I feel like it’s darn near fact that the regular season title has receded in importance with the wildly imbalanced schedule…
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And with the emergence of the B1G tourney, and with the growth of the NCAA tourney itself. . . OTOH, if MSU wins the B1G tourney too, they have something to crow about. I don’t see that as a foregone conclusion.
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After we beat them, many of their fans were saying that the B1G championship meant nothing to them this year. It was final four or bust.
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Same here - kept hearing about how little they care about a game played in January. It’s a convenient argument when you lose I suppose…
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Next year there will be a 20-game schedule with protected rivalries, so it shouldn’t be quite as bad as this year going forward.
True, it should be better, but protected rivalries don’t guarantee that the top teams are all going to meet twice.
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Does Rutgers want Michigan to be a protected rivalry? 
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Just means we have seven double plays instead of five. So single plays are still at 6. Basically a 50/50 shot you’ll have a double play against any given team. Wish we could go back to 12 teams and then we could feasibly have a round robin home and away conference schedule.
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Yes, it’s still far from ideal. I’d like to go to 22 games, honestly.
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Brutal last minute for Minny at Wisconsin. See if Wisconsin can grab this win in OT. (Edit: Wisconsin won. Quad 2 win still in tact)
As a side note, pretty awesome to see Wisconsin let a kid (student?) on a wheelchair help pass out towels during timeouts.
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As with football, I see good reasons to play more games in-conference. Not only does it lend rigor to the championship process, but it can invigorate the local rivalries that give conferences their character. The B1G was diluted when NB, Rutgers, and MD entered; it can be strengthened by having these teams actually play each other, develop histories and rivalries. If Delaney and his cronies want to strengthen the B1G they could do worse than to have its teams remove some of the far-flung patsies from their schedules, actually play one another. I’ll bet it would help with waning attendance, too. EDIT: NB that they ARE going to 20 next year.
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Indiana @ Nebraska line of only 3 seems mighty fishy tonight…
It’s not far from the kenpom/barttovik lines, while IU has been playing pretty well and probably gets more money bet on them. I think people here sometimes overvalue Nebraska because of their big win against UM.
IU giving Nebraska a tussle.
Congrats on locking up a 2:30 game. Disappointed there won’t be 1am recaps!
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It’s too bad we won’t get on the other side of the B10 bracket - we seem to have OSU’s number, and Purdue really seems unmoored at the moment.
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I get what you’re saying, and I think M has a better team than OSU, but we really don’t have their number, more like we’re about to get their number.
MSU, Wisconsin… we currently, demonstrably, have their number.
I hear you - I just ascribe our loss in Columbus to the untested callowness of youth. It seems to me like when we matchup with them, we’re better provided we keep our heads out of our behinds.
I agree. OSU is obviously better than we thought they were, when we lost in Columbus; and they provide some funky matchups with Tate and KBD. But I think that loss was mostly of our own doing. OSU, of course, played better for the last 25 minutes of the game than the previous 15, but we just threw up bricks and missed defensive switches that we had been making just minutes prior.
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I don’t think it was youth. Didn’t MAAR, Duncan and Matthews combine for 3-20 in the second half or something crazy like that?
I remember us missing a ton of layups too