2019 Big Ten Tournament

Shades

Well-known member
Joined
Oct 30, 2015
Messages
1,998
Reaction score
92
Points
48
The Big Ten Tournament keeps getting brought up in various threads, so I thought it was time.

The 2019 Big Ten Tournament is being held March 6-10 in Indianapolis, IN at Bankers Life Fieldhouse
Buy tickets now through Ticketmaster (Purchase Tickets) or your school ticket office.
Early Bird Pricing: Only $55 for an All-Session Ticket if purchased before January 31.
Regular Price: $75 for an All-Session Ticket.

Printable tournament bracket
https://bigten.org/documents/2018/9/13//2019_B1G_WBB_Tournament_Bracket.pdf?id=6075

XtNnsg3.jpg




If the games end up like this, which is Minnesota helps themselves, the favs win the other games
except maybe Indiana beating Purdue, you should end up with this bracket, which I'm really liking.
r2HGP3v.jpg


jqg6ZPa.jpg
 
Last edited:


Looks like Northwestern is going to knock off Indiana tonight.
359-BCBED-2-A9-E-4870-BE34-FB8-B17-A6-F267.jpg

These future outcomes should result in this tournament bracket.
2-F93-AD31-08-C9-4-E7-C-A544-62341-B182-C68.jpg
 

https://www.thehoosiernetwork.com/2...omens-basketballs-69-49-loss-to-northwestern/

With the loss, the Hoosiers remain a game behind Purdue and Nebraska and in the 11 spot in the Big Ten standings with a 7-10 record in the conference. For Indiana to avoid playing in the first round of the Big Ten Tournament, the Hoosiers would have to beat Purdue and hope Penn State can knock off Nebraska. Indiana has the tiebreaker over Nebraska based off of a head to head win on February 3.
 

https://www.thehoosiernetwork.com/2...omens-basketballs-69-49-loss-to-northwestern/

With the loss, the Hoosiers remain a game behind Purdue and Nebraska and in the 11 spot in the Big Ten standings with a 7-10 record in the conference. For Indiana to avoid playing in the first round of the Big Ten Tournament, the Hoosiers would have to beat Purdue and hope Penn State can knock off Nebraska. Indiana has the tiebreaker over Nebraska based off of a head to head win on February 3.

So if I understand that correctly, Indiana is now in the 11 spot ranking for the Big Ten Tournament, and I guess Minnesota is in the 6 spot.

Back on Dec 10 when Minnesota was riding high for a couple weeks already off the Syracuse win at an RPI #17, Indiana was also riding high at RPI #19 (both undefeated at the time). Both Minnesota and Indiana were undefeated in NC play through much (all, in Minnesota’s case) of the NC season.

In subsequent weeks, as Minnesota’s RPI dropped like a rock due to horrible SoS, Indiana stayed in the top couple RPI slots among Big Ten teams, with RPI ranks in the range of #12-15. I remember at the time thinking we’re better than Indiana (and still think so).

By the time Indiana’s RPI started dropping (RPI #29 at the time with a 4-3 Big Ten record), Minnesota’s RPI was way down to #116 thanks to bad SoS plus early Big Ten losses (2-5 Big Ten record).

Fast forward in time to 5 days ago, and RPI thread reports Indiana to be on the bubble but Minnesota out of NCAA playoff contention with RPIs of #48 and #101, respectively.

Bringing it up to date for today (Feb 27), Indiana is at an RPI #57 (with SoS #47), whereas Minnesota is at RPI #106 (with SoS #147) - all per RealTimeRPI. Indiana has a 7-10 Big Ten record and Minnesota has an 8-8 Big Ten record (1.5 games diff).

Indiana and Minnesota took similar paths in falling from NCAA grace - losing too many Big Ten games. Minnesota’s fall appears more precipitous but only due to its horrible SoS.

I claim that the B1G numbers somewhat substantiate my earlier gut feeling that Minnesota was (and is) a better team than Indiana.

Fast forward to today. Per Charlie Creme, Indiana is still on the bubble with a 12th seed in the Albany district. Minnesota is not Moving In and nowhere to be found in the discussion.

