Big Ten Tournament 2024-2025
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I get why you might want to limit the field but why would you pick 15 teams as the number?
redwingillini11
White and Sixth
- Batavia
I hate, hate, hate this. Just insane that every school in the country plays in its conference tournament and we are taking away these teams' only "postseason" moment.
If having all the games in one building is an issue, have the first two rounds at two different venues. In Chicago have a couple games at Wintrust Arena. In Indianapolis, have a couple of games at Hinkle Fieldhouse.
This is such a mistake I can't believe this is the best the Big Ten can come up with.
Fighter of the Nightman
- Chicago, IL
Agreed 100%. Like, at the VERY least you need to have a "First Four" or whatever (like with the NCAAs) to give the cellar dwellers a chance to get in ... and then at that point, just have the games start Tuesday instead of Wednesday...?
This would be very dumb. If conference tournaments couldn't theoretically give a last place team an auto bid, then just cancel them.
MoCoMdIllini
- Montgomery County, Maryland
Exactly. When 16 and a nice easy to visualize bracket is right there for the taking.
Bigtex
- DFW
seems like they trying to protect the higher seeds and the length of the tournament. one way to play a post season tourney
Day 1
18 vs 15
17 vs 16
Day 2
14 vs 1
13 vs 2
12 vs 3
11 vs 4
Day 3
10 vs 5
9 vs 6
8 vs w17/16
7 vs w18/15
Day 4
W 14/1 vs w7/18/15
W 13/2 vs w8/17/16
W 12/3 vs W9/6
W 11/4 vs W10/5
Day 5
W 14/1/7/18/15 vs W11/4/10/5
W 13/2/8/17/16 vs 12/3/9/6
Day 6
championship game
Day 1
18 vs 15
17 vs 16
Day 2
14 vs 1
13 vs 2
12 vs 3
11 vs 4
Day 3
10 vs 5
9 vs 6
8 vs w17/16
7 vs w18/15
Day 4
W 14/1 vs w7/18/15
W 13/2 vs w8/17/16
W 12/3 vs W9/6
W 11/4 vs W10/5
Day 5
W 14/1/7/18/15 vs W11/4/10/5
W 13/2/8/17/16 vs 12/3/9/6
Day 6
championship game
I personally have unwavering faith in the conference's leadership to make their response to an 18-team league dumber than any of us could imagine.
There are interesting solutions out there. You play the full league once, and use the three games that are opened up to play "nonconference" rivalry games (i.e. Purdue and IU could meet a second time but it would not count in the league standings). You break the league into six-team pods based on geography, play a double round robin, and then reseed everyone into three groups based on the results of the first stage (e.g. the first and second place teams in each pod go to the top pod, third and fourth to the second pod, etc.) to play another double round robin and get to 20 games.
There's all sorts of stuff that you can do to figure this out, but we're going to wind up with something like wildly unbalanced schedules where you play some teams twice and some teams zero times but still have everyone in the same table for determining the league champion, all while paying no attention to scheduling. I can't wait until we draw UCLA and Washington on the road in the same week but have a home game sandwiched between them.
But I think the league will exceed even these lofty expectations. If there's some format sitting there that's even dumber than the worst we can imagine, rest assured they will choose it.
Expansion of the BIG 10 is stupid.
Now that I got that off my chest, I have to say the following. The conference needs to keep the top seeds limited to only three tournament games. These games are brutal, and adding a fourth would only hurt the teams going into the tournament.
If you only let 14 in, the tournament stays exactly the same. It sucks for the bottom dwellers though.
If you go with 18, I think it looks like this:
1-4: Double Bye
5-6: Single Bye
Round 1: 6 games
7v18, 8v17, etc.
Leaves 12 teams
Round 2: 4 games
5v lowest seed
6 v lowest seed left
highest seed left v lowest seed left
highest seed left v lowest seed left
Leaves 8 teams
Round 3: 4 games
1 v lowest seed
2 v next lowest left
3 v next lowest left
4 v next lowest left
Standard 8 team tournament from here.
Now that I got that off my chest, I have to say the following. The conference needs to keep the top seeds limited to only three tournament games. These games are brutal, and adding a fourth would only hurt the teams going into the tournament.
If you only let 14 in, the tournament stays exactly the same. It sucks for the bottom dwellers though.
