Bracketology 2020 Losers: League play leads to early casualties

Big Ten

After this week, the Big Ten may be absent from the Top 10, but make no mistake – there are a lot of tournament teams in this conference. Michigan State will probably be the highest-ranked team in the league, but Maryland is probably not too far behind.

But early overachievers Ohio State and Michigan continue to fall back to earth. The Buckeyes lost both of their games this week, first to West Virginia and then to Wisconsin. It wasn’t long ago that OSU was considered the top team in the country, but suddenly they’ve lost three of four. As for the Wolverines, their loss to the Spartans on Sunday was their first real test since back-to-back losses against Illinois and Oregon last month. Suffice it to say, Juwan Howard’s club didn’t pass.

Iowa lost to Penn State, ensuring that the Nittany Lions will stay in the Top 25 – and probably guaranteeing that the Hawkeyes will drop out of it. The loss dropped them to 1-2 in the Big Ten, the same fate suffered by Indiana, who lost to Maryland, and Illinois. The Illini joined Michigan as victims of the Sparty resurgence.

With Penn State, Wisconsin, Purdue, and Rutgers all winning this week, the Hawkeyes, Hoosiers, and Illini lost some ground in the Big Ten standings. Worse, they’ve placed themselves at the bottom of the pile as all of these teams will be vying for some of the last few at-large bids. It’s likely that at least eight teams will come out of the Big Ten, but that number could be pushed to nine or even ten.

Ten bids seem like a lot, especially when you consider that conferences like the Big East and Big XII only have ten teams. For more on the latter, we head south into Tornado Alley.