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29 Days to B1G Basketball: Big Ten Network Predicts the Big Ten

It's media day and today we're taking a look at BTN's conference predictions for 2015-16.

By Bryan Steedman
Jerry Lai-USA TODAY Sports

Tomorrow is media day in the Big Ten so it wasn't a huge surprise to see BTN post their projected conference standings and a number of other predictions. So besides your typical conference predictions, you can find out that all eight participants had Melo Trimble as their player of the year or that 75% of the panel had Northwestern missing the NCAA Tourmanent (which is somewhat interesting because three people had them as their sleeper team, meaning someone thinks they're a sleeper team but not good enough for the postseason).

Anyways, here is BTN's projected standings:

  1. Maryland
  2. Indiana
  3. Purdue
  4. Michigan State
  5. Wisconsin
  6. Michigan
  7. Ohio State
  8. Illinois
  9. Iowa
  10. Northwestern
  11. Nebraska
  12. Minnesota
  13. Penn State
  14. Rutgers

With eight voters and one point for a first place vote (and 14 for a last place vote), the results of their standings shows how debatable the top of the Big Ten is after Maryland. While Maryland was a near unanimous top pick, there's six points separating second place Indiana and fifth place Wisconsin, before a drop off to Michigan and then a toss-up between Ohio State (64), Illinois (66) and Iowa (69).

Probably the biggest surprise in the poll is that they seem a bit standoff-ish towards Iowa, projected to surprisingly finish behind Illinois. And since they predicted seven NCAA Tournament teams, that likely means they'll have the Hawkeyes miss out on the postseason...which is a bit surprising. At the same time, though, if Iowa makes it that means we'll likely see eight NCAA Tournament teams and while there's enough talent in the Big Ten for that to happen, it's hard to project over half the league reaching the tournament.

Anyways, the Big Ten will be holding their media day tomorrow in Chicago. The event will be televised on Big Ten Network, starting early in the morning at 9 AM. If you can't get to a TV, BTN will also air their coverage on BTN2Go if you have an eligible provider. And of course we'll have plenty of coverage today on BTP as well, so be sure to check us out later this morning for your media day coverage.

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