Big Ten Basketball 2020-21 Discussion (Part 1)

Will Nebraska win a conference game?? That clearly looks 0-4 to me.

Nope, it would be a pretty big surprise if they did. The league is too good, their schedule is going to be so condensed.

I feel awful for Nebraska. That’s brutal.

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Seems like Illinois-MSU is on the schedule for Feb 23rd:

Seems like the best window for Michigan-Illinois is the first half of the last week of the season.

Maybe I’m just hyper critical about all of this, but it seems like a bad idea to further delay scheduling the first and second place teams from playing until the last week of the season.

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Oh boy. As if the Illinois fan outrage wasn’t loud enough already

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My Illinois fan cousin texted me and said the UM women’s team is playing on Thursday against Purdue yet the men’s team is (obviously) not playing on Thursday against Illinois. What’s up with that?

The women’s team has more games to make up and Purdue is 12th in the B1G. I am guessing Warde and KBA agreed we could afford to play them without much warmup.

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Big Ten release on today’s updates to the schedule:

The Big Ten has announced adjustments to its men’s basketball schedule. Illinois at Nebraska, which had been previously postponed on January 13, has been rescheduled to February 12. Illinois at Michigan State, which had been previously postponed on January 23, has been rescheduled to February 23.

The Big Ten will continue to work with its member institutions to identify rescheduling options for other games that have been postponed.

In order to accommodate the rescheduled contests, the Big Ten also announced additional changes to the schedule. A full list of schedule adjustments can be found below:

Wednesday, Feb. 10

Indiana at Northwestern – 5:30 pm ET/4:30 pm CT on BTN (time change)

Rutgers at Iowa – 7:30 pm ET/6:30 pm CT on BTN (time change)

Wisconsin at Nebraska – 9:30 pm ET/8:30 pm CT on BTN (moved from Feb. 11, 2021)

Thursday, Feb. 11

Purdue at Minnesota – 5:00 pm ET/4:00 pm CT on ESPN2 (time and network change)

Friday, Feb. 12

Illinois at Nebraska – 9:00 pm ET/8:00 pm CT on BTN (rescheduled from Jan. 13, 2021)

Tuesday, Feb. 23

Illinois at Michigan State – 7:00 pm ET/6:00 pm CT on FS1 (rescheduled from Jan. 23, 2021)

Wednesday, Feb. 24

Nebraska at Illinois – Game to be moved to final week of the season (Date and Time TBA)

Playing Penn State on Feb 16th still seems to be the only possible game we can makeup that week.

Looks like Penn State and Northwestern would also be available on the 23rd and 25th as well.

Scheduling Illinois on the 25th could be deemed as “fair” since that could* be Michigan’s 4th game in 7 days and Illinois’ 4th game in 8 days.

*assuming Michigan would get a game rescheduled on the 23rd.

Seems like the only way we get 2 MSU games is back to back on the final weekend too.

This seems likely the more I look at the schedule.

This makes sense to me too.

PSU on the 16th
Illinois on the 25th
MSU B2B,
Indiana B2B? :man_shrugging:

would the B2Bs be one game in each venue?

Since the conference made it clear that its priority is that every team play at least once, and then rivalry games, I’d hope that they don’t seek to reschedule PSU. Keep the team fresh.

MSU seems easy enough to do at each home arena. Indiana not sure, I assume it would have to be at one arena though.

I think the best solution would be to play Nebraska at Crisler 11 days in a row.

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MSU would be an easy home and home. No idea on IU if they would go down that route at the same arena. Someone on Twitter noted that Purdue has 2 games left against Nebraska and could just play two there (as a hypothetical).

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I read “priority” as if we have two options to play on one day, we pick the teams that haven’t played. Other teams are rescheduling games even if they’ve already played teams.

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Indiana and Michigan’s schedules lineup to play twice in three days right now, Feb 27th and March 1st, so it doesn’t necessarily have to be back to back days.

My guess is that we end up playing 4 games out of the five dates of Feb 21, 23, 25, 27, and Mar 1st. Right now the 21st and 27th are the only scheduled spots @OSU and @IU respectively. PSU/NW are both available the 23rd and 25th, Illinois is available on the 25th, and IU is available March 1st.

That’d be 2 remade games in that 9 day stretch, a potential third being MSU in the final weekend, and the fourth would have to be PSU on the 16th. That would get us to 19 games total.