B1G Tournament Forecasting Thread

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#101      
The bracket generator is here:
http://bball.notnothing.net/big10.php?sport=mbb
Update it to include yesterday's results and make predictions for the rest. Home teams are on the left, and currently favored teams are highlighted in red. It shows us finishing 4-1 by losing only to OSU. This gives us a 2 seed by winning the tie-break over PSU. Give Iowa the win over us on March 8 and we drop to the 6. Worse, if we win on Thursday we play Iowa again on Friday. All of this assumes the favorites always win the "other" games.
 
#102      

kiwanegarris22

South Carolina
As the weekend comes to a close, we still project for 13-7 and a tie for 2nd place with PSU, based upon:
  • Each of the top 12 teams winning its home games and losing its road games -- with just the following 1 exception
  • NEB and NW lose all of their games, whether at home or on the road
While there will certainly be a small number of upsets, this probably reflects the Vegas odds for all games from now through end-of-season. We would win the tie breaker with PSU and receive the #2 seed.
 
#103      
Okay, I kept the other teams' results constant (these are simply my predictions), and this is what I got for our Big Ten Tournament setup with the following finishes:

Finishing 5-0: 14-6 in the Big Ten gives us the 2-seed ... we would play the winner of (10) Minnesota and (7) Indiana, then a showdown presumably with (6) Wisconsin or (3) Penn State in the semifinals.

Finishing 4-1: 13-7 in the Big Ten gives us the 2-seed ... we would play the winner of (10) Minnesota and (7) Ohio State, then a showdown presumably with (6) Wisconsin or (3) Penn State in the semifinals.

Finishing 3-2: 12-8 in the Big Ten gives us the 6-seed ... we would play the winner of (14) Northwestern and (11) Purdue, then a showdown with (3) Iowa in the quarterfinals. SIGNIFICANT dropoff if we drop two games vs. only one down the stretch.

Finishing 2-3: 11-9 in the Big Ten gives us the 8-seed ... we would play (9) Michigan and then (1) Maryland in the second round. If we lose three, we will officially be in "simply excited to make the Tournament" mode. Let's not.

Finishing 1-4: 10-10 in the Big Ten gives us the 10-seed ... we would play (7) Indiana and then (2) Penn State in the second round. Actually looks a bit easier than the above scenario, but losing more than two is just simply bad news.

Finishing 0-5: 9-11 in the Big Ten gives us the 10-seed ... we would play (7) Indiana and then (2) Penn State in the second round. This is the exact same scenario as finishing 1-4. In other words, it's all indistinguishably bad at the bottom!

I think 1-4 and 0-5 are VERY unlikely (knock on wood). I don't think this team would disappear that badly. So, I will focus on the top three and some notes I took away from tinkering with the simulator:

- If we can beat the teams we should (UNL at home, at NU and IU at home), we will be fine. A 6-seed still provides a decent opportunity for another win or two to pad our resume, and a loss to OSU and Iowa won't look too bad. However...
- Taking care of business AND winning at least one of those tougher games REALLY puts this team in an exciting position. The dropoff from 5-0 to 4-1 is practically nonexistent, all else considered, so this is hardly an insurmountable task to get that 2-seed. Let's stay hot and take care of business, and this can get really fun down the stretch!
 
#104      

JFGsCoffeeMug

BU:1 Trash cans:0
Chicago
I know everyone keeps saying this, and it's common knowledge at this point, but the B10 tournament is going to be absolutely brutal. No easy routes to the championship game.
 
#105      
Too many moving parts to say what finish will give us what seed (but I'll try too). 5-0 wont even guarantee a 2nd seed (tie with MSU in record). 3-2 still gets us a 2 seed (even with losses to OSU and Iowa) if MSU falters enough and PSU stays a float to tie us in record. 4-1 could push us to a 5 seed given the right outcomes. Not sure a conference has been a bigger mess than this.

