BTPowerhouse's 2/1 Big Ten Tournament Bracketology: Michigan State Spartans Rising

This past week wasn't exactly the most exciting out there, but it was an important one that further divided up the standings and separated the top teams from the bottom teams. Half of conference play is now in the books and by now, most certainly have an idea of how things are going to sort out.

With that, let's take a look at the Big Ten Tournament bracket.

The concept of the bracket is pretty simple. Each time, BTP will breakdown how the Big Ten Tournament projects as of that moment. For instance, today's bracket will be set as of the night of Monday, February 1, 2016. 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.

2016 Big Ten Tournament Bracket (2/1):

Thoughts:

Things got really close in the standings during the early portion of the week, but with the weekend's games, things are back to being pretty spaced out across the conference. The gap from first to last is now nine games and just six teams are tied with another team in the standings. By now, we can finally make some real predictions.

At the top of the standings, Indiana and Iowa remain tied. The Hoosiers still have the tiebreaker, but with a challenging week coming up, it could be Iowa's chance to create some space. After these two, Maryland, Michigan, and Purdue are all still trying to close the gap. With tough games for all three, it's going to be a crucial next few days.

The middle group remains intriguing. Michigan State and Wisconsin continue to rise and Ohio State and Nebraska continue to drop in the standings. All four have some big games this week and by the end of the week, this picture should get a lot clearer as well.

At the bottom, it was a rough week for virtually all the teams. Northwestern kept the final single bye in the bracket, but largely did so because all the lower teams seemed to lose. Any upset in this group could drastically change the outlook of the Big Ten Tournament bracket.

We'll have to see how next week impacts things, but it looks like an exciting race in the Big Ten.