-Tom Izzo's Michigan State team has the best chance of all the Big Ten teams to win the title, but it's not going to be easy.
For the past two months, I have been on an inexplicablly long hiatus. Most of the blame goes to Medill for eating my life, but I could have done better to find a way to report on some of the Big Ten shenanigans that have been going on. Luckily, the quarter is over and it couldn't have ended at a better time because...
It's Tourney Time! NCAA March Madness is by far the best sporting event of the year. I'm someone who prefers watching pro sports over college sports about 99 percent of the time, and I still think nothing can match the first two rounds March Madness. It's the perfect combination of volume and excitement. Being able to wake up Thursday morning and watch games continuously until Sunday night is a sports fan's dream.
And of course, with the tournament comes filling out your brackets. I'm not going to bore you by being the 15,000th person show my bracket and tell you why Team X will make the Final Four and Team Y will pull off the first round upset. It's the same as getting stock market advice, "experts" tell you there's a logical approach to picking teams but in the end, who the hell knows what going to happen anyway?
Anyway, while I was filling out my bracket on cbssportsline.com and slotting Cornell in the 2nd Round over Missouri (please basketball gods, give the Big Red the strength to knock them out) I realized that they said Cornell has a 1.8 percent chance of winning that game. Then they said Cornell has a 0.4 percent chance of winning their second round game. This could either be calculated odds or 1.8 percent of people filling out brackets on CBS picked Cornell to win.
Either way, I thought this was pretty cool, so I decided to run all seven Big Ten teams through the tournament and check out their odds.
(ps. Big Ten had a great year considering they had seven teams and Penn State and Northwestern had a chance to get in late in the year and ended up in the NIT.)
*the numbers represent the percent chance that team will win that round's game
CBS obviously says Michigan State is the Big Ten team most likely to run the slate. What I found interesting is that none of these teams have much of a chance to go all the way.
To get a better idea of how those odds compare to other teams, here are some stats from all the top five seeds.
The chances of a Big Ten team winning it all this year are slim at best. Not a lot of people are giving any love to Michigan State, especially compared to the other highly ranked teams.
I added the first round numbers there to see where there might be some upset potential. Obviously, the top 2 seeds almost never lose the first game and 3 and 4 seeds are also extremely unlikely. I feel like anything less than 99 percent is an indication that there might be a chance of upset. It seems Washington will have their hands full with Mississippi State and Utah is fighting for their lives. But other than that, the top teams "seem" pretty safe. Whether these numbers are calculated odds or public opinion, it's still a good barometer of what teams are considered the best.
The two Big Ten sleeper teams I could see making a serious run are Purdue and Michigan. I've always had a theory that teams with a dominant player have the best chance of getting hot and making a run no matter how bad the supporting cast may be. This can apply in any sport, but especially in basketball. If Manny Harris or any one out of Robbie Hummel, JaJuan Johnson and E'Twaun Moore trio can get hot, they're good enough to carry their teams to wins even when the rest of team may not be playing well.
Speaking of which, I wouldn't mind seeing Manny Harris go off because of the Fab Five flashback potential. I used to love those Fab Five teams and not since the days of the immortal Robert "Tractor" Traylor have the Wolverines done anything in March. I think Michigan is due for some help from the basketball gods.
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ChiChi Madu
ChiChi was born in New York City and instantly became a fan of the Giants, Knicks and Yankees. More
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