Well, the Illini won tonight against Northwestern, and with very few games left, I looked over the schedules for the top 8 Big 10 teams, and project the following finish for the regular season:
Ohio State, 15-1
Wisconsin, 14-2
Indiana, 10-6
Iowa, 10-6
Illinois, 9-7
Purdue, 9-7
Michigan, 8-8
Michigan State, 7-9
Northwestern/Minnesota/Penn State in the cellar
I have the Illini beating Michigan and Penn State, but losing to Iowa in their last regular season game. The game of the year seems to be the Wisconsin visit to Ohio State, and it seems hard to believe that Ohio State will lose it at home.
In terms of the NCAA, it is really hard to project which teams make it to the tourney, since the depth of the conference is not that impressive to me, even though we have two top 5 teams in Wisconsin and Ohio State. Indiana seems like a lock, and Illinois and Purdue seem like they are bubble teams. Iowa seems like it would normally make it based on their projected finish, but their computer rankings look low. Michigan looks low in the computer rankings as well. A further anomaly is Michigan State, since their projected record is not impressive, but computer rankings are solid. It will be interesting to see how my projections end up and how many teams get in from the Big 10. Certainly this year the conference tourney will be important.
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