2025-2026 B1G Basketball Thread

[medinabuckeye1]

For the record I don't have any interest in post season rematch scenarios this year.

LoL, I agree!

I actually thought about your usual quest for that when I was looking at possible BTT scenarios and I didn't bother to listen the rematch scenario because, yeah no.

[ELA]

Updated for Maryland win.  Green means +1, Red means -1

• Illinois (18-2) 27-4
• Nebraska (18-2) 28-2
• Michigan (17-3) 27-4
• Purdue (15-5) 25-6
• Michigan State (14-6) 24-7 (-2)
• Wisconsin (12-8) 20-11
• Iowa (12-8) 22-9
• UCLA (12-8) 20-11
• Washington (11-9) 19-12
• Ohio State (11-9) 19-12
• Indiana (10-10) 19-12
• USC (10-10) 21-10
• Minnesota (6-14) 13-18
• Rutgers (4-16) 11-20
• Northwestern (4-16) 12-19
• Oregon (3-17) 10-24
• Maryland (3-17) 11-21
• Penn State (2-18) 11-20

1 - Illinois, Michigan, Nebraska
2 - Michigan State, Purdue
3 - Iowa, UCLA, Wisconsin
4 - Indiana, Ohio State, Washington
5 - Minnesota, USC
6 - Northwestern, Oregon
7 - Maryland, Penn State, Rutgers

[grillrat]

Well, if Purdue has any hope of winning the Big Ten this year, tonight is probably the deciding factor.  This has been a brutal stretch of games for them with 6 of 8 games on the road.  Lose and they drop to 9-4 in the Big Ten, 3 games back from the lead and with losses to two teams ahead of them.  Win out and they have a shot, but they would still need help with Illinois and Michigan ahead of them by 2 games.

[FearlessF]

I'll be watching.
Huskers gotta protect home court.

[medinabuckeye1]

Well, if Purdue has any hope of winning the Big Ten this year, tonight is probably the deciding factor.  This has been a brutal stretch of games for them with 6 of 8 games on the road.  Lose and they drop to 9-4 in the Big Ten, 3 games back from the lead and with losses to two teams ahead of them.  Win out and they have a shot, but they would still need help with Illinois and Michigan ahead of them by 2 games.

FWIW:
If Purdue were to win out they would finish 17-3.  That would be ahead of all but UNL, IL, and M.  As for those teams:

• Nebraska could do no better than 17-3 
• The M/IL loser could do no better than 17-3
• The M/IL winner could do no better than 18-2

So Purdue would be no worse than one game behind the B1G Regular Season Champion but they would need the IL/M winner to drop a game somewhere along the line in order to claim a share of the league title.  

[betarhoalphadelta]

The way Purdue has been playing lately, they're not winning out IMHO. 

[medinabuckeye1]

Bracketology:

According to Lunardi's latest (updated to include 2/9 games) the B1G has three bubble teams:

• UCLA is one of the last four byes
• USC is one of the last four byes
• tOSU is the first team out.  

There are 10 B1G teams currently in:

• #1 Michigan
• #2 Nebraska, Illinois
• #3 Michigan State, Purdue
• #7 Iowa
• #9 Indiana, Wisconsin
• #10 USC, UCLA

Based on the past performance of those seeds, that would result in:

• 7 teams winning their opener (6.9872)
• 4 teams making the S16 (3.7628)
• 2 teams making the E8 (2.3013)
• 1 team making the F4 (1.0769)
• 1 team making the CG (0.5577)
• 0 teams winning the NC (0.2821)

Here is the data behind that in case you are interested:

How to read the above, using #1 seeds as the example:

• #1 seeds win their opener 98.72% of the time.  
• #1 seeds make the S16 (R32 column) 84.62% of the time
• #1 seeds make the E8 (S16 column) 66.03% of the time
• #1 seeds make the F4 (E8 column) 40.38% of the time
• #1 seeds make the Final (F4 column) 25.64% of the time
• #1 seeds win the NC (NF column) 16.03% of the time

[medinabuckeye1]

Oops, I just noticed that I never updated the above to include the 2025 tournament results so I need to make that update.  

[medinabuckeye1]

Oops, I just noticed that I never updated the above to include the 2025 tournament results so I need to make that update. 

Updated to now include the 40 NCAA Tournaments since expansion to 64 (1985-2025 but no 2020):
The seeds as currently projected by Lunardi would result in:

• 7 teams winning their opener (7.000)
• 4 teams making the S16 (3.7688)
• 2 teams making the E8 (2.3188)
• 1 team making the F4 (1.0750)
• 1 team making the CG (0.5563)
• 0 teams winning the NC (0.2813)

Updated data (all 40 tournaments since expansion):

[FearlessF]

might not change much

[medinabuckeye1]

might not change much

Yeah, it didn't.  Only a marginal change.  There is so much data from 39 tournaments that adding one more simply can't change the averages very much.  

[FearlessF]

[ELA]

An MSU basketball podcast I listen to was interviewing a player's father, and they asked him the best Big Ten crowds.  He said Purdue and Illinois are right there, but he thought Nebraska had the best environment

[medinabuckeye1]

Can anyone explain Wisconsin?

They now have road wins in both Ann Arbor (who was a whore) and Champagne-Urbana. Those, along with Nebraska's win in Champagne-Urbana are the three best wins all year. 

That same Wisconsin team lost in Bloomington, lost AT HOME to USC, and got run out of the gym at both BYU and Nebraska. 

It seems like "good Wisconsin" is a top-5 team nationally while "bad Wisconsin" isn't top-10 . . . in the B1G.