Also, found a 7 way tie for first (PSU is the 1 seed), where we'd be the 7th seed in the BTT. That is my personal favorite. Half the conference shares the title.

I think winning either 4 or 5 gives us a almost certain top 4 seed, but 3-2 definitely doesn't put us out of the double bye. Iowa seems to hold the key to our double bye for the most part. If we beat them, I think 3-2 gets us in in most reasonable outcomes. If they really start to fade, we could lose to them and still be in the double byes. 2-3 is when we get real dangerous in terms of seeding--definitely something I see as possible, though unlikely.
 
#106      
The bracket generator is here:
http://bball.notnothing.net/big10.php?sport=mbb
Update it to include yesterday's results and make predictions for the rest. Home teams are on the left, and currently favored teams are highlighted in red. It shows us finishing 4-1 by losing only to OSU. This gives us a 2 seed by winning the tie-break over PSU. Give Iowa the win over us on March 8 and we drop to the 6. Worse, if we win on Thursday we play Iowa again on Friday. All of this assumes the favorites always win the "other" games.

Very nice!!

May not matter, but, can you deactivate color changes in games already decided?
 
#108      

danielb927

Orange Krush Class of 2013
Rochester, MN
Quick update from this morning. Our win tonight probably won't change things much as we were like 90% favorites in KenPom.

My new metric is saying the conference race is only 60% clear, which still feels pretty reasonable. We're in 6th in this chart, but check out the average seed for MSU, UW, Iowa, and us — all basically the same.

1582599966660.png


With random outcomes, we drop about a seed line, on average.

1582600018786.png
 
#109      
Just looking at the other top teams schedules, we seem to easily have the softest path to the end of the conference season. Still gotta play the games but you have to feel pretty good about us getting one of those 4 double-byes.
 
#110      
I haven't played around with the scenarios website yet....but I believe there could be a scenario where a loss on the final day against Iowa gets us a double bye, but a win would put us in a tie breaker that drops us to 5th or 6th.
interesting dilemma. Lose to Iowa, a team everyone here hates, and get a double bye, or beat them because we hate them, but then get to a 5th or 6th seed. lol
 
#111      
All things considered, I'd rather see Iowa lose tomorrow if both teams playing to a simultaneous L isn't an option. Iowa has the easier remaining schedule relatively.
 
#112      
If we would have beat Maryland that would have set us up well to maybe win the Conference. Hopefully we can finish in the Top 4. I like our chances to finish the year at 21-10 (13-7), heading into B1G tourney with a 3 seed, ranked 20th, looking at a 4 or 5 seed.
 
#114      
Was that an Evan Turner year?
It was, that was my first tournament. Turner hit a half court buzzer beater to take out Michigan on Friday, or we would have had a pretty good shot to be playing on Sunday (and we almost certainly would have made the tournament with a win over Michigan on Saturday). If I remember correctly, we had a chance to win at the end of regulation AND OT and didn't get a shot off either time. Rough game.
 
#115      
All things considered, I'd rather see Iowa lose tomorrow if both teams playing to a simultaneous L isn't an option. Iowa has the easier remaining schedule relatively.

And then this should set up to where if Illinois beats Iowa in the last game of the season, they are ahead of them in the standings and secure the double-bye. However, if Illinois has run the table 3-0 leading into that game, they might be playing with house money in that regard.
 
#117      

danielb927

Orange Krush Class of 2013
Rochester, MN
interesting dilemma. Lose to Iowa, a team everyone here hates, and get a double bye, or beat them because we hate them, but then get to a 5th or 6th seed. lol

I don't think this should actually be possible. If all other results are held constant, and we're in a tied group after a win over Iowa, we'd be behind that group with a loss to Iowa. There are certainly situations where we beat Iowa and miss a double-bye or lose to them and get one, but those require other results to change, too.
 
