Big Ten Basketball Tourney

A Puncher's Chance:
This is the Gophers last chance to make an impression for an at-large bid for the NCAA tourney. Some say they have to win the whole thing to get in...I, on the other hand think they could sneak in if they just win their first two games against Penn State and Michigan State. However, there would have to be a lot of help outside of our games to move ahead of the 4-5 other bubble teams in our way. For example: just within our tourney (not the gazillion other tourneys going on) we can't afford any upsets with the top four seeds. Illinois getting spanked by Wisconsin could move us into the fifth best team in the conference...at least in the committee's eyes since we hold the head to head tiebreaker, we have similar resumes and Illini's collapse to close out the year. Obviously, there are a lot of other things that have to happen as well...but, two more wins gets us to 20 (plus one would be against a quality opponent) and we have Tubby Smith as our coach. Never underestimate the power of having a big time coach when you're a team on the "bubble" when it comes down to Selection Sunday.

Identity Crisis:
Can we officially change our conference name to the Big 11? Or Big Midwest? I'm tired of the being associated with the Big Ten when we have eleven teams in our conference. It's cute that you can frame the number 11 in the Big Ten emblem, but come on you're just insulting our intelligence. Big East doesn't have to worry about numbers in their conference identity. The Big 12...used to be called the Big 8...they only changed the name to the properly reflect how many schools were affiliated with the new conference. Why are we so difficult? Or another solution besides renaming the conference...let's just kick Penn State to the curb so we're back at the number 10, for real...have they really added that much value to our conference (we're over a decade into it) other than shoving the corpse that is Joe Paterno out to the football sidelines on some Saturday afternoons.

Indy...??:
Why is Indianapolis hosting this basketball event every year (besides the first year or two when it was in Chicago)? The basketball tourney was sold to us that the hosting city would rotate amongst all the great cities we have in Big Ten country. Detroit can host a Final Four (just within the last year), but is not good enough to host the Big Ten tourney? We have Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis...and if we wanted to push it some more, I suppose you could include Milwaukee and Cleveland on that list (although, these are more of a stretch). I just don't understand the infatuation with Indianapolis as the venue of choice. Especially, when Indy is already hosting two big annual events year round...Indy 500 and the NFL scouting combine. Give Detroit and other cities capable of hosting a bone here and there.

SBG