And that’s in a draft tournament bracket estimate (by Creme) that includes 6 Big-Ten teams (compared to 8 ACC, 8 SEC, 6 PAC-12, 3 Big 12, 2 of several others).

Indiana currently has an 18-7 record (7-10 Big Ten) compared to Minnesota’s 19-8 record (8-8 Big Ten). By semi-transitivity of who beat whom, Minnesota is a better team than Indiana, yet Indiana is in, and Minnesota is out. In his commentary, Creme states “Bubble teams such as Auburn, INDIANA, West Virginia, Kansas State and Butler might need as many open slots as possible.”

So Indiana is not yet safely in. But why is it even in the discussion when Minnesota is a better team but not in the discussion?

The answer, of course, lies in the evils of RPI - most notably that it is mostly a measure of SoS (along with needing at least sufficient victories to not boot a team right off the largely SoS-based RPI map).

Indiana is in because they were brilliant in how they chose which NC teams to play - somewhat puffy but not total cream puffs. Their NC teams were easy enough for them to beat (as evidenced by they too had an early-season unbeaten record), but not oozing with cream. In contrast, Minnesota (read: Stollings) was absolutely idiotic in picking NC teams to play. They chose NC teams (minus Syracuse and a couple more) that were both puffy and injected full of cream, and creamy frosting to boot.

As a result, Creme (pun intended) says Minnesota is out, but the worse team (albeit less creamy team) Indiana is in.

This little story, on the face of it, tells us what we already knew. And I’m sorry to keep beating on a dead horse, but I make the point yet again to point out that Charlie Creme is a joke. He just puts some RPI metric numbers (that are poorly correlated with how good a given team is) into Excel and let’s Excel sort them, then massages the results a bit.

My concern is that what the Selection Committee does might be only slightly less of a joke than Charlie Creme, in spite of the laundry list of criteria that they ostensibly consider.
 
Last edited:


Why not put the blame on the past coaching staff instead of Charlie Creme? Everyone knows the committee uses RPI. Pitino talked about it a couple years ago when he built his schedule and they still went mostly off rpi, he put a bunch of solid mid majors but none they should ever lose to and they had a rpi around 25 at the end of the year and got a 5 seed. Its up to the coaching staffs to figure out what the selection committee uses when building their schedules and exploit it. Instead Stollings crew put together a schedule of 200+ rpi teams that do nothing of value except boost her coaching record. I'm with you that Minnesota is better than Indiana, but Minnesota now has a nonconference sos of 344 while Indiana's is 102. MInnesota's overall sos is 150 while Indiana's is 45th. SOS is the difference and the only person to blame is Stollings for putting that crap together.
 
Last edited:

WI'm with you that Minnesota is better than Indiana, but Minnesota now has a nonconference sos of 344 while Indiana's is 102. MInnesota's overall sos is 150 while Indiana's is 45th. SOS is the difference and the only person to blame is Stollings for putting that crap together.

Well said. I wonder if Stollings will continue to schedule cream puffs moving forward in her new gig.
 

Well said. I wonder if Stollings will continue to schedule cream puffs moving forward in her new gig.
I suspect she will.

Why not put the blame on the past coaching staff instead of Charlie Creme? Everyone knows the committee uses RPI. Pitino talked about it a couple years ago when he built his schedule and they still went mostly off rpi, he put a bunch of solid mid majors but none they should ever lose to and they had a rpi around 25 at the end of the year and got a 5 seed. Its up to the coaching staffs to figure out what the selection committee uses when building their schedules and exploit it. Instead Stollings crew put together a schedule of 200+ rpi teams that do nothing of value except boost her coaching record. I'm with you that Minnesota is better than Indiana, but Minnesota now has a nonconference sos of 344 while Indiana's is 102. MInnesota's overall sos is 150 while Indiana's is 45th. SOS is the difference and the only person to blame is Stollings for putting that crap together.
Well said, indeed. Thanks for posting, whalenfan, since I agree with you 110%. And you stated the important points quite eloquently.

I actually kept disparaging remarks for Stollings at a minimum in my post - I suppose mainly because I think I've lambasted her sufficiently in prior posts, and I'm now taking a slightly different tack to the problem (see below). I'm glad you filled in and connected the dots that I left out. However, I guess I did actually call her an idiot. ["(Stollings) was absolutely idiotic in picking NC teams to play. They chose NC teams (minus Syracuse and a couple more) that were both puffy and injected full of cream, and creamy frosting to boot."]

