Not every state in the United States has ranked choice voting, but the Big Ten will essentially have that in the next few weeks. While getting a No. 2 seed might be moderately more favorable than a 3 seed at the Big Ten Tournament, we really don’t know how much that means. It will all depend on the matchups. What we can much more definitively say is that getting a top-four seed matters a lot. Teams don’t want to have to play four games at the Big Ten Tournament, the week before the NCAA Tournament. They want to start their Big Ten Tournament on a Friday and let the other teams in the league slug it out on Second-Round Thursday.
Therefore, what we have in the league right now is a ranked-choice-style complication, essentially. When voters in localities participate in a ranked-choice election, they get to choose not only their first preference, but their order of preference for the other candidates on the ballot. Ranked choice voting is sometimes referred to as an “instant runoff,” in the sense that as the lowest-finishing candidates get eliminated by round (each new round of voting tabulations occurs if no candidate gets a majority of votes in the previous round), the field is gradually whittled down until a winner is determined.
In this case, the five Big Ten teams at 10-6 — occupying spots two through six in the conference — aren’t necessarily trying to win second place in the conference, though they certainly wouldn’t complain about that outcome. The real goal for those five teams is to finish in the top three of that five-team cluster.
Finishing third within that cluster means a No. 4 seed in the Big Ten Tournament and a double bye. Teams want to avoid finishing fourth or fifth in that five-team group. Finishing fourth in the five-team group means a No. 5 seed and a game on Second-Round Thursday against the 12 or 13 seed. Finishing fifth in the five-team group means a Second-Round Thursday game against the Big Ten’s No. 11 or 14 seed.
Entering play today, there are 134,217,728 scenarios in play for the Big Ten Tournament. There are multiple 25-game sequences that exist that could generate a 10-team tie for 1st place. https://t.co/peysGoKfDV
— Kevin Pauga (@KevinPauga) February 25, 2020
Let’s map out the paths for the five teams tied for second at 10-6 in the Big Ten:
Wisconsin visits Michigan, hosts Minnesota and Northwestern, and visits Indiana.
Illinois visits Northwestern, hosts Indiana, visits Ohio State, and hosts Iowa.
Michigan State hosts Iowa, visits Maryland and Penn State, and then hosts Ohio State.
Penn State hosts Rutgers, visits Iowa, hosts Michigan State, and visits Northwestern.
Iowa visits Michigan State, hosts Penn State and Purdue, and visits Illinois.
Let the fun — and the instant runoff vote — begin!