Big Ten Second Round Performance

Submitted by the_white_tiger on

Assuming that Illinois continues the trend of Big Ten teams dominating the 8/9 games and holds onto their 46-24 halftime lead, here's how the Big Ten fared in the first second round:

  • #1 Ohio State unsurprisingly routed UTSA, 75-46
  • #3 Purdue shut down St. Peter's, 65-43
  • #4 Wisconsin took down popular upset pick, Belmont, 72-58
  • #8 Michigan annihilated Tennessee, 75-45
  • #9 Illinois is currently taking UNLV to the woodshed
  • #10 Penn State lost to Temple on a last second shot, 66-64
  • #10 Michigan State fell to UCLA after coming back from a huge deficit, 78-76

So the Big Ten finished 5-2 in the first second round, which isn't too bad. The five top teams are still in the tournament. Here are the upcoming Big Ten matchups:

Saturday:

  • #4 Wisconsin takes on #5 Kansas State

Sunday:

  • #1 Ohio State faces #8 George Mason
  • #3 Purdue plays the winner of #11 VCU/#6 Georgetown
  • #8 Michigan beats #1 Duke
  • #9 Illinois tries to be the 9-seed that takes down Kansas in the second third round for the second consecutive year.

Overall, it's been nice to see the conference win comfortably in games that they've won, but only lose in very close games. Hopefully this postseason helps start to break the notion that the Big East is the undisputed, superior, most amazing conference ever.

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Champ Kind

March 18th, 2011 at 10:39 PM ^

Georgetown is going to be busy playing Ohio State and possibly Purdue.  It should be George Mason for OSU, and Illinois is currently taking UNLV to the woodshed, not UTEP.

Joined: 01/02/2009

MGoPoints: 1829

Mitch Cumstein

March 18th, 2011 at 11:07 PM ^

I wasn't really sure where to put this and its definitely not worth a new thread.  I'm watching the ISU-Cuse game and Jake Kelly is one of ISU's best players.  Is that the same Jake Kelly that used to play for Iowa?  That seemed like a couple years ago, but they look almost identical.

Joined: 10/02/2009

MGoPoints: 14072

AZBlue

March 18th, 2011 at 11:51 PM ^

I have always hated the yearly comparisons of Conference tournament performance based on Win-Loss performance alone.

Is there anyone doing things diffently out there?

I was thinking maybe a hockey style comparison would be better. i.e. you get a "win" for beating a higher seed, a "loss" for being upset, and a "tie" for winning or losing games according to seeding.

In this scenario the Big Ten would be 1-0-6 (8 points for 7 teams) - while the Big East would be 1-3-5 pending the G'town and Syracuse games. 

It doesn't take into account the seeding differences, but if you looked at points per team at the end of the tourney you would get a feel for where the conferences performed compared to their "rankings" entering the tourney.  It might also give a better feel on the top to bottom strength of the individual conferences.

Just my 2 cents.

Joined: 09/14/2008

MGoPoints: 16806

Muttley

March 19th, 2011 at 1:30 AM ^

have come from the Big Least, which suffered upsets in one 4-13 game (Louisville losing to Morehead St) and two 6-11 games (St. John's losing to Richmond and Georgetown losing to VCU).

The B1G's losses came in two 7-10 games w/ the B1G team playing as the 10 seed in both (Temple over PSU 66-64 and UCLA over MSU 78-76).

The 11 seed Marquette did beat a 6 seed Xavier 66-55, but I think the B1G outdid that w/ 8 seed Mich destroying 9 seed Tenn 75-45 and 9 seed Illinois destroying 8 seed UNLV 73-62 (it was a 22 point game w/ a little over 4 minutes to go.  An uncontested garbage-time 3 at the buzzer by UNLV helped to hide the degree of domination.)

Another way to look at it is to discard the results of the non-competitive 1-16 games (not a single upset in the entire tourney history) and the 2-15 games (can count on one hand). B1G 4-2, Big Least 5-4.

Joined: 07/07/2009

MGoPoints: -73245