B1G Bracketology: A conference of 6-seeds.

Basketball is a pretty objectively terrible sport, is it not?

We’ll be back later in the week to recap the world of Big Ten basketball this week (I hoped your teams all went 0-1, though early reports are that I might’ve been wrong).

In the meantime, though, here’s the NCAA Tournament bracketology scene in after another weekend:

Full Bracketology

B1G Observations

Well, I have to say there’s something oddly comforting about Joe Lunardi’s bracket, like a bowl of your grandma’s Jello salad that you know you don’t want to dissect any further—just spoon it into your mouth without asking questions—but that is unthreatening and wholesome enough to deal with it.

And he’s probably right to give four Big Ten teams the six-line! This is a mushy, middling conference that’s undoubtedly above average, but that probably will lose 1-2 of those games. I’d take wisconsin to Oklahoma and Michigan to St. Mary’s, since you asked.

• I don’t get how Michigan State went from a 3-seed to a 2-seed but don’t have the little ↑ symbol on Lunardi’s bracketology. Either way, they’re moving toward that comfortable 2-line and will convince us of it with a win at Indiana.
• We should be talking about Maryland as a 5-seed, but instead Northwestern decided to choke away a 15-point lead reaaaaaal nice and good. I hope Rapolas Ivanauskas and the Colgate Raiders bounce them with extreme prejudice.
• Iowa has quite the gap between Jerry Palm’s 8-seed (Florida!) and 5-seed (East Tennessee State), just another illustration of why these middling Big Ten teams will need to break serve on the road at some point to get from streaky AAC/ACC/SEC teams to mid-major champions with severe size deficiencies that Hawks and Luka Garza can exploit.
• Honestly, whatever Michigan is doing has kind of faded from my interest. They any good?
• Let us pause for a moment to notice the hell that would be Chris Dobbertean’s projection of wisconsin against the Northern Iowa Panthers. O/U is 115, scoop that under.
• Lest you thought that was all for the insanity today, while Rutgers does not crack a 7-line in the overall Bracket Matrix rankings (hence why they’re so low), all three of the “experts” I choose to highlight have them as a 6 or better. Including Jerry Palm. Seriously. Look at that shit. Rutgers. As a 4-seed. The end is nigh.
• Penn State is still hanging around. Whatever. I’d say they’re much closer to a 9-seed than a 6-seed, but I’m just some idiot with a blog. Most Penn State fans will just awaken from their cocoons around March anyways, check if they’re in the Dance, and go back to sleep until August.
• It surprises me that Indiana is still a 100% consensus among the 93 brackets to go dancing.
• Purdue and Minnesota: Anywhere from the last non-First Four team to just completely out of the bracket! Two more teams who desperately need that road win, and fast.

Anyway, that’s that. Give us your bracketology predictions in the comments, let me know what absurd things I missed, and be sure to stock up on Twinkies and canned foods for when Rutgers actually does make the Big Dance as a 4-seed.