If the season ended today, Maryland would be the No. 2 seed in the Big Ten Tournament. Indiana is alone in first place at 13-3 after its 74-47 victory at Illinois on Thursday. The Terps are tied with Iowa at 11-4 but own the tiebreaker over the Hawkeyes via their 74-68 head to head victory on January 28. Here’s what the Big Ten Tournament bracket would be if the event started tomorrow:
Byes: (1) Indiana (13-3), (2) Maryland (11-4), (3) Iowa (11-4), (4) Michigan State (13-5)
(You can discuss this on the BSL Board here.)
Michigan State and Wisconsin are tied at 13-5. They split their head-to-head meetings so it goes to the second tiebreaker, which is record against the top team in the conference – Indiana. The Spartans beat the Hoosiers in their only meeting while the Badgers split with them so Michigan State gets the final bye.
(5) Wisconsin (13-5) vs (12) Illinois (4-11)/(13) Minnesota (2-13)
(6) Ohio State (10-6) vs (11) Northwestern (5-10)/(14) Rutgers (0-15)
(7) Michigan (10-6) vs (10) Nebraska (6-10)
(8) Purdue (9-6) vs (9) Penn State (6-9)
The Buckeyes win the tiebreaker over the Wolverines via their 76-66 victory in the basketball edition of The Game last Tuesday. That makes Michigan the potential first opponent for the Terrapins, which is obviously not a great draw given how much trouble the Wolverines have given Maryland this season.
The key for Maryland is hanging on to that first round bye. They should be able to do that by holding serve on Senior Day against Illinois and splitting their remaining two road games with Indiana and Purdue. That would give them a 13-5 finish in Big Ten play and would require Wisconsin to win out just to force a tie with the Terps. The Badgers have two road games in their final three as well, going to Minnesota and Purdue after hosting Michigan on Sunday.
It would be a shock if 10-5 Michigan State lost any of its three remaining regular season contests – home games with Penn State and Ohio State wrapped around a trip to Rutgers – so the Spartans can be expected to finish 13-5. If the Terps ended up in a three team tie with them and Wisconsin at 13-5 behind Indiana, they would fall out of a first round bye due to their 1-2 record against those two teams while Wisconsin split with both (2-2) and Michigan State split with the Badgers and beat the Terps in their only meeting (2-1.)
If Maryland won out, it would be guaranteed the No. 1 seed. The Terps would be 14-4 with head to head victories over both Indiana and Iowa with no losses to either team and neither of those teams would be able to finish better than 14-4.
If Maryland beat Illinois but lost both trips to the Hoosier State, it would finish at 12-6. They would obviously be behind Indiana and Michigan State (barring a catastrophic finish for the Spartans.) Iowa would pass them as well if the Hawkeyes can win two of their tricky final three (@Ohio State, Indiana, @Michigan) to finish 13-5. Wisconsin would also need to win two of its aforementioned final three just to tie the Terps at 12-6. Both of those teams play Michigan in the Wolverines final two games of the season so Michigan would have to win both to force themselves in to the 12-6 mix. Likewise, Ohio State would have to somehow beat Iowa AND win at Michigan State in its final two games to finish 12-6. It’s safe to say that it’s highly unlikely, if not impossible that those teams finish tied with Maryland – but if the Terps could pick one to be tied with, it would be the Buckeyes, whom they swept.
KenPom has Maryland projected to finish in a three way tie at 13-5 with Iowa and Michigan State behind 14-4 Indiana. In such a scenario, Iowa would get the No. 2 seed over the Terps since they swept Michigan State and Maryland lost its lone game with the Spartans. Despite Maryland’s head-to-head victory over the Hawkeyes, 2-1 beats 1-1 and despite Michigan State’s head-to-head win over the Terps, 1-1 beats 1-2 so Maryland would be the 3 seed.
If Maryland somehow lost out, all bets are off. Here’s the worst case scenario seeding wise if the Terps finished 11-7:
-Indiana (loss to Iowa, win over Maryland, 14-4), Iowa (win over Indiana, losses to Ohio State/Michigan, 12-6), Michigan State (wins over Penn State/Rutgers, loss to Ohio State, 12-6), Michigan (wins over Wisconsin/Iowa, 12-6) Ohio State (wins over Iowa/Michigan State, 12-6) AND Purdue (wins over Maryland/Nebraska/Wisconsin, 12-6) finish ahead of Maryland
-Wisconsin (win at Minnesota, losses to Michigan/Purdue, 11-7) finishes tied with Maryland but wins the tiebreaker due to its 1-1 record vs conference champion Indiana while the Terps would be 0-1 vs the Hoosiers.
That cataclysmic sequence of events would knock the Terps all the way down to the 8/9 game with (probably) Penn State. They cannot fall further than the 8 seed, however, because the Nittany Lions – the current 9 seed – already have 9 conference losses. More likely, they’d end up as the 6 or 7 seed.
Obviously there’s still a lot of basketball to play in the final week plus of the regular season. Maryland controls its own destiny for the No. 1 seed but winning both road games at Indiana and Purdue when the Terps literally lost at a winless team last Thursday is a tall task. No matter how you slice it, the Terps probably need to win two of its final three to feel good about its chances for a first round bye. If it can only muster 1-2, it might still be able to end up in the top 4 seeds since Iowa and Wisconsin have tough closes of their own (as do Michigan and Ohio State) but it could very likely come down to tiebreakers. And if they lose out…..well, the good news is that even if the disaster scenario somehow happened and Maryland ended up in the 8/9 game with Penn State before subsequently losing that, they’ve probably done enough already to still make the NCAA Tournament and avoid a repeat of the bubble popping 2005 ACC Tournament 8/9 game loss to Clemson (a game this writer attended in the Clemson section of the Verizon Center.) But let’s hope it doesn’t come down to that.
