Big thrills in the Big Ten?
Indiana is standing tall again.
Michigan and Michigan State are right there with the Hoosiers, and Ohio State and Wisconsin aren’t exactly backing down from anyone, either.
The Big Ten tournament starts today, and it’s not hard to see why Spartans coach Tom Izzo declared it one of the best ever. And by best ever, he didn’t just mean best Big Ten tournament.
“We’re looking forward to one of the great conference tournaments of all time, if you ask me,” Izzo said. “When you look at the ranked teams and the teams that aren’t ranked and everyone else, it should be a heck of a Big Ten tournament in Chicago.”
The league is tops in the Sagarin ratings and boasts five teams ranked in the Top 25, including four in the top 10.
One of those top 10 teams — No. 6 Michigan — didn’t even get one of the four first-round byes. Instead, the Wolverines face Penn State on Thursday after falling a point short of sharing the conference championship with a 72-71 loss to Indiana on Sunday.
They need to regroup and figure out a way to get past the Nittany Lions, a team that rallied from 15 down in the second half to beat Michigan a few weeks ago.
Besides Penn State, Michigan might also need to get by Wisconsin and Indiana to reach the Big Ten tournament title game. Those three teams have combined to hand the Wolverines (25-6) four of their six losses, and No. 22 Wisconsin (21-10) is lurking in the second round on Friday after taking the fourth seed.
No. 3 Indiana (26-5), the top seed after winning its first outright conference title conference championship in two decades, will face the Illinois-Minnesota winner. No. 10 Ohio State (23-7), the second seed, gets Purdue or Nebraska, while eighth-ranked and third-seeded Michigan State (24-7) awaits Iowa or Northwestern.
“Michigan’s playing for a share for a title. Unfortunately, they slide out. Now, they have to play on the first day. It just shows you how deep this league is, how good this league is,” Penn State coach Patrick Chambers said. “The top four teams get that bye, which is critical, and I know Michigan wanted that. But it’s pretty amazing how tough this conference has been.”
Standing at the top right now is Indiana after a long climb, and winning the conference tournament would be another notch for a program knocked to the ground not too long ago. It’s something the Hoosiers haven’t done since the Big Ten started holding a tourney back in 1998.
“You just told me something that I didn’t know,” coach Tom Crean said. “That’s how little concerned we are about the negatives, what hasn’t happened. It’s really not anything we’ll reflect on.”