Remember October of 2019? The 2019-2020 college basketball season had not yet begun. Did we know how good the Wisconsin Badgers were going to be? No, especially with Micah Potter being prevented from playing by the stupid NCAA. Did we know how well the Badgers were going to play in their first 10 games? No. This team was a mystery. There were lots of mysteries going into the season.
Yet, if you could reliably count on a few things to happen in Big Ten basketball, where would you start? What prediction, more than anything else in Big Ten basketball, would most likely be true?
If you said, “Rutgers won’t make the NCAA Tournament,” you would have given a perfectly logical answer backed by 29 years of history. It has been 29 years, after all, since the Scarlet Knights last made the NCAA Tournament, in 1991.
Rutgers being mediocre (not necessarily bad, but certainly not good enough to reach the Big Dance in March) has been one of the most constant truths in college basketball for decades, right there with Michigan State and Tom Izzo being very good, at the other end of the spectrum of relevance in the sport.
Rutgers not being good enough, and Michigan State being a top team, were the two most reliable predictions one could make about Big Ten hoops this season. If you said that Northwestern would struggle, that’s fair and will be accepted. If you said Nebraska would struggle in a rebuild under Fred Hoiberg, that’s fair as well.
Rutgers being good has been one of the biggest surprises of the season — not necessarily because the Scarlet Knights weren’t developing their players (there WAS progress last season), but because Rutgers has evolved so rapidly and substantially under new coach Steve Pikiell. Rutgers isn’t a bubble team; Rutgers is, at the moment, a solid NCAA Tournament seed, good enough to wear home whites in round one as a higher-seeded team (No. 8 or better). The Scarlet Knights will have to lose four games in a row to become an uncertain NCAA team, riding the bubble near the cut line. Right now, they have margin for error. They are well inside the ropes.
Pick another Big Ten team entering this season. If you were asked to address Illinois — which lost 21 games last season — it would have been reasonable to say the Illini could not get any worse. They were likely to be better if only because the first two seasons for Brad Underwood were so bad. Yet, that kind of reality does not generally point to an NCAA Tournament.
Surprise! Illinois is also an NCAA Tournament team and would need to slide for the bubble to become an unnerving prospect.
Here is the shocking fact of all facts on Tuesday, January 21, before Big Ten games are played in the conference: If the season ended on Tuesday afternoon, Rutgers and Illinois would be top-four seeds at the 2020 Big Ten Tournament. That’s right: Rutgers and Illinois would get double-byes. You would not see them on the court on Big Ten Tournament Wednesday or Big Ten Tournament Thursday. They would debut on Friday and have great chances to make the tournament semifinals on Saturday and CBS national television.
“Where will Rutgers and Illinois be seeded in the Big Ten Tournament?” That question has probably been asked before, but if so, it has been asked because people want to make sure they don’t have to watch TV (or a game in person) when the Big Ten Tournament begins its five-day run on Wednesday. Right now, that same question is a question with NCAA Tournament implications. If Rutgers and Illinois both get a top-four seed, they won’t have to play nearly as many games before the NCAA Tournament begins. They will get tested by other top Big Ten teams if they can win one game and reach the semifinals. Getting that top-four seed means a lot, as Wisconsin fans know. The Badgers come to the NCAA Tournament relatively rested because they have rarely had to play more than two or three games in the Big Ten Tournament this century. Now, Illinois and Rutgers can derive the same benefit.
Will Rutgers and Illinois get a top-four seed in the Big Ten Tournament? It is surprising enough that we are even asking this question. It is more surprising how meaningful the question actually is.
We will see how meaningful the question is in a month. The rest of the Big Ten will try to restore order, but in a wacky year, who knows how it will all shake out?