2023-2024 B1G Basketball Thread

[medinabuckeye1]

I don't normally do mid-week updates to the projections but I will in this case because Wisconsin losing at Indiana then getting bumped down a tier changes a lot of things.  

The new tiers are:

• Purdue -1, Illinois -2
• Nebraska, Northwestern, MSU (+1/-3)
• Wisconsin (+3/-1), Minnesota (+1/-2), Iowa (+2/-2), Maryland (+3/-2), Rutgers (+1/-2)
• Penn State (+3/-1), Ohio State (+2/-2), Indiana (+2/-1)
• Michigan (+2/-1)

The updated projected final standings/BTT seeds are:

• 16-4/27-4 Purdue
• 15-5/24-7 Illinois
• 13-7/23-8 Nebraska
• 12-8/21-10 Northwestern
• 11-9/19-12 Wisconsin (wins tie with MSU based on H2H sweep)
• 11-9/19-12 Michigan State
• 10-10/19-12 Minnesota
• 9-11/17-14 Maryland (first in tie with PSU and IA based on H2H2H of 3-1, won in Iowa City)
• 9-11/15-16 Penn State (second in tie with UMD and IA based on H2H2H of 2-2 won at home lost on the road)
• 9-11/17-14 Iowa (last in tie with UMD and PSU based on H2H2H of 1-3, lost at home to UMD)
• 8-12/16-15 Rutgers
• 7-13/15-16 Indiana (wins tie with tOSU based on H2H sweep)
• 7-13/17-14 Ohio State
• 3-17/8-23 Michigan

That results in the following projected match-ups for the B1G Tournament at the Target Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota:
Wednesday, March 13 (Peacock):

• #11 Rutgers vs #14 Michigan, 9pm
• #12 Indiana vs #13 Ohio State, 630

Thursday, March 14 (BTN):

• #5 Wisconsin vs IU/tOSU, 230
• #6 Michigan State vs RU/M, 9pm
• #7 Minnesota vs #10 Iowa, 630
• #8 Maryland vs #9 Penn State, noon

Friday, March 15 (BTN):

• #1 Purdue vs UMD/PSU, noon
• #2 Illinois vs MN/IA, 630
• #3 Nebraska vs MSU/RU/M, 9pm
• #4 Northwestern vs UW/IU/tOSU, 230

Saturday, March 16 (CBS):

• PU/UMD/PSU vs NU/UW/IU/tOSU, 1pm
• IL/MN/IA vs UNL/MSU/RU/M, 330

Sunday, St. Patrick's Day, March 17 (CBS):

• PU/UMD/PSU/NU/UW/IU/tOSU vs IL/MN/IA/UNL/MSU/RU/M, 330

[medinabuckeye1]

A while ago @ELA suggested that we could include every team in the B1G Tournament by holding (IIRC) two mini-tournaments hosted by the #7 and #8 seeds to get down to eight teams, then move on to an eight-team tournament at some pre-determined neutral site on Friday-Sunday leading up to Selection Sunday. 

The more I think about this, the more I think we should actually go even further with this idea for several reasons. 

In the past the Tournaments have mostly been held in either Indianapolis or Chicago.  Both of those are pretty accessible for most of us.  They are pretty far from New Jersey and Maryland but even there:

• Lucas Oil Stadium is 689mi/10:40 from Jersey Mike's Arena
• The United Center is 697mi/10:44 from the Xfinity Center

Those are REALLY long drives but the other 12 teams in the league are all closer to Chicago and Indianapolis. 

I'm looking at this as someone who has actually attended two Big Ten Basketball Tournaments.  I went to one in Chicago and one in NYC:

• The United Center is about five-and-a-half hours from me
• Madison Square Garden is about seven-and-a-half hours from me. 

Those are fairly long drives but not completely ridiculous.  When I attended I saw fans from all the B1G Schools at both tournaments. 


With the league expanding both in number of teams and in geographic footprint, I think it will be harder to get fans to the tournament.  When you have teams from SoCal, the PacNW, the NYC Metro area, the DC Metro area, and all of our traditional midwestern teams there isn't any "neutral" site that isn't REALLY far from at least some of them. 

