BTPowerhouse's 2/20 Big Ten Tournament Bracketology: Maryland and Purdue Tied For #2 Seed

The Big Ten is in the midst of rivalry week and fans have already been blessed with some great games, including a thrilling Purdue win over Indiana on Thursday night.  The Wisconsin Badgers still hold a dominating lead over the conference as a whole, but things are as competitive as ever throughout the rest of the standings.  With that, let's take a look at the current seeding of this year's Big Ten Tournament.

The concept is pretty simple. Each week, BTP will be taking a look at how the Big Ten Tournament projects as of that morning. For instance, today's bracket will be set as of Friday, February 20, 2015 morning. I have taken the liberty of looking at the Big Ten records and using the Big Ten tiebreaker scenarios to see where teams will land. Things will certainly move, but it is still interesting to see as of this moment. Let's take a look.

2015 B1G Tournament Bracket (2/20):

At the top there is no change with Wisconsin sitting 3 games up on every team in the standings.  Perhaps things can change with rival Minnesota at home and Maryland on the road this week.  Still, even if they drop one, they look pretty safe at the top of the standings.

The race below Wisconsin, however, is much closer.  Maryland and Purdue are currently tied for the #2 seed and Michigan State and Ohio State are both close enough that they could be there by next week.  This could be one of the more important seeding situations, especially with Purdue on the bubble.  These teams will want to secure the double-bye in the tournament and all of these teams will be fighting here.

After the top group, we are starting to see some stability with Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa at the #6 through #8 spots.  None of those teams moved this week.  All of these teams are technically only one game back from Ohio State, so they have a shot at moving up, but it does seem likely that you will that group finish in some order in this area.

at the bottom, Michigan and Minnesota narrowly snagged the #9 and #10 seeds.  This is a vitally important seeding scenario because although the Gophers are seeded lower, avoiding Wisconsin's side of the bracket could be huge.  This is a race to keep an eye on.  For the #11 through #14 seeds, they rotated a bit due to Northwestern's wins over Iowa and Minnesota, but it would be shocking to see any of Northwestern, Penn State, or Rutgers not play on Wednesday in Chicago.