I think we all (Lindsay included, see next paragraph) just feel frustrated by the fact that Stollings messed up the SoS, and that messed up the RPI, and there's nothing we can do about it. Except cheer for the team to win the Big Ten championship as well as the two remaining regular-season games as (at this point) practice for the Big Ten championship.

In the recently posted Whalen interview "Coach Whalen Previews Rutgers" in the "Minnesota visits Rutgers" thread, Lindsay answers a question regarding RPI (couldn't hear the question, they really need to mic up the interviewers in these videos). Her answer includes a comment on the order or "There's nothing we can do about the non-conference schedule. It was given to us." This doesn't tell us anything we didn't know, but it does show us that Lindsay is acutely aware of how we got a really raw deal in (using my own allegoric language from this point) this year's SoS/RPI poker game. In essence, Lindsay had to come in mid-poker-game and take over the seat + cards + stake from a prior poker player (e.g., coach Stollings) who didn't even know how to play the game of SoS/RPI poker. Stollings thought the SoS part of the RPI game was there so that she could boost her own win/loss resume as a coach. A totally selfish and self-promoting approach, with no regard for the team.

In reality, a team should play the SoS part of the SoS/RPI poker game in a manner that maximizes the probabilistically expected value of the RPI metric (and we are currently stuck with that metric, unfortunately) at end of season when the Committee is evaluating teams for potential invitations to the NCAA playoffs. Based on the cards that Stollings left us, we totally lost the SoS game this year (or a more accurate description would be that we are the SoS laughing-stock of the Big Ten).

Because the Gophers so badly lost the SoS part of the SoS/RPI poker game this year, we also badly lost the RPI part of the game as well. Unfortunately, neither the Committee nor Charlie Creme seem to look much beyond RPI. RPI is just some arbitrarily-defined type of poker chip that is valued at a linear combination of 0.75 times the number of SoS chips that you won + 0.25 times (roughly) the fraction of games that you won. It puts not enough emphasis on basketball performance, and horribly too much emphasis on who you were able to finagle to play. To make it understandable how bad RPI is as a metric, again using the poker analogy, you could say that although you need to be a pretty good basketball team just to get a decent seat at the poker table, the winners of the poker game are mostly determined by who you were lucky enough to talk into playing you, plus how smart you were in signing up to play teams that are bad enough for you to be able to beat, but good enough to boost your SoS.

In the Mens game they use a different type of arbitrarily-defined poker chips called NET that are equally bad for different reasons. One of the many faults of NET is the opposite of the RPI fault, namely that they place too much emphasis on how much you clobber the other teams by, on average, and not nearly enough (if any) emphasis on how strong were the teams that you clobbered. So playing cream-puffs will tend to jack up the Mens NET ranking.

The part that I think is horribly ironic is that if the Womens game had been using NET this year instead of RPI, then the Lady Gophers would be trumpeted as NCAA leaders - probabily coming in at a NET ranking of about #20 to #30 - and definitely In the playoffs. In the RPI poker game, playing a bunch of horrible teams will kill your SoS and thus kill your RPI. In the NET poker game, playing a bunch of horrible teams is largely a don't-care for NET in terms of how the horrible-ness of your opponents per se impacts NET, but it does inflate your average margin of victory (which is what NET focuses on), and thus boosts your NET score. If next year the Women still have RPI and the Men still have NET, then the best interests of the Lady/Men Gophers would be served if both Whalen and Pitino had a little talk with the ADs of the worst schools that the Women played this year (such as Arkansas Pine Bluff and Coppin State and New Hampshire and Incarnate Word) and make a deal with them that our Women will not play them next year, but we'd be most happy to have our Men play them next year. Thereby the Women lose the SoS boat anchor around their neck that drags down their RPI ranking, whereas the Men gain the helium baloon around their neck that would inflate their NET ranking. If we are truly to do what is best in our own basketball-self-interest, then that's what we should do next year. [On the other hand, do we really want to stoop so low as to make Pitino and the Mens team play Arkansas Pine Bluff and Coppin State and New Hampshire and Incarnate Word, just to "game the NET systems"? Because every other team is gaming the system? And if you don't game the NET system too, then you might not get to go to the NCAA playofs since your NET score is not high enough. So that's one of my points here. Yes, we should perhaps properly game the system in any given year for whatever horrible system that we're given to game. But at the same time, I assert that the higher goal should be to totally revamp both the RPI and NET systems, so that they are useful and accurate systems for the cause they were intended, and there is no need to game them just because the systems themselves are so horribly designed.]

