I think they generally only keep the final weekend flexible
Speaking of final weekend scheduling flexibility:
A few pages back your proposed two six-team tournaments hosted by the #7 and #8 seeds running from Monday-Wednesday with the winners of those two becoming the #7 and #8 seeds in a Friday-Sunday eight-team tournament as a way to handle the new-and-expanded 18 team B1G.
Within that proposal you had denoted that the regular season would have to end by Saturday. I assume that was because we couldn't have teams playing a game on Sunday then needing to travel to a destination that might not be known until late Sunday for a game on Monday. That all makes sense but it occurred to me that if any two teams that were playing on the final weekend were both locked into the top-6 they could play on Sunday since they wouldn't be playing again until Friday anyway.
Example this year (using current projections):
Projected #1 Purdue and projected #2 Wisconsin are scheduled to play in West Lafayette the last weekend. Based on our projections they will be pretty easily locked into top-6 slots so their game could be Sunday. For this year that would probably be it since projected #3 Illinois is at projected #9/10 Iowa and projected #4 MSU is at projected #13 Indiana. Projected #5 Nebraska and projected #6 Northwestern aren't playing each other.
The major problem that might quash this idea is that we wouldn't know in advance how many Sunday games we could offer nor even if we could offer any at all. The league might not be able to sell a Sunday game (or games) that might or might not happen.
Also on the announced 15-team tournament:
I couldn't figure out why they went with 15 rather than 16. I was thinking that if you were playing on Wednesday anyway, why not play four games on Wednesday and have 16 teams involved. I *THINK* I figured out the problem:
The BTT is typically held in a building that serves as the home for an NBA team. For example this year's tournament is at the Target Center which serves as the home arena for the Minnesota Timberwolves. In the case of this year I don't think it would be a problem because their last home game before our tournament is on Monday, March 4 then they go on a six-game road swing and don't return to the Target Center until Tuesday, March 19. Our Tournament runs Wednesday, March 13 through Sunday, St. Patrick's Day, March 17.
My thinking though is that in some cases the host arena might have an NBA game on Tuesday night. If they do, they might not be able to get the building ready for BTT games until Wednesday evening. In that case, my guess is that they are thinking they can have one three-game session on Wednesday night consisting of:
- #10 vs #15
- #11 vs #14
- #12 vs #13
Followed by two two-game sessions on Thursday consisting of:
- #5 vs #12/13
- #6 vs #11/14
- #7 vs #10/15
- #8 vs #9
Ie, I think the reason to limit it to 15 teams is so that they don't need the building until Wednesday evening rather than early Wednesday afternoon.
