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2014-2015 B1G Men's Basketball

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It is interesting to try to guess how many B1G teams will make the NCAA tourney at this point. I believe the top half of the league should make it in the end, that's 7 teams, although 6 may be the more likely total. Joe Lunardi currently has 6 in his latest bracket, but that includes Iowa who is not in the top half (no doubt OSU will be largely responsible for gifting their berth to them if they make it). To listen to the analysts on ESPN, you might think there are only going to be 3 or 4 teams from the league make it with how they keep talking about how Wisconsin is clearly superior to all other teams in the conference & how everybody is mediocre aside from Wisconsin (i.e., "the B1G is down" mantra).

While the league likely will not end up with as many high seeds in the tournament or as many Sweet 16 teams as they have had lately, there are a handful of teams in the conference that are shaping up to be tourney caliber. The past few years have been ones where the league was historically strong at the top in terms of number of teams advancing to the Sweet 16. 2012-14 were really strong years for the league, but this year it's really not like it's Wisconsin and then a bunch of crap teams as the media tries to make it out to be. The B1G schedule makers did their best to further the Wisconsin supremacy perception by giving them the minimum 6 games against the top half of the league, in other words the Badgers have 2/3 of their league games against the weakest half of the conference (and no one else in the top half had the same degree of soft schedule), so it's facilitated the continuation of the perception that they're by far the best team in the league even though they lost to Rutgers and barely beat a UM team w/o LeVert (which may be their best conference win). I just don't buy that Wisconsin is a lot better than everybody else in the B1G. The nonconference performance of the conference was generally lackluster, but I would call this year more of an average season for the B1G as opposed to a poor one, it just looks poor in comparison to the historically strong seasons that preceeded it.
 
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DZ83CK said:
It is interesting to try to guess how many B1G teams will make the NCAA tourney at this point. I believe the top half of the league should make it in the end, that's 7 teams, although 6 may be the more likely total. Joe Lunardi currently has 6 in his latest bracket, but that includes Iowa who is not in the top half (no doubt OSU will be largely responsible for gifting their berth to them if they make it). To listen to the analysts on ESPN, you might think there are only going to be 3 or 4 teams from the league make it with how they keep talking about how Wisconsin is clearly superior to all other teams in the conference & how everybody is mediocre aside from Wisconsin (i.e., "the B1G is down" mantra).

While the league likely will not end up with as many high seeds in the tournament or as many Sweet 16 teams as they have had lately, there are a handful of teams in the conference that are shaping up to be tourney caliber. The past few years have been ones where the league was historically strong at the top in terms of number of teams advancing to the Sweet 16. 2012-14 were really strong years for the league, but this year it's really not like it's Wisconsin and then a bunch of crap teams as the media tries to make it out to be. The B1G schedule makers did their best to further the Wisconsin supremacy perception by giving them the minimum 6 games against the top half of the league, in other words the Badgers have 2/3 of their league games against the weakest half of the conference (and no one else in the top half had the same degree of soft schedule), so it's facilitated the continuation of the perception that they're by far the best team in the league even though they lost to Rutgers and barely beat a UM team w/o LeVert (which may be their best conference win). I just don't buy that Wisconsin is a lot better than everybody else in the B1G. The nonconference performance of the conference was generally lackluster, but I would call this year more of an average season for the B1G as opposed to a poor one, it just looks poor in comparison to the historically strong seasons that preceeded it.
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Just curious who you think is actually "good" in the Big Ten this year outside of Wisconsin, Ohio State, and maybe Maryland. It's not like you can turn to the non-conference results for any proof, and everyone has a WTF loss within the conference. Doesn't help that Michigan State is down, Nebraska has flopped, and Michigan can't stay healthy.
 
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Bucky32 said:
Just curious who you think is actually "good" in the Big Ten this year outside of Wisconsin, Ohio State, and maybe Maryland. It's not like you can turn to the non-conference results for any proof, and everyone has a WTF loss within the conference. Doesn't help that Michigan State is down, Nebraska has flopped, and Michigan can't stay healthy.
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Well I don't think regular season nonconference results are ultimately what conferences are judged on (although interestingly the B1G beating the ACC in the Challenge has taken a back stage to some uncharacteristic upset losses). Did the nonconference results matter for the B1G for the 2006 season when they were supposedly the strongest conference, yet did nothing in the NCAA tournament and then afterward everybody talked about how weak the Big Ten was?

I am not saying that there are going to be a lot of teams advance to the Sweet 16 from the B1G this year, I believe the opposite that it will be more of a normal year when they get like 2 teams there. Six or seven teams in the NCAA tournament, which seems probable even with the losses, I have a hard time believing if that happens (as it ought to) that this year was a notably bad year for B1G basketball. I don't think judging teams based on who they lost to is the most helpful measure anyway - you could point to a team like Notre Dame and say "oh, they have a real bad loss, they lost to Pitt, that proves how weak the ACC is" if you wanted to. Miami gets pounded by Green Bay (Phoenix, not Packers) and Eastern Kentucky, yet they get in the top-25. I just don't hear as much when the SEC or Pac-12 is having a down year, and the ACC has a tendency for its better teams to get overvalued.
 
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OHSportsFan said:
Two very mediocre teams from that state up north squaring off down to the wire on CBS.
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Honestly, I think you're looking at two teams that will probably make the NCAA tournament this season, so "mediocre" is an overreaction IMO to the upset losses in nonconference. If these teams make the tournament even with those losses, there are still going to be about 50 other programs that are considered high major that don't make it. Mediocre is the NIT and worse. I don't think mediocre teams make the tournament as an at-large, maybe we define mediocre differently.
 
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