As we head into the final week of Big Ten play, let’s take a look at how the BTT is shaping up and how Purdue can navigate some potential tiebreakers.
Big Ten Tournament Outlook and Tiebreakers
We have one more week of Big Ten basketball in this regular season. 17 games will decide how teams are positioned for the Big Ten Tournament in Indianapolis next week. For Purdue, this next week will give two opportunities to try and secure a double-bye and remain the only team not to play before Friday in the BTT (excluding the newcomers). As it stands, Purdue sits at 5th in the standings due to a 3-way tiebreaker between itself, Wisconsin, and Maryland. I will explain this specific tiebreaker and potential tiebreaker moving forwards which, in turn, should give Purdue fans some easy rooting scenarios for the week.
Let’s first take a look at the Big Ten standings as of Monday morning and each teams remaining games:
- Michigan State – 15-3 – At Iowa, Vs Michigan
- Michigan – 14-4 – Vs Maryland, At Michigan State
- Maryland – 12-6 – At Michigan, Vs Northwestern
- Wisconsin – 12-6 – At Minnesota, Vs Penn State
- Purdue – 12-6 – Vs Rutgers, At Illinois
- UCLA – 11-7 – At Northwestern, Vs USC
- Illinois – 11-8 – Vs Purdue
- Oregon – 10-8 – Vs Indiana, At Washington
- Indiana – 9-9 – At Oregon, Vs Ohio State
- Ohio State – 8-10 – Vs Nebraska, At Indiana
- Rutgers – 7-11 – At Purdue, Vs Minnesota
- Minnesota – 7-11 – Vs Wisconsin, At Rutgers
- Nebraska – 7-11 – At Ohio State, Vs Iowa
- Northwestern – 7-11 – Vs UCLA, At Maryland
- USC – 6-12 – Vs Washington, At UCLA
- Iowa – 6-12 – Vs Michigan State, At Nebraska
- Penn State – 5-14 – At Wisconsin
- Washington – 4-14 – At USC, Vs Oregon
Now here comes the fun part: currently, there is a 3-way tie for 3rd and a 4-way tie for 11th. Both are good examples of the tiebreaker procedures, which can be found here.
Let’s start with the 4-way tie. By rule, a tiebreaker between a group of 3 or more teams is resolved by first comparing the records of each team in the group against the remaining teams in the group. In this case, Rutgers is 2-0 against the pool of Nebraska, Northwestern, and Minnesota (they have not played Minnesota yet). Nebraska and Northwestern are both 1-2 against the group and Minnesota is 1-1 (again, haven’t played Rutgers yet). By winning percentage, Rutgers (1.000) takes the top spot of the four, Minnesota (.500), takes the second best slot, and Nebraska and Northwestern proceed to their own tiebreaker in the next spot. Now, because one or more teams broke the ties (2 in this case), we reset the process and because only 2 teams remain tied, the tiebreaker is head to head record and in this case, Nebraska beat Northwestern giving the Huskers the 13 seed and the Wildcats the 14 seed.
Now let’s look at the 3-way tie for third place between Maryland, Wisconsin, and Purdue. Again, because 3 or more teams are tied, we first look at their records amongst the group. Each of the three is 1-1 against the other two. This means we move on to the next tiebreaker which compares the record (by winning percentage) of the group against the top seeded team and continues down until a single team gains an advantage (this is where the rule gets tricky but I will explain later). So we start with the top seed in Michigan State. Each of Maryland, Wisconsin, and Purdue are 0-1 against the Spartans, meaning we move one spot down to Michigan. Maryland has yet to play Michigan yet so they are 0-0. Wisconsin is 0-1 against the Wolverines, and Purdue is 1-1. Now, there are two things to take away from this: by Big Ten rules, 0-0 is deemed to be the same winning percentage as 1-0 and the way the rule is written, only one team can separate from the group when comparing records in this stage of the tie breaker. This means that, at the moment, Maryland has the best record of the group and is awarded the 3-seed but because they can be the only team to separate, it does not matter that Purdue has the better record than Wisconsin against Michigan. Instead, the tiebreaker reverts back to head-to-head record where Wisconsin takes the 4-seed and leaves the 5-seed for the Boilermakers.
Obviously, this is just semantics at the moment but it does clear out a pretty easy path for rooting purposes over the week. Purdue fans first and foremost want Purdue to beat Rutgers and Illinois but because of the tiebreakers above, Maryland or Wisconsin would need to lose at least one of their games in order to bump Purdue up to the double-bye territory. The most likely candidate for that is Maryland to lose at Michigan on Wednesday. In fact, if Purdue wins against Rutgers and Michigan beats Maryland, Purdue very nearly clinches a double bye (2 out of 64 possible scenarios remaining result in Purdue as a 5-seed). Just for kicks, those scenarios additionally include Maryland losing to Northwestern at home, Wisconsin splitting at Minnesota and against Penn State, Purdue losing at Illinois, and UCLA winning out (because UCLA jumping into the mix completely messes with the tiebreakers). Altogether, it’s unlikely that both Wisconsin splits and Maryland loses out, but crazy things happen.
At the end of this week, if these three games go in Purdue’s favor, they will have a double-bye: Purdue over Rutgers, Michigan over Maryland, Purdue over Illinois. Simple enough to root for. And for what it’s worth, it is still possible for Purdue to jump up to the 2-seed if Purdue wins out and Michigan loses out. Obviously, we will know more as the week progresses, so keep checking in at Hammer and Rails for analysis of the bracket. But as for the Boilermakers, just keep winning.