On the other hand (and I see this as unlikely), if the Women are changed to NET next year, then we should gladly renew our contracts to play Arkansas Pine Bluff, Coppin State, New Hampshire and Incarnate Word. Why? Because NET favors those teams who choose to play opponents who are so bad that they can rack up winning margins of 30 points (and there is little-or-no SoS punishment in NET that I know of, although I'm still learning about it). So if the rules change, then we should adapt to the new rules, right? [Or in the Womens case, if they change the rules from RPI poker to NET poker next year, then do the same thing that made us lose badly in the RPI game, because it will make us win big in the NET game. But again, having the Women play a bunch of stupidly bad teams next year, just because the game switched from RPI to NET, while maybe helping us to get to the tournament, there is no other sensical reason for doing so, and it doesn't help our team improve any, and I for one don't want to be the person that has to tell Lindsay that we need to keep on scheduling seamingly stupidly now, because they changed the rules of the game from one stupid RPI metric to another stupid NET metric. I really wouldn't feel comfortable telling either Pitino or Whalen that they ought to stoop so low.]

Meanwhile, I for one want to work hard to change the system so that both RPI and NET are replaced with something sensible. Something statistically sound and causally sound (that is, so that the cause of getting a good score is being a good team, not just winning some completely arbitrary poker game).

Back in Lindsay's interview, she finishes off by saying the right thing. She says, we're just going to continue to try to win games. Something that lots of us posters have said too. And she's right, it's all we can do, and it's what we want to do at this point. If we win games, we still might be able to enter the NCAA tournament via the back door of a Big Ten championship. If not, we'll be well prepped to do well in the WNIT.

Now jump from what the team must do to what I must do. I've learned a lot of technical details about the SoS/RPI game over the last year (and to a lesser extent, NET). And the whole thing just irks me. It's not fair to the teams, let alone it's statistically nonsensical. It's not fair to the teams who have all worked so hard (not just the Gophers, but every other team who got left out of the NCAA tournament unjustly). I claim we need a better system to replace both RPI and NET, both of which are just bankrupt. I mean, soon we will see Mens teams rushing to sign up to play Coppin State, for crying out loud.

Two of my approaches are as follows. One is to try to enlist important people for my cause. For example, Charlie Creme. Maybe I got off to a bad start on this one by calling him a joke. But I guess I'm hoping to convince him, or shame him, or whatever it takes to enlist his help in changing the system. If Charlie Creme would come out and say, "I know I've made a good living off this RPI thing, but I have to show my support for the growing movement to junk both RPI and NET, because it's the right thing to do. I can still make my living off the new replacement system, and feel better about it too." Charlie, if you're reading me, please help (and I'm sorry I called you a joke - I think what I really meant was that the current RPI/NET system is a giant joke, and poor Charlie if forced to live within this joke of a system - good gracious, I wonder how the poor guy sleeps at night!).

My other approach might be to write a technical paper on the whole RPI/NET mess. Not sure what statistics journal might be willing to publish it, tho, if I do write it. I mean, how many technical journals accept a paper for publication that start out 90% technical and end up 10% rant? If anyone knows such a journal, let me know.
 
Last edited:

Can we keep the NCAA bracketology talk to the Bracketology thread?
 




Seconded.

Thirded. Sorry, how these misplaced thoughts got here was that the fact noted here that the Gophers are about 6th place in B1G whereas Indiana is 11th, yet knowing Indiana is In and Minnesota is Out made me recall that I had predicted just that early in the season. In hindsight I realize I could have been trickier and quoted this thread from the Bracketology thread. My bad.
 