If you go with 18, I think it looks like this:
1-4: Double Bye
5-6: Single Bye
Round 1: 6 games
7v18, 8v17, etc.
Leaves 12 teams
Round 2: 4 games
5v lowest seed
6 v lowest seed left
highest seed left v lowest seed left
highest seed left v lowest seed left
Leaves 8 teams
Round 3: 4 games
1 v lowest seed
2 v next lowest left
3 v next lowest left
4 v next lowest left
Standard 8 team tournament from here.
My ideal:
* 17 conference games in a round robin.
* 3 more Inter-conference challenges -- a challenge each year with each of the ACC, SEC, Big East, and Big 12.
Teams that travel to USC/UCLA or WAS/ORE should play the pair on Fri/Sun in a single trip to reduce the travel impact. The Sun game should be the early game (noon PT?), to enable the students to get home by ~11pm CT. It is still likely 1AM before teams in the east get home. The time shift will make any evening games Friday feel like they are finishing at midnight. Heck, maybe the teams should play Sat/Sun afternoons. The west coast teams should also have games both Sat/Sun to ensure equal tiredness. e.g. (ILL plays USC/UCLA Sat/Sun, WI plays UCLA/USC Sat/Sun.)
My actual expectation: Do whatever makes the most money with no consideration to the impact on the players health or studies, or fairness of competition.
Fighter of the Nightman
- Chicago, IL
Eh, I am an Illini football fan since birth ... I have plenty of sympathy with the folks who are loyally sticking with the Minnesota Gophers basketball program and just want one more opportunity to hope for a miracle, lol.
I think it could be tough to find a venue to set aside 6 days for this. I also think allocating tickets to 18 teams will leave a lot of open seats. Maybe the first 3 rounds are home games for the higher seed, or they are played in a smaller venue in the same town as Friday thru Sunday's games. In Chicago that could be Wintrust or Welsh Ryan.
I also don't have a problem in keeping the bottom 4-6 teams out of the tournament.
I mean, they used to bundle travel when it was just going to play Indiana and Ohio State. I know that teams don't do it by bus anymore but it still seems like a waste of everyone's time to just pull games out of a hat or whatever they do to schedule things now.
The Bulls used to spend the better part of a month on the road because the circus was in town, so seems like a week could be doable. (I guess Reinsdorf solved that problem by just putting the circus on the court.)
Battle89
- Cary-Grove, the better Trojan team
Sounds like I am in the minority on this one. Been wanting the number of B1G tournament teams reduced for years. Don't like 14 in now and 18 sounds awful (though how they get to 15 is beyond me).
Regular season should mean something, and I don't want our conference playing that many games right before the NCAA tournament. I'd say go all the way down to 8 and a simple bracket, but that may be too far given the posts above. I'll go to 12 with the top 4 getting byes.
Regular season should mean something, and I don't want our conference playing that many games right before the NCAA tournament. I'd say go all the way down to 8 and a simple bracket, but that may be too far given the posts above. I'll go to 12 with the top 4 getting byes.
Not bad. Maybe only reseed at the start of Rd3.
Condensing to make it easier to see. Seeds 1-4: Double Bye; Seeds 5-6: Single Bye
| Tues | Rd1 | 12->6 | Bottom 12 teams |
| Weds | Rd2 | (6+2)->4 | Rd1 winners + seeds 5,6 |
| Thurs | Break day (Travel?) | Protect player health. | |
| Fri | Rd3 | (4+4) -> 4 | Rd2 winners + seeds 1-4 |
| Sat | Rd4 | 4 -> 2 | |
| Sun | Rd5 | 2 -> 1 |
Scheduling Rd1 w/6 teams is interesting. Either one needs two sites, and play overlapping games, or one needs two days. The west coast teams makes "higher seed hosts" non-viable. I get wanting to drop two Rd1 games.
A possible two day schedule is:
| Mon | Rd1a | 6->3 | 7v18, 8v17, 9v16 |
| Tues | Rd1b | 6->3 | 10v15, 11v14, 12v13 |
I'm also okay with not having the bottom teams play. I'd be find going down to 13 (seeds 1-3 get a bye). Any team below that doesn't have a real shot at the NCAA. With expansion, in a really good year, we might send 11. Lets give them resume building chances.
Pipe Dream: The tournament is a week earlier so players have a chance to recover before the Dance.
band camp
- STL City
Blackhawks are also a tenant.
