Spoiler alert, the Badgers are the odds-on favorite to win their first Big Ten Men’s Basketball Tournament since 2008. Here are how the rest of the tournament’s top seeds stack up against UW.
No. 2 Maryland
The odds-on favorite to meet Wisconsin in the Big Ten championship game are the second-seeded Terrapins, who finished 14-4 in Big Ten play and handed the Badgers one of their two conference losses.
Maryland enters the tournament riding a seven-game winning streak, with four of those wins coming by six points or less, and will look to improve its seeding in its first NCAA tournament appearance under fourth-year head coach Mark Turgeon.
The Terrapins are led by their dynamic backcourt, featuring freshman Melo Trimble and senior Dez Wells, who average a combined 31.4 points per game. The Badgers saw firsthand just how lethal the combo of Trimble and Wells can be, as the duo torched Wisconsin for 42 points on 51.6 percent shooting in the Terrapins’ 59-53 victory.
Behind the stellar play of its frontcourt, Maryland has exceeded everyone’s expectations in its first season in the Big Ten, even earning its first Top 10 ranking since 2003, but the Terrapins will enter the Big Ten tournament looking for more.
No. 3 Michigan State
Save a perplexing loss at home to Minnesota, the Spartans have closed the year out strong, going 9-3 in their final 12 games with losses to Illinois, Minnesota and at Wisconsin, none by more than seven points. Leadership like Travis Trice, Branden Dawson and Denzel Valentine win games in March, but it’s their stingy defense and three-point shooting that makes the Spartans a threat to win the tournament.
While Trice (69-of-187) and Valentine (81-of-193) are the long-distance shooters most fans know of, Bryn Forbes is the x-factor for this team.
While he has run cold in the team’s last two games, going 3-of-16 from the field and 0-of-9 from three, he put on a clinic against the Badgers, singlehandedly keeping the Spartans in the game by shooting 8-of-9 and 5-of-5 from three for 21 points. If they can get hot from three, the Spartans’ tough defense plus Tom Izzo coaching will make them a very tough out in Chicago.
No. 4 Purdue
After the Boilermakers finished their non-conference schedule with an 8-5 record, including stunning home losses to North Florida and Gardner-Webb, few expected them to make much noise in the Big Ten this season.
However, Matt Painter’s squad found a way to turn it around once the conference season rolled around, finishing 12-6 in Big Ten play and earning a double bye into the quarterfinals of the conference tournament.
Purdue is led by junior center A.J. Hammons, who, in addition to averaging 11.5 points and 6.5 rebounds, leads the conference with 2.8 blocks per game. Hammons was a consensus All-Big Ten second-team selection and teammate Rapheal Davis was named the conference’s Defensive Player of the Year.
Purdue already looks like it will be making its first NCAA tournament appearance since 2012, but a strong showing in the Big Ten tournament will erase any doubt in the selection committee’s mind.
No. 5 Iowa
Iowa has the perfect combination of great wins (at North Carolina, sweeping Ohio State and home against Maryland) and head-scratching losses (back-to-back losses against Minnesota at home and at Northwestern), making it the biggest wild card in the field. It’s tough to beat a team three times in a season, which may be the jolt the Hawkeyes need to get over the hump and beat Wisconsin.
They have plenty of talent, particularly in the front-court with first team All-Big Ten selection Aaron White, the eye-gouging Adam Woodbury and the Wisconsin defector in Jarrod Uthoff to win the tournament. Big Ten Sixth Man of the Year Gabriel Olaseni, Peter Jok and many others give Iowa the kind of depth most teams would crave when playing potentially four games in four days and provide at least one advantage over the fairly shallow Badgers.
The Rest
Once you get past the Top 5 seeds in the bracket, the cupboard becomes pretty bare when it comes to real threats to Wisconsin. The next team in the seeding, Ohio State, got totally pantsed by Wisconsin to the tune of a 24-point margin on its home floor. Before that game, the Buckeyes hadn’t lost by double digits their entire season. That said, they could conceivably be a threat, because D’Angelo Russell.
The Badgers will face one of Michigan and Illinois to begin their tournament and have defeated both in the past. Michigan put up a substantially better fight, taking UW to its only overtime game of the season, but has continued to be gutted by injuries. The Wolverines will likely go through the conference tournament sans starting point guard Derrick Walton Jr., then try to make some noise in the NIT or CBI.
Illinois could get frisky, but it hurts that they don’t have a single player who can effectively match up against one of the Badgers’ big three in crunch time, lest all three of them.
There’s a small chance that backcourt-heavy Indiana goes absolutely nuts from 3-point range, but it’s doubtful they could sustain that for four straight games.
