2025-2026 B1G Basketball Thread

[medinabuckeye1]

Just learned Purdue doesn't play road games at Michigan, MSU, or Illinois.  Immediately put in $ on them to win the Big Ten

I've been beating the drum about uneven conference schedules in football in the mega-conference era but it applies to BB as well.  This has actually been an issue for a while in BB but the mega-conference change makes it a bigger issue.  Those and at Nebraska are probably the four toughest games that Purdue could possibly have in the league and somehow they miss three of the four, wow.  

Purdue's league road games this year:

• Rutgers, won 81-65
• Wisconsin, won 89-73
• USC, 1/17
• UCLA, 1/20
• Indiana, 1/27
• Maryland, 2/1
• Nebraska, 2/10
• Iowa, 2/14
• Ohio State, 3/1
• Northwestern, 3/4

Here are B1G teams sorted by BPI rank and whether or not Purdue visits them this year:

• 2 Michigan, no
• 7 Purdue, n/a
• 8 Illinois, no
• 18 MSU, no
• 20 UNL, 2/10
• 23 IU, 1/27
• 29 UCLA, 1/20
• 30 Iowa, 2/14
• 35 tOSU, 3/1
• 36 UW, won
• 50 USC, 1/17
• 54 UDub, no
• 60 NU, 3/4
• 72 MN, no
• 74 Ore, no
• 82 UMD, 2/1
• 104 PSU, no
• 126 RU, won

Note for @betarhoalphadelta , this isn't to denigrate Purdue it is just looking at the reality that schedules in the mega-conference era can vary a LOT.  

Also note that with 18 teams and 20 league games each team plays three teams twice.  For Purdue those are #6 IU, #8 Iowa, and #10 UW.  Thus, Purdue only plays four total games and only one road game against the top-5 teams in the league and the ONE road game is against #5.  

If we were doing tier-based projections (more on that in a later post) I think we'd project them to go either 19-1 (loss in Lincoln) or 18-2 (Lincoln and Bloomington).  


Then if you look at Michigan which is a consensus better team they'd have a lower projection because they play:

• AT #2 PU on 2/17
• AT #3 Illinois on 2/27
• AT #4 MSU on 1/30
• vs #4 MSU on 3/8
• vs #5 UNL on 1/27

Against the top-5:

• Michigan has 5 games, 3 on the road.  
• Purdue has 4 games, 1 on the road.  

[medinabuckeye1]

On tiers:

For those not familiar:  For years we operated a projection system that used tiers where each team was expected to win all of their home games except those against teams two or more tiers higher and lose all of the road games except those against teams two or more tiers lower.  

This ended up serving a few functions for us:

• It gave us a reasonably accurate projection of where all the teams would finish, and
• It helped us to avoid the "talking head trap" of thinking that a team on a streak was Great/Terrible without looking at the schedule to realize that they were actually on a streak because they had a particularly easy/tough stretch.  

As an example, Michigan finishes the regular season on a six game stretch of:

• AT Purdue
• vs DOOK in DC
• vs Minnesota
• AT Illinois
• AT Iowa
• vs MSU

That is brutal.  To be honest, 3-3 would be pretty good, 4-2 would be very good, and anything better than that would be amazing.  Now if they end up going 2-4 that honestly isn't all that bad but I guarantee that there will be talking heads shouting "What is wrong with Michigan?"  Well the answer would be that nothing is "wrong", they just played a REALLY tough stretch of games.  No reason for wailing and gnashing of teeth among the Wolverine fans.  

Now the problem.  It has gotten awfully big for me to try to manage it.  What I used to do was to assign tiers then use that to calculate a mathematical projected record on a double-round-robin.  Then I'd back out the games not played to come up with a mathematical projection before upsets.  Then I'd add in positive upsets and subtract out negative upsets to come up with a final mathematical projection.  Then I had each game with either a result or an assigned projection and used that to come up with a separate projection and I double-checked the two projections against each other to make sure I had everything entered right.  

Back when we had 14 teams and 20 games each team only had six "games not played" so this was manageable.  Now that we have 18 teams and 20 games each team has 14 games not played so it is a data-entry nightmare.  

I just thought I'd throw this out there to get suggestions.  One thought I have is that I could make it a Google Sheet and then share it with a few of you guys and that way we could split up the data entry.  I'd make the "shell" and then just pass it along for others to enter games not played and individual games.  

Thoughts?

[ELA]

I've been beating the drum about uneven conference schedules in football in the mega-conference era but it applies to BB as well.  This has actually been an issue for a while in BB but the mega-conference change makes it a bigger issue.  Those and at Nebraska are probably the four toughest games that Purdue could possibly have in the league and somehow they miss three of the four, wow. 

