Big Ten Tournament Scenarios
With eight days left in the regular season you may be wondering, what's next. Well that is very dependent on how things shake out over the next couple of games.
Currently Michigan sits in 7th in the conference at 9-7. With two games left, Michigan has a chance to not only grab 11 conference wins, but doing so would knock fellow 9-7 team Northwestern off the 6-line. Additionally, this could lead to other movement within the standings.
MSU is currently in fifth place in the conference at 9-6 with a game at 4 p.m. vs. Wisconsin. I don't need to tell you who to root for. But, if Michigan wins out and MSU loses any of their final three games, Michigan would move up to fifth place in the conference based on tie breakers. The teams are 1-1 head to head but Michigan has one less loss and a key tie-breaker is overall win percentage among tied teams. For Michigan State to finish ahead of Michigan they would need to win out and have Michigan lose at least one game. MSU also plays Maryland next Sunday.
The difference between the 5-6 seeds and the 7+seeds are important. The 5-6 seeds will get to play someone coming off a Thursday night game. For example: last year No. 6 Wisconsin played the winner of the 11/14 game. And although they lost, along with Iowa and Indiana - that was weird and I imagine you would definitely rather play a team that is tired.
Now, there are other possibilities as well. If Michigan falters, they could drop below Iowa in the standings. Iowa owns the tiebreaker. But MIchigan cannot fall below 8. So worst case scenario would be an 8-seed with a second day game vs. the 10-seed which would currently be Illinois. More importantly, this would hurt our NCAA tournament hopes/seeding. Lets hope we avoid this by taking Mitch McGary's advice and winning the game.
In terms of best case scenario, the 4-spot could be still in reach. This would get Michigan 2 byes. For this to happen, Michigan would need to win out to pass MSU and Northwestern and Maryland would have to lose out. Even if MInnesota loses out, they hold the tie-breaker. Maryland plays Rutgers Tuesday, so we will know our highest potential in two days.
So here are your rooting interests:
Wisconsin over MSU - at 4 p.m.
Rutgers over Maryland - on Tue
Illinois over Michigan State - on Wed.
Wisconsin over Iowa - on Thur (prevents Michigan dropping from 7)
MSU over Maryland - on Sunday, but only if Maryland loses to Rutgers
I hope everyone found this helpful. Win the game.
February 26th, 2017 at 7:54 PM ^
Based off the way Wisconsin and Maryland have been playing, ending up with the 7 seed could be a blessing in disguise. As long as we don't let the team at the 10 seed (currently Nebraska) sneak up on us, we'd have a good chance of making a little run.
February 27th, 2017 at 10:37 AM ^
Maryland will not be the #2 seed. The terps could fall out of the Top 4.
At this point, MSU/Minnesota are more likely to get there than Maryland.
Frankly, Minnesota might even be the favorite for the #2 seed over Wisconsin. They get to play the Badgers this week and are currently only one game back and red hot. Minnesota would win a tiebreaker (the Badgers beat them in January), based off of their record against Purdue. MSU would also have a tiebreaker over the Badgers (as would Michigan, but we might be too far behind for it to matter).
February 27th, 2017 at 10:29 AM ^
Whatever path helps us get off the the 8/9 seed line I'm for, even if that means a loss that drops us to a 10 seed, the 8/9 seed is the worst place to be.