I kept reading (especially from one particular poster) how weak the Big Ten was this year, blah, blah, blah, so it has been surprising to watch this "sub-par" league already put three teams in the Sweet 16! How could that be? Maybe, like many of us have been saying all season, it's because the league was stronger from top-to-bottom, providing stiff nightly tests for everyone getting teams who did make the NCAA ready for the pressure-cooker environment. I'm also noting that two of those three teams were beaten by the Wildcats this season!
Weak Big Ten???
- Thread starter Catreporter
- Start date
You could argue that about all of college basketball. NU just went toe-to-toe with the team ranked number one for a good chunk of the season, and while Gonzaga is very good and talented, I didn't see them as any juggernaut. Lots of parity in in college hoops this year, especially in the major conferences.
Yeah and the ACC blew chunks. They still have a couple legit teams, but they were overrated by the East Coast media machine. Our conference lacked a dominant team and we got penalized for it.
By the same token, these lower seeds probably gave our teams that proverbial chip on the shoulder. Also the higher seeded teams may have taken our teams lightly because this was supposedly a down Big Ten.
If the center of the media elite world was in Chicago and not NY, nobody would say the BT is weak.
The notion that the B1G was weak had some foundation. No one can see the future, but in late season (pre-postseason) major polls, the B1G had not a single team in the top 15!!, only one in the top 20, and a total of two in the top 25!
Considering that the conference has now 14 teams, the above did suggest that B1G was weak, at least by some reasonable definitions of weakness.
As it turned out, half the B1G made the NCAAT, with 7 B1G teams officially ranked 16-35. Hence, it seems the conference lacked REALLY strong teams, but had plenty of medium-strength ones.
Now we have 3 B1G teams in the S16 (with fair officiating it should have been 4!!) which suggests some B1G teams may have even been underseeded. But we know that NOW. Nobody knew it a week or two ago. It may also be that the B1G teams have kept improving through the season, whereas others haven't kept up.
Hopefully, as many B1G teams as allowed by the brackets will make the Final Four, which would make the conference look even better.
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Felis, the point is that the polls are biased and underranked the B1G (and overranked the ACC). Case in point. See the Sweet 16. See Wisconsin and Michigan as 7 and 8 seeds knocking off 1 and 2 seeds. See two ACC 2 seeds (and all but the 1 seeded UNC) getting knocked out by the 2nd round.
That is a possible argument. But it's not very pursuasive.
Hard to make a convincing argument that ALL major rankings, not only human polls like AP's and coaches', but also many reputable computer rankings (which have been in used for years if not decades) were biased against the B1G, THIS year. Why should they be? Have they been consistently biased in years past?
For example, even the latest Sagarin ranking still has only three B1G teams in the top THIRTY, and NONE in the top 10. The B1G fares even worse under KenPom: even today, nobody from the B1G in the top 10, only 3 in the top THIRTY-FIVE!!
So, again, hard to argue that there was a general conspiracy that involved not only the AP voters, also those who vote in the coaches poll, as well as major reputable computer rankings as those mentioned, ALL in agreement to under-rank the B1G. Not likely!
Hard? I think not. Look at the field in the Sweet 16. That's pretty damned convincing to me.
Well, the 3 B1G teams that made the S16 (should have been 4!) are the same that the mentioned computer ratings have in the top 20-something. So the computer rankings aren't wrong in this respect now, and probably weren't wrong a few weeks ago, before the T started.
The best possible explanation might be that for whatever reasons some B1G teams just kept getting better, relative to the improvement of others.
Not sure I see a connection between their getting better relative to other conferences (if that is indeed what is going on) and the conference being tough top to bottom.
Anyhow, you can certainly argue the top half the conference, that is the 7 NCAAT teams, are tough (#16-#35 per committee), and then add maybe a couple more. The remaining 5 teams or so don't seem too tough (per power conference standards...all are tough compared to minor conferences, but the same can be said of most teams in other power conferences).
If computer rankings are to be believed the bottom 5 B1G teams are ranked mostly in the 70's and 80's, except for Rutgers which is well into the 100's. That isn't bad relative to the entire D1, but again, same could be said about most teams in power conferences.