Big Ten Conference and Team March Madness Historical Trends Since 2000

On Sunday, it was announced that the Big Ten would have 7 teams participating in this year's NCAA Tournament, which was the most of any conference.  With the tourney starting on Thursday and Friday for all the Big Ten teams, it seemed like a good time to take a step back and see how the teams and conferences have performed historically.

The Big Ten has not won a championship since 2000 although Maryland did win in 2002 as a member of the ACC, but the league has put at least one team in the last three Final Fours and five of the last six.  As such, there has been a lot of success over the last few seasons and plenty of reasons to like the conference going forward.

Let's take a look at how the Big Ten has performed since 2000.

Conference Performance

As this is a Big Ten site, the easiest place to start appears to be the conference race and the Big Ten certainly holds up with almost any conference in total wins.

Of course, total wins is just one indicator, especially when some conferences had more teams for most of this period and could skew some data, so it's important to look at the percentages as well.

Team Performance

When you move on to the specific teams, that is when you can start to see some interest trends develop including the significance of Michigan State's run under Tom Izzo.

Similar to the conference performance, it's also interesting to group the data to look at the percentages.  Appearances are important for a program, but what they did once they were in is important as well.

What To Expect

There is obviously no perfect way to predict how the team's might do this year in the NCAA Tournament, but one good indicator is how seeds in the same situation have performed historically.  With the Big Ten having so many lower seeds this season, the first round will be especially important.  Here is how seeds have performed in the first round.

Overall

Some really interesting numbers.  Not only does it confirm t he concept that Tom Izzo does very well in March, but it also backs up the concept that the #5 seed has much more trouble than the seeding trends should indicate.  No Big Ten teams are #5 seeds this year, but Maryland is a #4 seed.  Perhaps some of these numbers will change this year and the total wins by conference could certainly change with 7 teams from the Big Ten in the Big Dance.