In a shameless plea for NCAA tournament at-large berths, the Big Ten last week filed a report with the tournament selection committee.
Every conference does it. They send reams of paper detailing injuries to key players and highlighting victories over teams from rival leagues.
Nothing is out of bounds. If you have a cute cheer squad, be sure to include a photo. The material is bundled together and dispatched to the committee’s hotel suite in downtown Indianapolis, along with a couple of dozen red roses. The Big Ten presumably will not be faxing the committee a box score from Friday’s Wisconsin-Ohio State in the Big Ten tournament quarterfinal.
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It will not forward the Purdue-Michigan State quarterfinal stat sheet. As for the summary of Minnesota’s opening-round loss to Northwestern, why bother? The Golden Gophers came to town bent on proving the committee had wronged them last spring. Maybe it’s time to start fudging those term papers again, eh, Goldy?
The Big Ten tournament is supposed to be a showcase. But it has turned into Exhibit A in the how-bad-is-the-Big Ten debate.
The league’s flagship, Wisconsin, sank before it left the dock. Coaches and apologists argue that when the No. 1 team goes down, it’s proof of a conference’s overall strength and parity. Didn’t Arizona and Marquette lose in their respective conference playoff openers?
“No one can say this is a [crummy] league just because the No. 1 seed went out,” Wisconsin guard Freddie Owens said.
There’s some truth to that. Besides it wouldn’t be fun if the higher seeds won every game.
But the Big Ten’s upsets weren’t the result of scrappy underdogs seizing the moment. These were mediocre teams losing to even-more mediocre teams.
The ticket-buying public has caught on. Friday’s opening session drew only 17,483 fans, the smallest crowd in the event’s six years. The house wasn’t close to full when local favorites Illinois and Northwestern tipped off during Friday’s cocktail hour.
There wasn’t a stampede at the box office when the 13th-ranked Fighting Illini, the closest thing this league has to a stalwart team, dashed out to a 47-21 halftime lead. Who wants to pay to see No. 18 Wisconsin, the league’s regular-season champion, go nearly seven minutes without a basket? The Badgers did that in the first half of their 58-50 loss to eighth-seeded Ohio State. If there’s anything worse than watching a Badger try to create his own shot, it’s watching him clang it off the rim. Wisconsin shot 34 percent from the floor.
As Wisconsin tried to rally in the closing minutes, its best scoring opportunity came when a Buckeye threw an inbound pass off his own basket. The ball caromed to a wide-open Badger loitering beyond the three-point arc. He missed worse than the kid throwing the inbound pass.
Purdue, meanwhile, mustered 12 points in the first half against Michigan State, the lowest one-half total in modern school history.
And these are two of the Big Ten’s good teams?
“I thought we would get to have a fun game where we had played hard and get out of here with some momentum heading into the NCAA tournament,” said Purdue coach Gene Keady, who seemed ready to request a 10th seed in the Baghdad regional. “For some reason we really struggle playing a good team on a neutral court. We’d better figure it out because we have this baby coming up against next week–I hope.”
Never fear, coach. Purdue will make the NCAA field. But don’t bother reserving rooms for the second weekend. By the time Friday’s opening doubleheader had ended, skeptical scribes were wondering when Big Ten Comissioner Jim Delany would issue another news release rebutting the media’s “pessimistic” appraisal of his conference. No one blames Delany for coming to his league’s defense. Someone has to.
Big Ten officials are quick to point out that the league has sent six teams to the Final Four in the last four years. They have yet to explain what that has to do with this year’s brackets.
Someone asked Wisconsin coach Bo Ryan what Friday’s loss would do to his team’s NCAA seed.
“I have no idea,” Ryan said. “I have never cared. What I think doesn’t matter.”
Fair enough. Here’s what we think: It’s time for spring football.