The last week of the Big Ten basketball regular season is upon us. This is March.
The Wisconsin Badgers were 6-6 and in the middle of the Big Ten one month ago. Now they are 12-6, and with the Maryland Terrapins losing to the Michigan State Spartans this past Saturday, Wisconsin is within ONE game of the Terps for the regular-season league championship!
Everyone's got two left.
What a final week it will be. pic.twitter.com/waOwxN602x
— Big Ten Network (@BigTenNetwork) March 2, 2020
The Maryland Terrapins do not have a piece-of-cake schedule this week. They must go to Rutgers — not an easy place to win this season — and then host Michigan, which has become a better road team of late, having won at Rutgers and Purdue not too long ago.
If Wisconsin beats Northwestern and Indiana and Maryland can’t sweep these final two games, Wisconsin will get a share of the regular-season Big Ten title. What an extraordinary achievement that would be. Given that Northwestern at home should be a very manageable game (to put it politely), Saturday afternoon’s visit to Bloomington and Assembly Hall could have title implications for the Badgers. If UW beats Northwestern, it will clinch one of the four coveted double byes in the Big Ten Tournament. Wisconsin fans can rest assured that they won’t have to attend a Thursday game at the Big Ten tourney unless they want to spend time scouting the opposition. (We all have to make our own choices in life.)
What about the other teams one game back of Maryland?
Michigan State is at Penn State and home against Ohio State.
Illinois is at Ohio State and is home against Iowa.
One can very easily imagine Michigan State and Illinois losing at least one of those two games. If that scenario unfolds, Wisconsin’s head-to-head win over Maryland means that if UW and the Terps are tied at 14-6 atop the Big Ten, with MSU and Illinois one game back at 13-7, the Badgers would be the No. 1 seed for the Big Ten Tournament.
All that’s left is to play the games. Let’s see which Big Ten team comes out on top. That the Badgers have a real chance tells you all you need to know about the dramatic nature of this team’s turnaround since Feb. 1 against Michigan State.