SALON

Wednesday, Mar 13, 2013 6:33 PM UTC

Deep field could mean big thrills for Big Ten

By

Topics: From the Wires,

Deep field could mean big thrills for Big TenNebraska's Ray Gallegos, right, looks to grab a rebound in front of Iowa's Eric May (25) during the second half of an NCAA college basketball game, Saturday, March 9, 2013, in Iowa City, Iowa. Iowa won 74-60. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)(Credit: AP)

CHICAGO (AP) — Indiana is standing tall again.

Michigan and Michigan State are right there with the Hoosiers, and Ohio State and Wisconsin aren’t exactly backing down from anyone, either.

The Big Ten tournament starts Thursday, and it’s not hard to see why Spartans coach Tom Izzo declared it one of the best ever. And by best ever, he didn’t just mean best Big Ten tournament.

“We’re looking forward to one of the great conference tournaments of all time, if you ask me,” Izzo said. “When you look at the ranked teams and the teams that aren’t ranked and everyone else, it should be a heck of a Big Ten tournament in Chicago.”

The league is tops in the Sagarin ratings and boasts five teams ranked in the Top 25, including four in the top 10.

One of those top 10 teams — No. 6 Michigan — didn’t even get one of the four first-round byes. Instead, the Wolverines face Penn State on Thursday after falling a point short of sharing the conference championship with a 72-71 loss to Indiana on Sunday.

They need to regroup and figure out a way to get past the Nittany Lions, a team that rallied from 15 down in the second half to beat Michigan a few weeks ago.

Besides Penn State, Michigan might also need to get by Wisconsin and Indiana to reach the Big Ten tournament title game. Those three teams have combined to hand the Wolverines (25-6) four of their six losses, and No. 22 Wisconsin (21-10) is lurking in the second round on Friday after taking the fourth seed.

No. 3 Indiana (26-5), the top seed after winning its first outright conference title conference championship in two decades, will face the Illinois-Minnesota winner. No. 10 Ohio State (23-7), the second seed, gets Purdue or Nebraska, while eighth-ranked and third-seeded Michigan State (24-7) awaits Iowa or Northwestern.

“Michigan’s playing for a share for a title. Unfortunately, they slide out. Now, they have to play on the first day. It just shows you how deep this league is, how good this league is,” Penn State coach Patrick Chambers said. “The top four teams get that bye, which is critical, and I know Michigan wanted that. But it’s pretty amazing how tough this conference has been.”

Standing at the top right now is Indiana after a long climb, and winning the conference tournament would be another notch for a program knocked to the ground not too long ago. It’s something the Hoosiers haven’t done since the Big Ten started holding a tourney back in 1998.

“You just told me something that I didn’t know,” coach Tom Crean said. “That’s how little concerned we are about the negatives, what hasn’t happened. It’s really not anything we’ll reflect on.”

He did, however, reflect on how far Indiana has come since he took over in 2008. That’s something he’s not shy about doing.

Indiana endured crippling NCAA sanctions in the wake of the phone call scandal involving his predecessor Kelvin Sampson and struggled to get back to the top. The Hoosiers won just six games his first season, but they made a big jump a year ago, orchestrating a turnaround that matched the biggest in Big Ten history on their way to a 27-9 record and a trip to the Sweet 16. With star Cody Zeller leading the way, they were ranked No. 1 in the preseason poll and spent a good chunk of the season there.

When they rallied from five down in the final minute to beat Michigan on Sunday, it was just another big step for a program that had picked itself up and dusted itself off. Now, the Hoosiers are again staring at some major obstacles, and as they prepared to take that next step, Crean couldn’t help but take a look back.

He mentioned the “players that helped get this back” and the support for the team.

“We had hundreds of people waiting at the gym (Sunday) night when we got in,” he said. “We had probably 100 to 150 people waiting at the airport when we got there on a Sunday night in the rain. That’s what it’s about. It really is. The thing to me is we’ve always said there’s no way this program could have endured what it did without the support — not just the support but the passion, the legitimate passion that our fans have had.”

More By Andrew Seligman.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 0 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Loaded terminology like "entitlements" and "welfare" skews the debate and alters America. How right-wingers use semantic tricks to kill government.
336 points337 points | 101 comments
vote
How right-wingers use semantic tricks to kill government -- "...much of the U.S. economic security support system consists of subsidies for the affluent in the form of tax breaks, like those for private retirement savings plans such as 401(k)s and private employer-provided health insurance."
62 points63 points | 3 comments
vote
Temple Grandin on DSM-5: “Sounds like diagnosis by committee.” When it comes to autism, Grandin argues we're paying too much attention to labels -- and not enough to individuals
33 points34 points | 3 comments
vote
Temple Grandin on DSM-5: “Sounds like diagnosis by committee.” When it comes to autism, Grandin argues we're paying too much attention to labels -- and not enough to individuals
36 points37 points | 2 comments
vote
With the help of Photoshop, artist Yao Lu has made shanshui — traditional ink paintings — of China's landfills
33 points34 points | 1 comment

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations