Tie-breakers

An early look at the tie-breakers for the conference tournament shows that Michigan is not in great shape. The Wisconsin game is the killer. Lots of splits among UofM/MSU/OSU/WISC, but since we only played Wisconsin the once that hurts us. If we don't win both games this week, there's a decent chance we're looking at the 5-seed in the conference tournament.

OSU has at IU and Ill at home. Two tough games.

MSU has Wisconsin and NU at home. They can win out. Wisconsin is desperate after last night's loss.

Wisconsin has at MSU and at PSU. They will probably split.

UM has at Purdue and IU at home. I think Purdue is a must win.

Should be an interesting week.

kind of comical that UM will most likely be a top 5 nationally ranked team and still be a 5 seed in their conference tourney.

Yep the Wisconsin and Penn St games should not have been losses. If we would've done what was expected then M would be looking at a showdown with IU for the conference title on the last game of the season.

Oh well, let's not concern ourselves with it too much. If the team is playing good come tournament time I'll be happy.

At the beginning of the year I thought if they make it to the elite 8 it would be a successful year. That could very well still happen.

That would be funny but it really isn't possible. Either Michigan St. or Wisconsin will have 6 losses, so Michigan will finish above one of them.

hailtoyourvictor wrote:

That would be funny but it really isn't possible. Either Michigan St. or Wisconsin will have 6 losses, so Michigan will finish above one of them.

But UM has a shot at 6 losses too.

yes the Wisconsin loss was the killer but we need to just build momentum now. @Purdue is very big.

'shoes

But if Michigan has 6 losses they won't be a top 5 team.

Did a little more checking and as near as I can tell it breaks down like this: if we beat Purdue but lose to IU, the only way we avoid the five seed is if one of MSU/Wisc/OSU loses twice, with OSU being the only one where that seems reasonably likely. If we beat IU but lose to Purdue we would need one of the three to lose twice or be in a tie-breaker that didn't involve Wisconsin. Or we could just win them both and not worry about it.

I stole this from rlcBlue @ UMHoops.com

"

So I finished looking at all 128 possibilities for the remaining games involving the top 5 teams in the conference and the impact on BTT seeding, and here's the executive summary:

1) Just win, Baby. If Michigan finishes 11-7, it will be the #5 seed in the BTT, no matter what happens in the rest of the games.

2) Don't get your hopes up too high. Michigan can't be the #1 seed; we get #2 in 20 scenarios. Indiana is the top seed in 118 of the scenarios.

3) Most likely isn't that likely (and that's a good thing). The KenPom Chalk scenario (IU wins out, MSU wins out, UM beats Purdue, OSU beats Illinois, Wisconsin beats PSU) has a 15% chance of happening. In that scenario, BTT seeding would be IU, MSU, UW, OSU, UM.

4)Titles are great, but... A four-way co-championship that includes Wisconsin gets Michigan the #4 seed in the BTT. A four-way that includes MSU gets us the #3 seed. A three-way that includes MSU gets us the #2 seed; without Sparty we get the #3 seed. All two-way championships get us the #2 seed behind IU.

5)The road to the title game is paved with cheese.The most advantageous seedings IMHO are those where UM and Wisconsin share the #2 and #3 seeds, in either order. These virtually all require UW to win in East Lansing.

Bonus)Absolute best-case scenarios.OSU beats IU, UM beats Purdue, UW beats MSU, UM beats IU, Illinois beats OSU, PSU beats UW, MSU vs Northwestern goes either way; Michigan is regular season co-champ, #2 seed opposite UW at #3."