#122      
Every report I see is that the Illini are the 6 seed for the BTT as things currently stand, However, they are tied with PSU and Wisky but hold road victories over both. So I am evidently missing something. Can someone explain why the Illini are not currently the fourth seed? It makes no sense as their records are the same in league play and non-con play has no bearing whatsoever.
The seeding of teams in a multi-team tie is based upon their winning percentage just in games played between those teams. Today, if Illinois were to be the 6 seed it would be because of a 5 way tie between MSU, Iowa, PSU, Wisconsin and Illinois. Our record against MSU and Iowa is hurting us in this comparison.

I'm not going to try to figure out how many ways there are for us all to be 12-8, there are probably 100. But just know that being 0-3 right now against MSU and Iowa is hurting our position in the group. We can help ourselves only one more time in that math, also, in the final game.
 
#124      
Okay, this is my study break, so we might need someone with a clearer head to correct this. This is how the current Big Ten standings sit:

1. Maryland: 12-4

2. Penn State: 10-6
2. Michigan State: 10-6
2. Iowa: 10-6
2. Wisconsin: 10-6
2. ILLINOIS: 10-6

3. Michigan: 9-7

4. Rutgers: 9-8

How should we be rooting this week to help us get that crucial double bye? This is my rudimentary guess:

TUESDAY
Iowa at Michigan State ... doesn't matter, right?

WEDNESDAY
Rutgers at Penn State ... RU, but this is uphill
Maryland at Minnesota ... MINN, again uphill

THURSDAY
Wisconsin at Michigan ... UM, which is a nice break
Indiana at Purdue ... PU, which I'm confident of
Ohio State at Nebraska ... doesn't really matter, but I guess Nebraska

That look about right? We pretty much need some of the second place teams to fall off. Our schedule looks fairly middle of the road down the stretch, compared to the rest of the current top six. I tried to rank them by how tough they look to me, accounting for each team's chance of winning each:

RUT: at PSU, vs. UMD, at PUR
MSU: vs. IOWA, at UMD, at PSU, vs. OSU
UMD: at MINN, vs. MSU, at RUT,
IOWA: at MSU, vs. PSU, vs. PUR, at ILL
PSU: vs. RUT, at IOWA, vs. MSU, at NU
ILL: at NU, vs. IND, at OSU, vs. IOWA
MICH: vs. WISC, at OSU, vs. NEB
WISC: at MICH, vs. MINN, vs. NU, at IND

All we can control is the games we win, of course. Just keep getting better and coming out on top! Beating NU in Evanston and IU at home to finish out the week hopefully has us feeling good going into that tough final week. If we can finish this week 3-0, I'd imagine we will be back in the top 25 and will be participating in two pretty hyped up games to finish out the year, at ranked OSU and hosting ranked Iowa to wrap up the season. Exciting to have these games matter so much again!
 
#125      
TUESDAY
Iowa at Michigan State ... doesn't matter, right?

WEDNESDAY
Rutgers at Penn State ... RU, but this is uphill
Maryland at Minnesota ... MINN, again uphill

THURSDAY
Wisconsin at Michigan ... UM, which is a nice break
Indiana at Purdue ... PU, which I'm confident of
Ohio State at Nebraska ... doesn't really matter, but I guess Nebraska
Iowa depends on if you think we can/will beat them. Split Iowa and we almost certainly finish top 4, assuming a 2-1 finish elsewise. Lose to them and we really have to go 3-0 in our remaining to be looking good in the top 4 (unless Iowa and msu really drop off). At the end of the day, our Iowa game is probably the most important for us in terms of seeding that we can control directly.

We want Iowa and MSU to lose as much as possible, and PU and (more importantly) Michigan to win as much as possible. Essentially, any team we've got a winning record over we should be rooting for.

Get's trickier if you think those teams could jump us in the standings (mainly for PSU). There's definitely a chance they claim the 2nd seed outright, though I don't think that's a crazy issue (I'm more than ok with 3/4).
 
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