Apparently they are expanding the conference tournament to include all 18
Source, any indication of structure?
Just give everyone a f'ing trophy.
It isn't about that, it is about the almighty dollar. If all 18 teams go to the League Tournament that means 17 games they can sell TV rights and tickets to.
As far as structure, we talked about this before but next to nobody will travel any appreciable distance to watch their #15 seeded favorite B1G BB team take on the #18 seeded cellar-dwellers in a battle to determine which team will get crushed by the #2 seed.
Basic structure options as I see it:
#1, get down to a geometric sequence of 2 (2, 4, 8, 16) then everybody plays:
First Round:
Second Round:
- #1 vs 16/17
- #2 vs 15/18
- #3 vs #14
- #4 vs #13
- #5 vs #12
- #6 vs #11
- #7 vs #10
- #8 vs #9
#2 feed teams in four at a time (this is historically how they've done it with adjustments as necessary to account for the then current number of teams:
First Round:
Second Round:
- #9 vs 16/17
- #10 vs 15/18
- #11 vs #14
- #12 vs #13
Third Round:
- #5 vs 12/13
- #6 vs 11/14
- #7 vs 10/15/18
- #8 vs 9/16/17
Fourth Round:
- #1 vs 8/9/16/17
- #2 vs 7/10/15/18
- #3 vs 6/11/14
- #4 vs 5/12/13
What I would suggest is to have the top-4 host the opening rounds then the winners of those rounds meet at a neutral site for a B1G Final Four as follows:
First Round:
- #15 vs #18 at #2
- #16 vs #17 at #1
Second Round:
- #1 vs 16/17 at #1
- #2 vs 15/18 at #2
- #3 vs #14 at #3
- #4 vs #13 at #4
- #5 vs #12 at #4
- #6 vs #11 at #3
- #7 vs #10 at #2
- #8 vs #9 at #1
Third Round:
- 1/16/17 vs 8/9 at #1
- 2/15/18 vs 7/10 at #2
- 3/14 vs 6/11 at #3
- 4/13 vs 5/12 at #4
Then go to a neutral site for the Final Four
My suggestion would be to either eliminate the games on the final Sunday of the regular season or make the schedule flexible such that no team mathematically in contention for a first round game has to play on Sunday then:
- Travel day on Sunday at least for the bottom-4
- Travel day on Monday for everybody
- First round on Tuesday at top-2 seeds
- Second round on Wednesday at top-4 seeds
- Third round on Thursday at top-4 seeds
- Travel day on Friday
- Semi-Finals on Saturday at a neutral site
- Championship on Sunday at a neutral site
