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Welcome to the Street Fight: Big Ten Most Contentious In All of College Basketball

By Hashim R. Hathaway

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As regular season conference play comes to a close, there may be no conference with a bigger battle for supremacy than the Big Ten.

Make no mistake, there’s blood in the water, and the sharks, they are a’ swimmin’.

With two weeks left in the regular season, it’s a free-for-all in the Big Ten. After last night’s not-totally-a-surprise upending of #5 Wisconsin by conference newcomer #14 Maryland 59-53, the Badgers still maintain a two-game lead over the Terrapins.

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However, Wisconsin still has to face March-mad Michigan State on Sunday and a road game at Ohio State to close out regular season play. For the Terps, their remaining schedule of Michigan, Rutgers and Nebraska couldn’t come at a better time.

While unlikely, all the current scenarios at play could potentially lead to as much as a four-way tie for the regular season title, only jumbling the field for the Big Ten Tournament in Chicago, where even the champ won’t have a clear path. All of this certainly makes for exciting basketball, but for prognosticators picking the field for the NCAA tournament, it could only lead to confusion.

As of this writing, ESPN’s resident bracketologist, Joe Lunardi, has eight teams (Wisconsin, Maryland, Michigan State, Purdue, Indiana, Ohio State, Illinois and Iowa) from the Big Ten making it into the tournament.

Without question, Wisconsin and Maryland are locks to advance with conference records of 13-2 and 11-4, respectively. However, after that, the remaining field still has work to do, as competition from teams that will not be dancing, like Michigan and suddenly-hot Northwestern could burst more than one bubble before everything’s said and done.

Michigan State and Purdue are currently tied for third at 10-4, but that won’t be the case as they face each other on March 4 in a game that is probably more a must-win for the Boilers than it is for the Spartans. However, Sparty has to travel to Madison three days prior to test themselves against Wisconsin, and the result could turn the Purdue match-up into a must-win. If Tom Izzo’s crew drop both, the season-ending match against Indiana could prove critical to Michigan State’s chances.

Practically all the teams in contention still have to play one another before before heading to the Big Ten Tournament

Indiana, Ohio State and Iowa all have six losses and with seven-loss Illinois, all four teams can see their chances disintegrate in one of the final three games, particularly Indiana and Iowa, who face each other in Bloomington on March 3, in an absolutely must-win for either team. The loser of that match will almost certainly fall out of the tournament, if not be hanging on for dear life.

Indiana’s path to glory comes to Chicago tonight against the streaking Northwestern, and now games that once looked like a soft landing for the Hoosiers could decide everything, as they still have to close out the season after the Iowa match against Michigan State. While it’s a home-game, the uneven Hoosiers could rise or fall depending on the shooting prowess of junior Yogi Ferrell and freshman James Blackmon, Jr.

For Ohio State at 8-6, their path is just as precarious as two of their four remaining games are against a Purdue squad they already lost once to and a season finale at home against Wisconsin.

Practically all the teams in contention still have to play one another before before heading to Chicago, so it is more than likely that the currently-projected eight teams going to the dance could easily pare down to five or six, depending on outside forces and the outcome of the Big Ten Tournament.

The paths are complicated, and there’s still much work to be done in such a short time, but there is no conference in Division I that has as much of a battle going into the final days as the Big Ten, and for fans, the result will be every bit as thrilling as the NCAA Tournament itself.

Next: Wisconsin Badgers: Three Thoughts on the Loss against Maryland

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