The league's solution is probably going to be to try to rotate the thing so we'll end up having it at something like:

• Target Center in Minneapolis in 2024
• Lucas Oil in Indianapolis in 2025
• Staples Center in LA in 2026
• United Center in Chicago in 2027
• MSG in NYC in 2028
• Lucas Oil in Indianapolis in 2029
• Capital One Arena in DC in 2030

As I see it, there are a number of problems with this:

• It sucks for the "outlying" schools that the tournament will only come to them something like once every 10 years?
• It sucks for the "core" schools that the tournament will be away from them every other year. 
• I think we'll have trouble selling tickets in far-flung places because there will be a limited number of interested fans.  Fans of teams that suck that year probably aren't going to be interested even if they are close geographically and I'm not sure that there will be enough fans of the good teams to fill up the Staples Center. 
• The new solution was announced for the 18 teams that will be in the league next year but there is already smoke about adding FSU/ND and possibly beyond and I don't see the current solution as being scalable. 

My solution is to take @ELA 's idea and go even further with it.  Instead of having #7 and #8 host two mini-tournaments then getting the top-8 together at a neutral site, lets have the top-4 host mini-tournaments then have ONLY the four winners get together at a neutral site for a two-day tournament. 

As I see it:

• Tickets will be MUCH easier to sell at the top-4 schools because their fanbases are almost inherently interested because their teams are, by definition, doing well. 
• Tickets for the semi-finals and CG at a Neutral site will not be too difficult to sell because the games will all be on a weekend and they are all BIG games.  There are no #11 vs #14 clunkers. 

Using current projections and a rough guess as to where the four new teams would slot in, here are the 18 seeds based on next year's membership with this year's results:

• Purdue
• Illinois
• Nebraska
• Northwestern
• Wisconsin
• Michigan State
• Oregon
• Washington
• Minnesota
• Maryland
• Penn State
• Iowa
• Rutgers
• USC
• UCLA
• Indiana
• Ohio State
• Michigan

So my tournament would be:
Monday, March 11:

• #18 Michigan vs #15 UCLA at Illinois
• #17 Ohio State vs #16 Indiana at Purdue

Tuesday, March 12:

• IU/tOSU vs #1 Purdue at Purdue
• M/UCLA vs #2 Illinois at Illinois
• #14 USC vs #3 Nebraska at Nebraska
• #13 Rutgers vs #4 Northwestern at Northwestern
• #5 Wisconsin vs #12 Iowa at Northwestern
• #6 Michigan State vs #11 Penn State at Nebraska
• #7 Oregon vs #10 Maryland at Illinois
• #8 Washington vs #9 Minnesota at Purdue

Wednesday, March 13:

• PU/IU/tOSU vs Wash/MN at Purdue
• IL/M/UCLA vs Ore/UMD/ at Illinois
• UNL/USC vs MSU/PSU at Nebraska
• NU/RU vs Wisc/IA at Northwestern

Thursday, March 14 and Friday, March 15:  Travel Days

Saturday, March 16, neutral site:

• PU/IU/tOSU/Wash/MN vs NU/RU/Wisc/IA
• IL/M/UCLA/Ore/UMD vs UNL/USC/MSU/PSU

Sunday, St. Patrick's Day, March 17:
PU/IU/tOSU/Wash/MN/NU/RU/Wisc/IA vs IL/M/UCLA/Ore/UMD/UNL/USC/MSU/PSU

With the 15-team tournament method any expansion results in more teams left out. With this method expansion simply results in more Monday games as necessary:

• With 20 teams you'd need four games on Monday (one at each site)
• With 22 teams you'd need six games on Monday (two at two sites and one at two sites)
• With 24 teams you'd need eight games on Monday (two at each site). 

[bayareabadger]

The vultures are out on Greg Gard this morning. Wow.

Who do they think their gonna get?

Even though he'd be great, Lamont Paris would be an absolute no, since he and Gard are besties.

