Big Ten Basketball 2013: DBTH. Just another good conference

Maybe my perception is off, but didn't the B1G do well in the non-conference though? I just think drawing large conclusions from a huge single elimination tournament (in a high variance sport such as college basketball) is generally not the best way to judge the finality of the best teams. It's what makes March Madness so good; often the best teams don't win.

Officiating in Big Ten needs to change, because it's too difficult to adjust to how a game is supposed to be called come tournament time.

I would say until you get to the Final Four, there is a lot of luck involved. Not saying it is everything, but it is like gauging the Big Ten based on their bowl record in a given year. Never mind that we always get overmatched.

Could you give me my state's lottery numbers for next week while you're at it?

People try to draw too much out of single elimination tournaments. The B1G was the best conference in bball this year. Just because Wisconsin lost a game they shouldn't have, doesn't mean they are a bad team.

I hate that people point to national titles as a sign of a good conference. Look at the teams that have won since 2000. Mostly the blue blood programs. We have one blue blood -IU. Doesn't mean we don't have the best conference. The Big East had 5 teams knocked out in the round of 64. We have two more wins than them despite having one less team. I don't really care how the rest of the tournament plays out because it doesn't undo the rest of the season. And I know, the tourney is what really matters blah blah blah. It matters. But it is not an end all be all for me.

I don't agree that the Big East is more talented.  The Big Ten has as much NBA talent as anyone.  I think it's a crap shoot when you get into the tournament.  I think the better argument is style of play.  Michigan is probably the least "Big Ten like" of the tourament teams.  Perhaps their style of play allows them to adapt better in the tournament.  Take OSU last night.  Once they got down 15 or so, you knew they wouldn't come back.  They just didnt have the firepower to do it. 

sample size, bro. use your brains

The B1G may or may not have the best team in the country, but both the regular season and the NCAA tournament has shown that it has more teams in the top 16 than any other conference.  

Since our win in 1989, the B1G has only 1title, State in 2000. That's pretty bad. During that timespan the ACC, Big East and SEC have quite a few. And it's not just blueboods like Duke, NC and Kentucky although they have 10 in that stretch I believe. Schools like Arkansas, Maryland, UNLV, Arizona, Syracuse each have a title. UConn came out of nowhere and won 3.

The conference will have roughly performed to their seeding - which was the best of the majors.



Remember: (1) best conference does not equal best teams. (2) "Luck" affects all conferences. Marquette should have been out in round one - actually needing "help" from the other team to pull it out (3) Several experts noted pre-NCAA that really only IU and M truly had the athletes be serious title contenders. (This was BEFORE they saw the easy draw that OSU squandered)



If anything, I feel it is the Big East that was over-rated or given the sympathy as part of its "farewell tour" - ND, Pitt, and G'town all performed far below their seeds and only 3 of the 8 teams made it to the 2nd weekend, most losing in round 1 iirc. (I refuse to call the play-in games round 1)

The conference is by far the deepest but, as the number of remaining B10 teams show, doesn't have the best top team. IU was the most dominant all year and choked the most at the end.

WTF are you talking about?

This is not college football. There are 347 basketball teams in division 1. That the Big Ten represented as well as it has is proof it was a dominant conference.

Big Ten is 11-6 in the tournament this year (i.e. the best 60ish teams in the country plus conference champions) unless I counted wrong.

7-1 in the round of 64 with 2 upsets for the Big Ten and one against (Wisconsin)

4 sweet sixteen - 25% - exactly what the Big Ten was seeded.

2 elite eight - 25% - exactly what the Big Ten was seeded.

Fifth place Michigan beat the Big 12 champ, Big 12 runner up, 4th place BE Pitt, preseason hype and NBA talent filled NC State, and won our preseason tourny. Oh ya we also have not lost to a non-Big Ten team.

Indiana be Big East champ Georgetown. Illinois won Maui and beat teams like Gonzaga and Butler. Or you can look at Kenpom and most other tempo free stats to see how strong the top 10 teams in the Big Ten are.

