Big Ten Tournament Preview
As the Big Ten Tournament approaches lets take a look at who could stand possibly make a run and win it.
It’s been a weird, odd, down year for Big Ten basketball. There’s a lot of good teams in this conference,probably 7 or 8 teams will make the NCAA Tournament, just not a great one. Saying that, this Big Ten Tournament will probably be an exciting one with some unexpected wins and some drama.
The Purdue Boilermakers are probably the conferences bet team followed by Wisconsin. Then there’s a whole bunch of teams who are kind of hard to tell apart – Michigan, Maryland, Michigan State, Northwestern,and Minnesota. All of those teams could very well make a run and win the tournament but also don’t be surprised of any of these teams lose in the first round of the tournament. And then there’s Ohio State and Indiana who aren’t good this year but have some scorers and also make a run.
Here is the bracket
The format is he same as last year. All 14 teams get to qualify and the top 4 teams in the standings get double byes into the quarterfinals and the six teams after them get one bye. The bottom four seeds play on the first day and have to win 5 games in a row to win the tournament. It’s a single elimination tournament with the two top ranked teams on the opposite sides of each other.
Here are the teams listed in the order they are seeded in.
- Purdue
- Wisconsin
- Maryland
- Minnesota
- Michigan State
- Northwestern
- Iowa
- Michigan
- Illinois
- Indiana
- Ohio State
- Nebraska
- Penn State
- Rutgers
My Personal Predictions
I think that the quarter finals will be Purdue vs Michigan, Minnesota vs Michigan State, Wisconsin vs Indiana, and Maryland vs Northwestern. Purdue will probably beat Michigan and I am predicting Michigan State to beat Minnesota setting up a Purdue vs. Minnesota semifinal. Wisconsin will single-handedly beat Indiana but Northwestern will upset Maryland. I think Purdue will beat Minnesota and Wisconsin will beat Northwestern. That mean it will be Purdue vs Wisconsin in the championship game. It will be close the whole game but I just think that Purdue will take out Wisconsin and win the tournament.
