FanPost

Alternative Big Ten Standings: The Advantage of Playing Northwestern and Nebraska Means Something in the Big Ten Basketball Race

David Banks-USA TODAY Sports

Given the home team dominance and overall glut of good, not great teams this year, somebody (forget who, sorry, but not going to look) suggested a +/- ranking based on road wins and home losses. I decided to follow up on this a bit and did some investigating.

As it turns out, every non-Nebraska, non-NW member of the Big Ten plays three games against those two teams. Obviously, there is thus a slight edge to teams who play both on the road and get one at home, since it means 9 of their 17 remaining games are at home, and you'd trade a trip to Lincoln or Chicago Evanston for a chance to get 9 home and 8 road games against fellow tourney aspirants. However, this is not a big enough edge to cry "unbalanced schedule."

In the following standings, the only games that count are:

1) Road win vs. one of the other tourney aspirants = W

2) Home loss vs. one of the other tourney aspirants = L

3) ANY loss vs. Nebraska or NW = L

Standings as of all games played through Jan. 19 [Cumulative total record will not equal .500 b/c of Neb/NW element]:

Illinois 1-0

Wisconsin 2-1

MSU, Rut, MD, Ind. Minn, Mich. 0-0

OSU, PSU, Iowa, Pur 0-1

-----

Indiana has 0 games remaining vs. NW/Neb

Pur and Iowa have 1 game remaining vs. NW/Neb

Rut, OSU, MSU, Minn and Ill have 2 games remaining vs. NW/Neb

MD, Mich, PSU, and UW have 3 games remaining vs. NW/Neb

[This is a promoted FanPost and does not represent the editorial opinion of Off Tackle Empire or SBNation; it is one fan's opinion and if you call anyone associated with this website a "journalist" who should be "ashamed", you are doing a disrespect to both real journalists and real shame and ought to take a good, long look at yourself.]

All FanPosts are the opinions of the author only. By posting a FanPost, you give OTE permission to edit or remove content as management of OTE, SBNation, or Vox deem necessary. FanPosts not in line with community guidelines will be removed.