Nobody should be saying the Big Ten is untouchable, but it's clearly and by far the best league this year. Not acknowledging that is the only fantasy in this post. And as much as I hate OSU, they got hardcore jobbed yesterday by the refs. Not a fan of that statement, but it's true. That officiating was an embarrasment.

This is unpleasant to contemplate, but I think NateVolk has a point, at least as far as the top ends of the conferences are concerned. (Depth is another matter.) Sure, the tourney can be random, but the cream generally rises to the top.

Which Big Ten pre-tourney non-conference wins were *really* good (retrospectively, without regard to the opposing team's ranking at the time)?

Indiana: Georgetown
OSU: 0
MSU: Kansas
UM: 0
Wisconsin: 0
Illinois: 0
Minnesota: 0

Two.

I'm serious. On the subject of Kansas, they didn't really play anyone, either, and benefitted (as they have, very often, over the past 20+ years) from playing in a crappy conference. Still, both Michigander wins count as good ones, I think. Georgetown (early tourney exit aside) did well in a tough conference.

Duke beat Minnesota and OSU (and Louisville) in the preseason. Miami beat MSU. Marquette and Florida beat Wisconsin. (As in the prior paragraph, I'm focusing on games involving high tourney seeds. Gonzaga, for obvious reasons, just doesn't count.)

I still think the Big Ten is in a good near-term position. Recruiting has gone well and they should have some more good years. This year, though, I'd have to go with the Big East (again, at the top end).

if i did my math right, the big east is 10-6 right now in the tourny and the BIG is 12-6. 

For people saying not to use the tournament I get what you are saying but at the end of the day when you look at the fnal four in most years it is made up of teams who were there all year.  Just look at this years elite 8, duke, l'ville, syracuse, michigan, florida, osu, marquette, wichita state.  Of those teams only two spent most of the year not ranked in the top 10 and I think that is true most years.  I honestly believe that the style of play that is predominant in the big ten is not good for top teams.  If you have a better team it behooves you to get more possesions.  The big ten was certainly the deepest league in the country this year, but that doesn't mean the top 2 or 3 teams in the country played in it so it depends which measure you care about more.

...by any substantive measure the Big Ten was the best conference in basketball this year.

In addition to all of the stats cited above, a quick look at Kenpom reveals that the Big Ten still has 5 teams in the top 12, even after our losses in the tournament.

I was taken aback by how big and imposing Syracuse looked versus Indiana, they all looked like Payne on msu

Believe or not, the same reason why the NCAA tourney is so exciting is the same reason why you can't necessarily judge the strength of a conference by how many of their teams make it to the final four:  It's a one and done tournament where anything can happen.  All the teams that are in the tourney, from 1 seeds to 16 seeds, are there because they've shown the propensity that they can possibly beat almost any other team on any given day.  While the cream pretty much always rises to top in the end regardless, you're going to have a lot of unforseen outcomes that wouldn't hold true if it was in a best of 7 series.  Besides, 2 teams in the elite 8 and 4 in the sweet 16 is pretty damn good.

Conference in College Basketball 2012-2013.  Individually, though, there may be four or five teams from other conferences that are better than our best teams.  This, plus a couple lousy games can distort the perception of who's great and who's not in the tournament.  Our 3,4,5,6 place teams are better than other conferences 3,4,5,6 place teams.  Both Illinois and Minnesota played well against  teams seeded a few notches above them.

Just curious, if Michigan were to win the championship, would that change your opinion of the conference? That would be the B1G representing 25% of the sweet 16, elite 8, and final 4 plus winning it all. The B1G would be 15-6 at that point while the Big East could be 12-8 at best (10-8 at worst).

If Michigan lost to Louisville in the championship game, the B1G would have one more win and the same number of losses as the Big East.

In either of those scenarios, I would have to think that the B1G would still be looked at as a better conference than the Big East. It seems kind of silly to think that the opinion of the B1G rides on one team, though.

The Big Ten is 12-6 with Michigan still alive.  Let's not bury the conference just yet.