Last edited:

Looking at this now.
umPB7gE.jpg

T62CTmr.jpg
 
Last edited:

It’s looking like the Gophers can do no worse than the #10 seed, so the game against Michigan St is looking pretty uneventful, unless you have a huge preference on who to play in the second round, Maryland or Iowa.
 



Hard to say who would be the better draw for the Gophers...Maryland or Iowa. I guess I would lean toward playing Iowa also. That being said, the Gophers would probably have to beat both those teams to be the BIG tourney champion. Of the top 4 teams, I think Rutgers is by far the weakest at this time of year. Of the bottom 4 teams, Purdue seems to be the strongest.
 

I did notice the #8 vs #9 game is being played at 12:00 PM ET
While #7 vs #10 plays at 6:30 PM ET

I think the Gophers are probably better at night. I remember that early game at Michigan.
 

This is how it should end up.
Hope the bracket generator thing works right.

umPB7gE.jpg

T62CTmr.jpg


XtNnsg3.jpg
 

That's a brutal bracket. IU is tough and then most likely IO.
 

So barring an upset somewhere, all we have to do is beat IN, IO, Rutgers, and MD. Of course, that would mean 3 upsets performed by Gophers.
 

So barring an upset somewhere, all we have to do is beat IN, IO, Rutgers, and MD. Of course, that would mean 3 upsets performed by Gophers.

If you go by RPI, it’d be 4 upsets.
MIN 98
IND 49
IOWA 9
RUT 25
MAR 14
 
Last edited:


Bright side: Playing all of those teams helps the Gopher RPI. (And those terrible teams who have been anchoring it down are pretty much done with their losing.)
 

The Gophers are ranked the 102nd D1 team RPI-wise through March 2nd. The weak noncons is their undoing. Thanks to Marlene Stollings who scheduled it.

Michigan State is ranked 40th before tonight's game. IMHO, they have to win the B1G Tournament to make it into the NCAA tournament.

https://www.ncaa.com/rankings/basketball-women/d1/ncaa-womens-basketball-rpi


Gophers pound Michigan State, prepare for critical Big Ten Tournament

Minnesota faces Indiana in the Big Ten tourney Thursday night.
Joe Nelson, Bring Me The MN News, March 3, 2019

https://bringmethenews.com/minnesot...state-prepare-for-critical-big-ten-tournament
 
Last edited:

The Gophers are ranked the 102nd D1 team RPI-wise through March 2nd. The weak noncons is their undoing. Thanks to Marlene Stollings who scheduled it.

Michigan State is ranked 40th before tonight's game. IMHO, they have to win the B1G Tournament to make it into the NCAA tournament.

https://www.ncaa.com/rankings/basketball-women/d1/ncaa-womens-basketball-rpi


Gophers pound Michigan State, prepare for critical Big Ten Tournament

Minnesota faces Indiana in the Big Ten tourney Thursday night.
Joe Nelson, Bring Me The MN News, March 3, 2019

https://bringmethenews.com/minnesot...state-prepare-for-critical-big-ten-tournament

Understood. But let's say they can even get to the championship game, knocking off IN, IO, and RUT, but lose to MD. Could that drop their RPI to below 100? Perhaps, then a bubble team?
 

The Gophers are below 100 now (98). The problem is bubble teams are 45-65.
 

The Gophers are below 100 now (98). The problem is bubble teams are 45-65.

Expanding on “perhaps a bubble team?” and thatjanelpick’s summary of why we’re most likely not a bubble team even with 3 more wins ...

No, almost zero chance of us being a bubble team, even if they beat Indiana, Iowa and Rutgers (but not Maryland). RealTimeRPI reports that by beating MSU the Gopher’s RPI has already been bopped up to 98. And it would go higher if we beat 3 more higher-RPI teams - but not sure how much higher.

