So far the Big 10 is undefeated in this year’s tournament having not played in the play in game. We’re off to a good start.
Today, the Big 10 has 3 games. Considering the Big 10 only had 4 teams make the NCAA tournament this year, today is a pretty big day.
The first Big 10 game today is the Michigan State - Temple game which starts at 11:30am CT. I know nothing at all about Temple but plenty about Michigan State. It is completely irrelevant who MSU is playing. They have about a 50-50 chance of winning the game. I cannot remember seeing such in inconsistent team that is capable of swinging from such highs to such lows in the history of basketball. I flipped a coin to determine that MSU will win by 1 point because Nietzel happens to hit a 25 foot 3 pointer as the clock expires.
Next up for the Big 10 is the Purdue - Baylor game at 1:50pm CT. I really want Purdue to do well since they seemed to come out of nowhere and stand toe to toe against anybody on the schedule. Both teams flubbed horribly in their conference tournament losing to really bad teams. Purdue was definitely hotter up until that point as long as you are impressed with regularly beating Big 10 opponents this year. I like Purdue’s defense and the few times I have watched their games I thought their offense was pretty efficient. I’ll pick Purdue to win by 8.
The final Big 10 game today is Wisconsin - CSU Fullerton at 8:40pm CT. CSU Fullerton likes to shoot 3s and their tallest player is 6′ 6″. Unless they hit about 20 of 25 3 pointers, Wisconsin will crush them. And Wisconsin’s defense is good enough that CSU will have to make those 3 pointers under extreme duress. Wisconsin will easily walk away with a 15 point win.
The other big hyped game from today is the Kansas State - USC matchup at 6:10pm CT. The game features two big name freshman who will be playing in the NBA next year. One of them will be playing their last game today. It would be a lot more interesting of a game later in the tournament but who really cares about the outcome of a couple of one year wonders outside the fans of the respective teams. My prediction is that the game will end with one of the teams scoring more than the other but other than that, I don’t care.
I’ll also be keeping my eye on the Duke - Belmont game to make sure that Duke wins so that they can eventually get crushed by Kansas in the Final Four like I predicted yesterday.