1/27 Big Ten Tournament Bracketology: Maryland Leads The Field

The last few weeks have been wild from top to bottom in the Big Ten. Fans have seen teams go up and down and all kinds of results, including home and road upsets, blowouts, and battles down to the wire. Of course, those results have left things at an interesting spot in the Big Ten standings.

In light of 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 Friday, January 27, 2016. I have taken the liberty of looking at the Big Ten records and using the Big Ten tiebreaker scenarios to see where teams land. Things will certainly move, but it’s interesting to see as of this moment.

2017 Big Ten Tournament Bracket (1/27):

Thoughts:

To start, it's worth noting that this projection is still early with a capital e. Even a single game can drastically change the bracket’s outlook and with so many important ones over the coming days, expect things to look much different in the near future. However, as mentioned above, it’s still fun to see how things look now.

At the top of the bracket, it’s not surprising to see Maryland and Wisconsin at the one and two seeds respectively. The Terps and Badgers are actually tied in the standings, but Maryland gets the tiebreaker due to Wisconsin’s loss to Purdue. Of course, with the two facing later this season, some separation is surely coming.

The lower side of the bracket also looks like it would be packed with excitement. Another Michigan State-Ohio State battle, a third edition of Indiana-Purdue, and another Purdue-Wisconsin game? Sign me up.

Admittedly, the bottom segment is a bit misleading here. Minnesota is sitting at the No. 12 seed, but don’t be too alarmed. This is largely due to tiebreakers that won’t exist by the end of next week. Seeing Nebraska’s substantial drop over the last few weeks has also be interesting, as the Huskers were the one seed a few weeks ago.

We'll have to see how the coming weeks impacts things for the bracket, but it still looks like an exciting race across the Big Ten.