A sport Northwestern is good at!

On account of us knowing even less about women’s basketball in the conference than we do about most other subjects—I know, it’s possible—we don’t often wade into Big Ten women’s hoops around here, save for the big moments in the season.

The Big Ten Tournament is one of those moments!

But first, here’s what there is to play for:

Big Ten Women’s Bracketology

A note (and thank-you to Sloth Astronaut, NU fan and now-proud Minnesotan extraordinaire for calling it to my attention): I am lazy and keep all my bracketology in one Google Sheet. You’ll have to click the most recent tab with a “W” in it for the women’s bracketology. As of this writing, that’s “3/6 W”. [Now updated!] Click that tab! Sorry! —MNW

New update: Not much has changed!

Why is Rutgers below Purdue on that spreadsheet? I’m not entirely sure. But Sheets gets mad at me when I try to sort data with a frozen column, and I’m too lazy to unfreeze the column, so I’m just going to tell you about it here. Mea culpa, mea culpa, through my fault, through my fault, [/beats chest] through my most grievous fault.

Ohio State and Michigan both appear to have solidified their spots on the 7- and 9-seed lines, respectively, if RealTimeRPI jumping on board with Charlie Creme is to be believed, while Purdue appears to have made damn sure it’ll be dancing with a first-round win over Michigan State.

If anything, the matchup to watch for seeding porpoises today is the 1:25pm spot between [5] Rutgers and [4] Indiana. The Hoosiers are dancing right around the chance to host rounds 1 and 2 in Bloomington, and while they’ve actually lost more games at home (11-4) than on the road (10-2), I still assume waking up at home would be better. Meanwhile, who knows? Maybe Rutgers winning could skip them onto a 7-line and avoid a 1-seed for a couple rounds longer.

3/3: That all appears to be pretty settled—no one here is in the Last Four In, and Purdue actually just moved from a 10 to a 9 in Fansided’s Russell Steinberg’s estimation. So barring something really stupid in the Big Ten Tournament, it looks like they’re just jockeying for seeding.

On that front, Northwestern is dancing right around that 2- or 3-seed line, and barring a loss before the BTT semifinals should stay there, doing the all-important “miss the #1 seed until the Elite Eight” dance. In Maryland’s case, winning the tournament will get them onto a 1-seed line, while Iowa might need to help their cause by getting to the conference championship to get onto a 3-line (again, avoiding the #1 seed). Indiana, too, will need some help—or to help their own cause—as the consensus seems to be they won’t be hosting the first couple rounds.

But that just means we’ve gotta play the games! Off to Indianapolis, where the action tips off this afternoon...

Big Ten Tournament Schedule

Wednesday, March 4

[12] Wisconsin Badgers vs. [13] Illinois Fighting Illini

1pm | BTN

[11] Minnesota Golden Gophers vs. [14] Penn State Nittany Lions

3:30pm | BTN

Thursday, March 5

[8] Michigan State Spartans vs. [9] Purdue Boilermakers

11am | BTN

[5] Rutgers Scarlet Knights vs. [12] Wisconsin

25 mins. after MSU-Purdue | BTN

[7] Michigan Wolverines vs. [10] Nebraska Cornhuskers

5:30pm | BTN

[6] Ohio State Buckeyes vs. [11] Minnesota

7:55pm | BTN

Friday, March 6

[1] Maryland Terrapins vs. [9] Purdue

11am | BTN

[4] Indiana Hoosiers vs. [5] Rutgers

1:25pm | BTN

[2] Northwestern Wildcats vs. [7] Michigan

5:30pm | BTN

[3] Iowa Hawkeyes vs. [6] Ohio State

7:55pm | BTN

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If you’d care to chat about these games as you stream them on Fox Sports Go at work, feel free to do that here! More info at the Big Ten website. In the meantime, enjoy all the varied basketball coverage we’ve got here at OTE. Go ‘Cats.