Big Ten vs. NCAA

Like most of you, I am getting pretty sick of hearing about how bad the Big Ten is, and how their is no way that they should have gotten 7 teams in the tournament. There is absolutely no basis for this other than the fact that ESPN loves teams and conferences that score because it makes for good t.v. Not one Big Ten tournament team had a head scratching loss to the point where you could make an argument against them. Here is a breakdown of what the Big Ten did to the rest of the basketball world.

Michigan State -

vs. ACC
Lost to Maryland 80-62
Lost to UNC 98-63

vs. Big 12
Beat Oklahoma State 94-79
Beat Texas 67-63
Beat Kansas 75-62

Sure the ACC losses look bad, but Michigan State should be considered the Big Ten and Big 12 champion after crushing 3 of the best 5 teams in the Big 12

Illinois

SEC
Beat Vanderbilt 69-63
Beat Georgia 76-42

Big 12
Beat Mizzou 75-59

ACC
Lost to Clemson 76-74

The SEC games don't mean anything because both Georgia and Vandy suck, Mizzou is a #3 seed and won the Big 12 tournament and Illinois beat the hell out of them. Again the ACC game sucks because Illinois could have won that game.

Purdue

ACC
Lost to Duke 76-60
Beat Boston College 71-64

Big 12
Lost to Oklahoma 87-82 in overtime

The loss to Duke was bad, and the Oklahoma game was really close. Purdue was up 6 with 5 minutes left and they blew it.

Ohio State

ACC
Beat Miami 73-68

Big East
Beat Notre Dame 67-62
Lost to West Virginia 76-48

Also beat Butler 54-51

Miami was a decent ACC team, and Notre Dame was supposed to challenge for the Big East title. Butler is a tournament team right now.

Minnesota

Big East
Beat Louisville 70-64

ACC
Beat Virginia 66-56

It is well documented that Minnesota didn't play anyone in the non-conference, but beating the #1 overall team should mean a lot. I mean, people think that Western Kentucky is the second coming of George Mason because they handled Louisville in the 3rd game of the season.

Wisconsin

ACC
Beat Virginia Tech 74-72

Big East
Lost to UConn 76-57
Lost to Marquette 61-58

Big 12
Lost to Texas 74-69

Wisconsin can be an argument for some people, but losing to Marquette and UConn are not terrible losses, Texas and VT both blow, but Wisconsin kind of does too.

Michigan

ACC
Lost to Maryland 75-70
Lost to Duke 71-56
Beat Duke 81-73

Pac 10
Beat UCLA 55-52

Big East
Lost to UConn 69-61

So for the 7 teams that got into the tournament from the Big Ten their records in non-conference over major conference and tournament teams is:

Big 12 - 4-2
ACC - 5-6
Big East 2-4
SEC 2-0
Pac 10 - 1-0

Based on this, what conference should bitch? Here are the next teams in each conference that didn't get in

Miami 18-12 (7-9) - Beating St. John's and Kentucky are not good non-conference wins. Maybe if you beat Ohio State then you could complain that you are better than a Big Ten team that got in.

Kansas State 21-11 (9-7) - When you lose to Iowa, Kentucky, and Oregon, you should be banned from any post season tournament. Best wins are Oakland and Cleveland?

Providence 19-13 (10-8) - Again, your best non-conference win is Rhode Island, yet you lose to Northeastern, St. Mary's, Baylor and Boston College. I don't care what you do in your conference, you can't lose to 4 non-tournament teams in your non-conference.

Washington State 17-15 (8-10) this record speaks for itself.

Florida 23-10 (9-7) The win against Washington is the only good win this team has. And when you lose 7 games in the SEC you have nothing to cry about.

Bubble Teams
St. Mary's - Do I think they got screwed? Yes, but the team they should be pissed about is Arizona. The only tournament team that they beat was San Diego State, but SDSU didn't make the tournament. The Providence win is okay, but not great. As soon as Patty Mills went down, they were screwed.

Creighton - The only tournament team that they beat was #12 seen Northern Iowa who is in their conference and they split with them. And they lost to Arkansas - Little Rock and Nebraska. The only school that you can lose to that gives the exact location of the school in the state is UNLV.

San Deigo State - They have an even worse case than St. Mary's since they lost to them. They also lost to Arizona and Arizona State. The win against Utah is not good enough to complain.

Its not like the Big Ten got 10 teams in and they all got ridiculous seeds. Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin got seeds of 10 and higher. They got exactly what they deserved. Do they have better resumes than the teams that didn't get in? Yes. Are the seeds consistent with what the teams did over the course of the season? Absolutely. But now you are going to have to listen to people say that they were right about the Big Ten because the 3 teams that got lower seeds did not pull off upsets. It is asinine to listen to people talk about how the Big Ten didn't deserve 7 teams. The Big Ten is a conference that was stacked in the middle. Just because we didn't have 3 teams in the Top 10 doesn't mean that the conference as a whole is garbage, it just means that the conference was pretty even.