Big Ten Basketball: Separation Complete

Photo Credit: Jeff Hanisch-US PRESSWIRE

After the weekend’s action, which included Ohio State taking down Michigan and Illinois falling to Minnesota, the league now has four teams with at least six victories and at most three losses — Ohio State leading the way, followed by Michigan State, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Purdue, Minnesota, Illinois, and Indiana form the middle with either four or fives wins and losses, and the usual suspects of Iowa, Penn State, Northwestern and newcomer Nebraska make the third and final tier.

Some wacky upsets in the early going showed the conference was deep enough to the point where some of the worst teams could beat good or even elite, but the trend hasn’t continued. The teams that have established positions at the top of the conference are clearly superior, as efficiency margins reveal:

The tiers presented by the standings remain when looking at efficiency as well. Ohio State, despite their two losses, have been a remarkable 28 points better than their opponents per 100 possessions, dwarfing even Michigan State’s excellence over their first eight games. It seems as if a clear first, second, and third have been established with Ohio State, Michigan State, and Wisconsin respectively, but with only seven or eight games remaining in the conference schedule and just one game separating all three, one or two upsets could tilt the balance away from Ohio State and towards one of the other two.

Meanwhile, Michigan’s advantage in the standings should be enough to keep them in the top four in front of the middle schools, who all hang around an even efficiency differential. Although all four of these teams are probably good enough to pull an upset against any of the top four, particularly in a home game, they just haven’t been able to maintain more than an average level of play.

We’ve even seen a few upsets from the lower tier schools — Iowa over Wisconsin, Northwestern over Michigan State, Iowa over Michigan, Nebraska over Indiana, Penn State over Illinois — but they just don’t have the talent to win multiple games against the conference’s best.

With some big games coming up this week — Michigan State at Illinois, Indiana at Michigan, and the headliner, Ohio State at Wisconsin — we’ll see if the trends established in the conference hold up. But for now, consider the toss-up days of the first few conference matchups to be over. Separation in the Big Ten is complete.

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