They ain’t firing him this year. Maybe if they miss it next year. 

That said, this team. This stupid team. They have the ability to play better. And if they’re 5% better, they flip 3-5 of these games and I’m in a much less shitty mood. 

[bayareabadger]

I think that it certainly overrates uncapped MOV.  I'm all for MOV counting, but Wake Forest's coach even said that he used to give his bench a chance to play in blowouts, and now he can't, because there is a difference between winning by 25 and winning by 12.  I think it should be capped at like 20, and that if you are up by 20 at any point in the final 5 minutes or so, it goes in as a 20 point win.

Where the NET is better than RPI is with the Quads.  They look at Quad 1 wins and Quad 4 losses.  So just piling up Quad 3 wins, instead of scheduling Quad 1 and Quad 4 games is less beneficial.  The RPI literally took the combined RPI of your opponents, and that was your SOS.  So you would have a better SOS going 2-0 #150 and #151, than playing #1 and #320, and going 1-1.

You’d have to do it game by game in a weird way, since the efficiency is a season-long thing.

I’m a bit skeptical of the gaming-the-system stuff. And kind of doubt the cutoffs make for better numbers. But they might be numbers folks feel a bit more confident in. Maybe.

[medinabuckeye1]

You’d have to do it game by game in a weird way, since the efficiency is a season-long thing.

I’m a bit skeptical of the gaming-the-system stuff. And kind of doubt the cutoffs make for better numbers. But they might be numbers folks feel a bit more confident in. Maybe.

You are right, efficiency is a difficult thing to put a limit on.  

With MoV it isn't terribly difficult.  Upthread we kicked around simply capping it at 20 points and then putting in a provision that if you have a sufficient lead sufficiently late in the game you get assigned a 20 point MoV.  This would serve two functions:

• To not encourage (or effectively force) good teams to leave their starters in late in order to prop up their MoV, and
• To limit the ability to compensate for a bad schedule with blowout wins.  

IMHO, both of those are valuable functions.  I don't think a team should be penalized for clearing their bench late in a blowout.  I also think that a win over a very good team, even if it is a very close win proves more than a win over a very bad team even if it is a blowout.  

With efficiency you'd have to basically just stop counting once the bench got cleared but as you pointed out that would have to be done in a game by game weird way so it would be very difficult to pull off when looking at what, ~320 teams playing 31 games each plus conference tournaments.  

[bayareabadger]

You are right, efficiency is a difficult thing to put a limit on. 

With MoV it isn't terribly difficult.  Upthread we kicked around simply capping it at 20 points and then putting in a provision that if you have a sufficient lead sufficiently late in the game you get assigned a 20 point MoV.  This would serve two functions:

• To not encourage (or effectively force) good teams to leave their starters in late in order to prop up their MoV, and
• To limit the ability to compensate for a bad schedule with blowout wins. 

IMHO, both of those are valuable functions.  I don't think a team should be penalized for clearing their bench late in a blowout.  I also think that a win over a very good team, even if it is a very close win proves more than a win over a very bad team even if it is a blowout. 

With efficiency you'd have to basically just stop counting once the bench got cleared but as you pointed out that would have to be done in a game by game weird way so it would be very difficult to pull off when looking at what, ~320 teams playing 31 games each plus conference tournaments. 

But I think they took out raw MOV.

The issue becomes that MOV is sort of a cousin of efficiency. You could cap efficiency MOV for each game, but I’m not sure how it plays out.

I’m also less than sure it matters. Games where you’re up by a million, but the lead falls dramatically aren’t THAT common. So it might be a case of coming out in the wash.

[847badgerfan]

You’d have to do it game by game in a weird way, since the efficiency is a season-long thing.

I’m a bit skeptical of the gaming-the-system stuff. And kind of doubt the cutoffs make for better numbers. But they might be numbers folks feel a bit more confident in. Maybe.

I'm going out on the water Saturday. That means they will beat Illinois.