Purdue's league road games this year:

• Rutgers, won 81-65
• Wisconsin, won 89-73
• USC, 1/17
• UCLA, 1/20
• Indiana, 1/27
• Maryland, 2/1
• Nebraska, 2/10
• Iowa, 2/14
• Ohio State, 3/1
• Northwestern, 3/4

Here are B1G teams sorted by BPI rank and whether or not Purdue visits them this year:

• 2 Michigan, no
• 7 Purdue, n/a
• 8 Illinois, no
• 18 MSU, no
• 20 UNL, 2/10
• 23 IU, 1/27
• 29 UCLA, 1/20
• 30 Iowa, 2/14
• 35 tOSU, 3/1
• 36 UW, won
• 50 USC, 1/17
• 54 UDub, no
• 60 NU, 3/4
• 72 MN, no
• 74 Ore, no
• 82 UMD, 2/1
• 104 PSU, no
• 126 RU, won

Note for @betarhoalphadelta , this isn't to denigrate Purdue it is just looking at the reality that schedules in the mega-conference era can vary a LOT. 

Also note that with 18 teams and 20 league games each team plays three teams twice.  For Purdue those are #6 IU, #8 Iowa, and #10 UW.  Thus, Purdue only plays four total games and only one road game against the top-5 teams in the league and the ONE road game is against #5. 

If we were doing tier-based projections (more on that in a later post) I think we'd project them to go either 19-1 (loss in Lincoln) or 18-2 (Lincoln and Bloomington). 


Then if you look at Michigan which is a consensus better team they'd have a lower projection because they play:

• AT #2 PU on 2/17
• AT #3 Illinois on 2/27
• AT #4 MSU on 1/30
• vs #4 MSU on 3/8
• vs #5 UNL on 1/27

Against the top-5:

• Michigan has 5 games, 3 on the road. 
• Purdue has 4 games, 1 on the road. 

Not to derail the basketball thread, but that's why I kind of liked a 4 team tournament for the CCG.

End the season a week earlier, then on Thanksgiving weekend #1 hosts #4, and #2 hosts #3.  Then going down 5-6, 7-8, 9-10, 11-12, 13-14, 15-16, and 17-18 play.  For those you can shuffle to avoide rematches, but those would all be conference games.  Then the winners of the "semis" would go to Indy.  Now that they reformatted the playoff and made the Big Ten and SEC Championships irrelevant, whatever, don't bother

[betarhoalphadelta]

Note for @betarhoalphadelta , this isn't to denigrate Purdue it is just looking at the reality that schedules in the mega-conference era can vary a LOT. 

No personal offense taken. I hadn't realized this either, but I'm pretty stoked about it. Nice to get some good luck on the scheduling front. 

That said, while I'm happy about the fact that it might benefit Purdue when it comes to NCAA seeding and potentially where the team is geographically placed in the bracket, I think these uneven conference schedules affect the bubble teams like OSU much more significantly, as you've pointed out. 

I.e. despite their current rankings with UM ahead of PU, Purdue with a favorable home/road split would have a solid chance of moving up to a 1 seed, while Michigan with an unfavorable home/road split has might end up dropping to a 2 seed. But overall both teams are going to be solidly in the field and with a pretty good draw. 

[847badgerfan]

I’m realizing that bad Wisconsin means a better chance that I could actually see them in person in the tournament. That’s interesting.

Whereas, if they are good, they either get a spot in the Midwest or get banished to be one of the not quite top seeds in a western locale because of the unbalanced sites.

This has happened far too often for my liking.

[medinabuckeye1]

This has happened far too often for my liking.

I've been tracking it for YEARS and I'll share it again when we get closer to tournament time but the NCAA insists on having two or three of their opening round sites in the Mountain and Pacific Timezones every year despite that fact that those timezones almost never actually produce anywhere near enough #1-4 seeds to fill them.  Consequently a LOT of 4-5 seeds from the east end up out west.  

[FearlessF]

so, would it be better to be a 4-5 seed out west or a 6-7 seed back closer to home?

[bayareabadger]

This has happened far too often for my liking.

I don’t totally see any way around it.

if they are good enough to get seeding preference, they stay home. If they aren’t, someone with seating preference is closer to all the other places.

They do need to cut down to at most one western site in the first round, but for now, it is what it is.

[medinabuckeye1]

I don’t totally see any way around it.

Ah, yes you do:

They do need to cut down to at most one western site in the first round, but for now, it is what it is.

This is the way around it.

They obviously have the data that I have. 

To clarify, I would have no objection at all if the Mountain and Pacific timezones produced an average of 10 top-4 seeds but once in a while they only produced 2 so in those outlier years a bunch of Eastern #3 and #4 seeds got shipped out West. That would just be a bad luck situation. That is NOT what is happening. What IS happening is that history shows that the Mountain and Pacific timezones on average produce only enough top-4 seeds to justify having barely over one first round site and yet year after year the NCAA insists on having too many Western sites for the available Western top-4 seeds. Ie, they either know better or they should know better and they continue on anyway. 

[Brutus Buckeye]

They like the Doors.