the Grant/Tarpley years should have matched up well with the Big East powers, but our tourney runs always came up a little..ahem..short.

I agree. I picked a great time to move back to the midwest.

the year the Big East was 3/4 of the FF as the pinnacle of coference dominance.  And it was one of the conference's weaker teams that won it all.  Ed Pinckney was awesome in the NC game.

I was born in '85 so I'm just gonna go with the B1G is better

What a great era for college basketball in general. TV coverage was really expanding in the late 80's. The major conferences all had top teams (where have you gone Pac10/12?). Most teams were built around seniors and juniors so you really knew the players across the country. Not saying other periods of time have not been great as well but I really enjoyed that decade, of course '89 doesn't hurt my perception.

Comparable to the Big East of the mid 80s?! 

Child, please!  I don't see any Patrick Ewings, Chris Mullins, Mark Jacksons, etc in this year's Big Ten.  Those Big East teams all had a few future NBA players and some big time stars.

Heck, the 1989 Big Ten was better than this year and there was much more talent in the league in the early 90s.

The ESPN article implies that Kentucky is in danger of not making the NCAAs (which I find hard to believe, given that they've got 20 wins and are defending champs), but even Calipari is moaning:

"I am so disappointed in the job I've done with this team," Calipari said. "I've never had a team not cohesive at this time of year. Every one of my teams was cohesive. Every one of them had a will to win more than how they were playing. Every one of them had a fight. Well, if this team doesn't have that, that's on me. What in the heck did I do?"

http://scores.espn.go.com/ncb/recap?gameId=330660061

Big East of the 80's? Heck, I wasn't even old enough to remember 1997.

I don't understand why they couldn't have spaced out the ridiculously tough games. Also there should be something on always playing at 9pm. I understand TV rating and money, but limit the # of times teams have to go in and do this.

That's tough to consistently do. Playing at 1 or 4pm on a Sunday is NOTHING like 9pm on a school night.

Anyway, the OP is right. We're all beat to shit. It's either going to make us untouchable in the tourney or we're not going to have anything left. Michigan still hasn't recovered from it's "gaunlet."

But again, you can somewhat predict the top teams in the conference. Hell, even if you just went by the previous year's standings so you didn't have to predict anything.

Space out these games. The fact that Michigan had to do what it did, 4 games in 10 days...3 vs. ranked teams and the other @ Wisconsin was unforgivable.

I would think that there are quite a few little things as well which provide evidence of this being a tough conference, not the least of which is the distinct possibility of over half of the conference getting a tournament bid (7 of 12 is impressive, I think).

The Big Ten, at last check, also has the highest overall power rating collectively as a conference and more wins against the Top 25 than any other conference, and what is interesting about this is that a fair proportion (enough to be significant anyway) of those same matchups have been between teams in the Big Ten. 

I think the collective conference RPI is 0.583 as well (again, at last check), which is a great rating when it includes the likes of Nebraska and Penn State. 

The NCAA will never allow an all-Big Ten Final Four.  If it looks like it is going to happen, somebody in the Big Ten will get a lot of "controversial calls" against them and lose in the Elite Eight.

It's always hard to compare because a good chunk of the OOC games are at the begining of the year and teams change over the course of a whole season. That said, although the announcers and metrics all say the B1G is the best conference, I don't think the gap between the B1G and the rest of the country is that big. Aside from Michigan which won it's two OOC good match ups (NC ST, KSU, Pitt has been sliding recently), the OOC record for the B1G is good but not great. 

The B1G/ACC challenge was determined by one game.

MSU beat Kansas but lost to UConn and Miami (YTM),

Minny beat Memphis but lost to Duke,

OSU lost to Kansas and Duke with no big OOC win

Indiana smoked UNC and beat Georgetown but lost to Butler,

Illinois beat Butler and Gonzaga but lost to Missouri.

Wisconisn lost to Florida, Creighton, Virginia, and Marquette

The tourny will tell all, but like the records and turn over at the #1 spot have shown all season, it's a pretty even year across all of basketball.