NCAA Basketball: Overall takeaways from 2021 Gavitt Tipoff Games

Big Ten early troubles?

The Big Ten was favored in all eight of these matchups. All eight, and yet came out with only two victories. Especially significant, the three ranked teams out of the Big Ten to play in the Gavitt Games all lost to their respective opponents. They also covered only one of the eight contests as far as the spread is concerned. It leads you to consider the possibility that the conference as a whole may be simply a bit overvalued.

Now, this follows a particularly disastrous postseason for the conference. The league had two number one seeds as well as two number two seeds going into March Madness. In all, they had five of the top 16 total seeded teams and nine total bids to the NCAA Tournament. After three days of the tournament, the league was down to just three total teams– Maryland, Iowa, and Michigan.

Only Michigan went on to win their second-round game, and after two rounds they were the only Big Ten team left. This was also not the first year the Big Ten has seen postseason woes. The league has not seen a title for over 20 years now, and only a few years of overperformance in that stretch. Five of the past six years, the Big Ten has won less games in the tournament than their seeding would project.

Now, with week three of the AP Poll just released, it seems the Gavitt Games has had an impact on the polls. The Big Ten is down to just three ranked teams in the Top 25 after starting the season with seven teams within the top 27 vote-getters.

The conference is just a few more lackluster postseasons and sluggish starts away from being heavily discounted as a leading conference. If you aren’t as good as you are projected in the nonconference nor in the NCAA Tournament, perhaps you simply aren’t as good as you are projected.