2020-2021 B1G Basketball Thread

[HawkFrenzy]

Duke dropping out of the ACC for COVID

Now they are saying their season is over. Anyone think they would have done this if they were 22-2 and looking at a top 2 seed? I am sure they can field five healthy players next week. 

[847badgerfan]

Dook is a sham program.

[medinabuckeye1]

Where does this leave MSU and their streak?

[MaximumSam]

OSU makes more interesting than necessary

[medinabuckeye1]

OSU makes more interesting than necessary

Crazy, I saw they were comfortably ahead and next time I checked they were in a dogfight. 

I looked and they went from up 14 with 3 to go to up one in the closing seconds. 

[Brutus Buckeye]

[betarhoalphadelta]

Hope that took the legs out of them before tomorrow morning...

[medinabuckeye1]

Hope that took the legs out of them before tomorrow morning...

Just a good warm-up to work the kinks out and be fully prepared for tomorrow's game

In all seriousness, I remember looking into this a number of years ago and most teams did tend to perform best in their second game. Basically our theory was:

• Rusty, getting acclimated in game 1.
• Top of game in game 2.
• Tired in game 3.
• Really tired in game 4.

Back in the 11-team tournaments we found that the best performing team relative to seed was #6. They had the perfect situation:

Game one was against the worst team in the league and usually out of 11 teams one of them is just awful so game one was almost always a cake walk. In all the years of 11 team Big11Ten tournaments, #11 only beat #6 once.

Game two was against a better, but not too much better opponent in the #3 seed.

[betarhoalphadelta]

I wonder... What does the 4/5 matchup look like historically? 

Obviously those two teams should be as close to evenly matched as nearly any other in the tournament, but the 5 has a game under their belt while the 4 does not.

[medinabuckeye1]

I wonder... What does the 4/5 matchup look like historically?

Obviously those two teams should be as close to evenly matched as nearly any other in the tournament, but the 5 has a game under their belt while the 4 does not.

Well . . . that hasn't happened the way I thought it would based on #6's dominance of #3 in the old set up.

• 2019: didn't happen, #5 Maryland lost to #13 Nebraska.
• 2018:  #5 Michigan beat #4 Nebraska and won the whole tournament.
• 2017:  #5 Michigan State lost to #4 Minnesota.
• 2016:  didn't happen, #5 Iowa lost #12 Illinois.
• 2015:  didn't happen, #5 Iowa lost to #13 Penn State.

12 team tournaments (so #5 played #12 on Thursday)

• 2014:  #5 Ohio State beat #4 Nebraska.
• 2013:  #5 Michigan lost to #4 Wisconsin.
• 2012:  #5 Indiana lost to #4 Wisconsin.

Since we expanded to 12 and then 14 teams the #5 has advanced to play #4 five times with #4 holding a 3-2 lead.


Note that when #5 was playing the worst team in the league on Thursday they went 3-0 against #12 and 1-2 against #4 on Friday.

Since expanding to 14, the #5 has had a better opponent and has gone 3-3 against the 12/13 winner on Thursday (including #5 Ohio State's win over #13 today) then 1-2 against #4 on Friday.

This surprised me because #6 was well over .500 against #3 in the old 11-team tournaments. I'm not sure why but I'll throw out two guesses:

• #6 in the 11-team tournaments opened with the worst team in the league and it was the opener for both teams so #6 was rarely pushed in their Thursday opener. Now #5 opens with a better team that already had their opener the day before, it is a much tougher and more draining game.
• Maybe it was just easier for #3 to overlook #6 than it is for #4 to overlook #5?

[betarhoalphadelta]

5 games is a pretty small sample size, so it's probably no use trying to draw conclusions or a narrative from it, especially if it's a narrow 3-2 advantage to the higher seed. 

[ELA]

What was the series in the 11 team 4-5 game on equal rest?  It might all just be a small sample size nothing.

[bayareabadger]

5 games is a pretty small sample size, so it's probably no use trying to draw conclusions or a narrative from it, especially if it's a narrow 3-2 advantage to the higher seed.

I know I went to Indy a couple times to watch UW take back-to-back 4-5 losses. 

[Brutus Buckeye]

What was the worst seed to win the Tournament?