[ELA]

Sissoko

https://twitter.com/itsAntWright/status/1762872532644790589?s=20

[medinabuckeye1]

Tonight's games are both on BTN.  The late game between Minnesota and Illinois isn't terribly compelling as Illinois is a double-digit favorite because they are both the better team AND playing at home.  

The early game between Northwestern and Maryland is much more interesting at least to me.  I think all (or at least most) of us would agree that Northwestern is the better team.  Net has NU at 52 and UMD at 67 while KenPom has it closer with NU at 44  and UMD at 45.  Either way, the better team is on the road.  Our projection system and the wiseguys out in Vegas both like the Terps to win at home (Vegas says UMD-5).  For an additional angle, Maryland is 15-13 overall and 7-10 in the league.  They are also 2-8 in Q1, 4-2 in Q2, and 2-3 in Q3.  Their atrocious start is really killing them here.  They might already be eliminated from any practical chance at an at-large bid but a loss at home to Northwestern tonight would end all doubts about that.  

[betarhoalphadelta]

SVP on the subject of gaming the NET: https://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/39615642/scott-van-pelt-clemson-tigers-brad-brownell-net-rankings

[NickSmith4Three]

Minnesota shot 70% from three.  

Good thing Illinois is elite offensively.

[GopherRock]

https://twitter.com/OptaSTATS/status/1763074169434943652?s=20

[medinabuckeye1]

Last night's win by Northwestern in College Park was the first upset that Northwestern has been involved in all year long.  Nebraska is now the only B1G team with no upsets on the year.  Hopefully that will change tonight in Columbus where the Tiers say Nebraska will win but the wiseguys say Ohio State by 3.  

At the opposite end of the spectrum is Maryland.  They are our most upset prone team this year with a total of six upsets in their 18 games.  You might look at that and think that our projection system sucks but I would argue that it doesn't because no rational system would project the things that Maryland has done and, in any case, Maryland is right on pace for their projection because the upsets are evenly split between three unexpected wins (@IL, @IA, @RU) and three unexpected losses (vsMSU, vsRU, vsNU).  My argument is that no rational projection system would project that the road team would win both games in the UMD/RU series nor that the Terps would somehow be good enough to win in Champaign and Iowa City yet simultaneously bad enough to lose at home to Michigan State and Northwestern.  

As a league we are running at a pace of roughly one upset every sixth game.  Only PSU (+2), UW (+2), MSU (-2), and Illinois (-2) are outside of +/-1:

• +2:  UW (+3/-1), PSU (+3/-1)
• +1:  NU, IU (+2/-1), M (+2/-1)
• even:  UNL, Iowa (+2/-2), UMD (+3/-3), tOSU (+2/-2)
• -1:  PU, MN (+1/-2), RU (+1/-2)
• -2:  IL, MSU (+1/-3)

[medinabuckeye1]

Tonight's games:
I'll start with the late game.  Rutgers hosts Michigan at 8:30 on FS1.  The wiseguys say Rutgers by 7, our tiers say Rutgers wins.  The Scarlet Knights are currently:

• 6-10 in the league
• 14-13 overall
• 95 per KenPom
• 98 per Net

Rutgers may not have a plausible path to an at-large bid anyway but a loss tonight would end all doubt about that. 

In the early game Ohio State hosts Nebraska at 6:30 also on FS1.  The wiseguys say Ohio State by 3, our tiers say Nebraska wins.  The Buckeyes are currently:

• 6-11 in the league
• 16-12 overall
• 58 per KenPom
• 65 per Net

The Buckeyes *MIGHT* have a little more leeway than the Scarlet Knights but if this isn't a "must-win" for Ohio State it is *REALLY* close to it. 

If the Buckeyes lose tonight the best they could do would be to finish the regular season at 18-13/8-12.  In that case I think they'd probably have to make it to St. Patrick's Day in Minneapolis to get into the NCAA Tournament. 


If the Buckeyes win out they finish the regular season 19-12 and from there I *THINK* a 2-1 showing in Minneapolis gives them a plausible chance while anything better results in a final record of 22-13 or better and I think they are in at that point.