Big Ten Women’s Basketball Standings, Bracketology: Northwestern’s good at this!

After what I’m sure was not a mild breakdown and was, instead, an example of my never-ending commitment to fresh basketball #content for all you OTE readers, I watched as Northwestern women’s basketball dispatched the last “true” test on their schedule, Ohio State, in Columbus, racking up their eighth consecutive win and keeping pace with the red-hot Maryland Terrapins atop the Big Ten Conference.

The Terps and ‘Cats have split their season meetings, meaning they’re trying to hold serve through the Big Ten conference season, keeping Iowa at bay and kicking it to tiebreakers for the #1 seed in the conference championship tournament, held this year in Indianapolis:

1. Head-to-head: Tied, 1-1
2. Record vs. Next-Highest: Tied, 1-1, vs. Iowa... Since Northwestern, Maryland, and Iowa all went 1-1 against each other (and then because Iowa took an extra loss, the idiots), this could go on for a while, as NU and MD have perfect records against everyone else all the way down (2-0 is not better than 1-0).
3. Won-loss percentage of all Division I opponents: You are absolutely kidding yourself if you think I’m doing this math.
4. Coin toss conducted by the Commissioner or designee: I guess we’ll never know until it happens!

From there, it’s onto Big Ten women’s basketball bracketology. As I’m not a great women’s basketball mind—it starts and stops at guards extraordinaire Lindsey Pulliam and Veronica Burton, three-point gunner Abi Scheid, colossus Abbie Wolf, and the rest of the ‘Cats (including Brooke Pikiell, daughter of Rutgers Scarlet Knights coach Steve, oddly)—I’m not going to add commentary here. Just a few things to note/remember:

• Top 4 seed? You host the first two games.
• Regionals: The regions are hosted in Portland, OR; Greenville, SC; Dallas, TX; and Fort Wayne, IN. I didn’t want to go to the trouble of figuring out which was which; click the links if you’re really curious.
• I hope your team loses. Go ‘Cats.

That’s it! Besides the one bracketologist thinking Minnesota and Nebraska were still in things—Minnesota’s certainly out, having stumbled to a 4-game losing streak; Nebraska tested Northwestern but has lost 6 of its last 8—it seems like the Gophers, Huskers, and Michigan State should all get a look at the 64-team Women’s NIT, but not much else.

Here’s how the last week of conference play shapes up before the Big Ten Tournament tips off at Bankers Life Fieldhouse in a week:

Thank you for tolerating an idiot talking about women’s college basketball! Want to write more about it yourself? Hit me up or just write a Fanpost, and we’ll kick it to the front page!