Easy solution expand conference to 20 teams. Have 10 teams play in the Midwest and 10 play on the West coast. Then have a Championship game between them. The Big Ten really is 2 conferences under the same name. The fact you won’t really play teams in football and can only play once in basketball doesn’t build rivals
IlliniSaluki
- IL metro east burbs of St. Louis
I don't think they will ever not have the full conference in the Big Ten Tourney. It gives teams that are on the bubble a chance to win a game or two and get in and a possible Cinderella team to win the B1G tourney and get in also. Plus it's more $$$$ and that will win out over all the talk about "it's too many games."
PS. If we get to 20 teams they could start doing a double Tourney where the winner of Tourney A (held in Indy) and Tourney B (held in LA) meet for the overall B1G tourney Championship. Not sure if that is possible but just a thought.
PS. If we get to 20 teams they could start doing a double Tourney where the winner of Tourney A (held in Indy) and Tourney B (held in LA) meet for the overall B1G tourney Championship. Not sure if that is possible but just a thought.
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It was always fun listening to Pat and Dale blame the circus trip for the team's failures back in the glory days of Eric Daze & Co.
@Navy_illini , @IlliniSaluki : Who do you add to get to 10 west coast teams? The BigTen passed on the best of the rest out west. I feel sorry for whatever teams get put in the "western" conference (NE, IA, MN, WI?). The Pac12 was probably worth better TV money that that western conference, and it was easier on the students.
While I understand the national footprint for selling TV rights, as an athlete, I'd think long and hard about going to UCLA/USC/WA/ORE at this point. The qualify of student life is going to be terrible due to the travel requirements. I'd also strongly bias against going to any Big10 school if more than one west coast trip was required per season. Prediction: All of the newly added west coast schools take a huge dive that really starts to show 4-6 years from now.
At this point, I hope the next round of TV contracts is all of the power conferences banding together to do a single deal. The mega conferences could split backup into regional conferences of 10-11 teams each, which seems to be about the right number for playing round robins in football and basketball. It would also allow the inter-conference challenges. The idea would almost work with just the Big10 and SEC other than the 4 west coast teams.
Anyone for ditching the 6 coastal schools, NE, and IA? (Nothing against the coastal schools other than geography.)
While I understand the national footprint for selling TV rights, as an athlete, I'd think long and hard about going to UCLA/USC/WA/ORE at this point. The qualify of student life is going to be terrible due to the travel requirements. I'd also strongly bias against going to any Big10 school if more than one west coast trip was required per season. Prediction: All of the newly added west coast schools take a huge dive that really starts to show 4-6 years from now.
At this point, I hope the next round of TV contracts is all of the power conferences banding together to do a single deal. The mega conferences could split backup into regional conferences of 10-11 teams each, which seems to be about the right number for playing round robins in football and basketball. It would also allow the inter-conference challenges. The idea would almost work with just the Big10 and SEC other than the 4 west coast teams.
Anyone for ditching the 6 coastal schools, NE, and IA? (Nothing against the coastal schools other than geography.)
Tacomallini
- Washington State
Fixed it for me
I think if you put UCLA USC Ore Washington plus 6 in LA. You probably pack that arena if UCLA or USC are good. If they aren’t good then it would be hard to fill that arena. The Big Ten problem is it doesn’t fit in a geographic footprint. RU to UW and there are too many teams
I agree with your hope of a mega conference to restore the conference landscape. Until that happens the logistics of determining a conference champion needs to be figured out
The more teams (and games for the bottom seeds) you add, the less likely it is for a Cinderella who was solidly out of the tournament to win the whole thing. So I have no issue with the worst teams not being invited.
To me, the issue is that you want to ensure that bubble teams are ALWAYS included, as the BTT is their chance to add quality wins.
I would think 14 teams (current format) would get you there, but maybe not, which may be the argument for 15 or 16.
To me, the issue is that you want to ensure that bubble teams are ALWAYS included, as the BTT is their chance to add quality wins.
I would think 14 teams (current format) would get you there, but maybe not, which may be the argument for 15 or 16.
There are plenty of conferences, albeit mid major and low major conferences, that don't have the bottom 2 teams in their conference play in the conference tournament. Though in a lot of cases it's because they're running their men's and women's tournaments the same week and are in a time crunch with the building they're using.
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