Bracketology last showed 6 Big Ten teams In - and they counted them In exactly in their RPI order, as follows:

Team RPI (SoS) Rec (B1G Rec)
Iowa 9 (15) 23-6 (14-4)
Maryland 14 (80) 26-3 (15-3)
Rutgers 25 (36) 21-8 (13-5)
MSU 42 (50) 19-10 (9-9)
Michigan 44 (72) 20-10 (11-7)
Indiana 49 (48) 19-11 (8-10)
—- (border between In and Out) —-
Nebraska 79 (24) 14-15 (9-9)
Ohio State 82 (28) 14-13 (10-8)
Purdue 85 (41) 17-14 (8-10)
Minnesota 98 (131) 20-9 (9-9)
Northwestern 110 (78) 16-13 (9-9)
Penn State 135 (35) 12-17 (5-13)
Wisconsin 191 (124) 13-17 (4-14)
Illinois 212 (89) 10-19 (2-16)

As you can see, even though Minnesota is ranked #7 in B1G for Big-Ten Tourney purposes, they are ranked #10 by RPI for NCAA purposes.

Although it is remotely conceivable that 3 more wins might move us up ahead of Nebraska into #7 by RPI, there’s pretty much no way we’re going to move the needle on our RPI enough to catch Indiana. And even though we think we’re better than Indiana (and hopefully we’ll prove that in our game next Thursday), the NCAA Committee historically goes by The Gospel According to RPI.

Now, if we win 3 of 4 B1G Tourney games, could it be that the NCAA might expand the B1G In list to 7 teams? Again, remotely possible but not likely, since it would have to steal a slot from another conference, many of which also have a long list of good teams.

One more remote possibility - maybe the NCAA might stick with 6 B1G teams, but flip-flop Minnesota with Indiana (and thus Minnesota In and Indiana Out) since (in that scenario) the Gophers would have beaten Indiana twice (not to mention Minnesota 7th ranked in B1G by wins and Indiana 10th ranked). Also, by that point under this scenario, Indiana would be down to an under-.500 8-11 record in the B1G but Minnesota at 12-10. Flipping Indiana and Minnesota is what they should do, of course. That would be the only logical thing to do. But the NCAA is not known for being logical, whereas it is known to stick with what the RPI is telling them, and in that scenario Indiana would still have the better RPI. So the flip-with-Indiana option seems a bit unlikely too.

So technically speaking, there’s a few weird ways in which Minnesota might end up on the bubble after 3 B1G Tourney wins, but I’d have to say that the bubble prognosis doesn’t look too good.

So the best option (and one that I think is doable if they play like they did against MSU (an RPI 42 team, remember)) is still for the Gophers to take control of their own destiny (no Pitts pun intended), rather than leave their fate in the hands of the fickle NCAA, by winning all 4 B1G Tourney games.
 
Last edited:

http://www.dailynebraskan.com/sport...cle_457b883a-3eee-11e9-8963-37c35df3b962.html

As the sixth seed, Nebraska earned a first-round bye, meaning the Huskers will play either No. 11 Purdue or No. 14 Illinois depending on the result of that game Wednesday.

Either way, Nebraska is in good shape to take a first-round victory. The Huskers defeated Illinois in their lone matchup this year, leading from start to finish in a 77-67 road win. Freshman forward Ashtyn Veerbeek led the way in that game with a career-high 19 points to go along with a team-high eight rebounds.

...

However, the more likely matchup will be Purdue. In the lone game between Purdue and Illinois this year, the Boilermakers won in a 72-50 blowout.

Nebraska found success against Purdue in earlier matches this year, sweeping them in the two-game season series. In their first matchup, the Huskers outscored the Boilermakers 18-6 in the first quarter on their way to an 84-64 road victory. The 20-point win stands as the largest margin of victory Nebraska had this year in conference play. Junior guard Hannah Whitish shined in the contest, dropping a season-high 28 points to go with a career-high 12 assists.

In the second meeting, the score was a little tighter. Nebraska came out on top 67-61 but needed a 10-point second half comeback to sweep the Boilermakers. Freshman forward Leigha Brown anchored the comeback, scoring 22 of her career-high 30 points in the second half, including six in the final minute of the game. Junior guard Nicea Eliely also made an impact, scoring just nine points but dominating on the defensive end with five rebounds, three blocks and two steals.
 


Looks like Wisconsin will take down PSU to advance to the second round game against OSU.
 

Purdue only up 6 at the half against Illinois
 

Looks to me like Tsipsis is making some progress with the Badgers. But, it's not going to be a quick turnaround. How long will PSU hang with Washington as the coach. That program is a shell of what it used to be under the previous coach.
 




Top Bottom