The Big Ten has operated more like the wild west than a major basketball conference this season, but it’s led to some intriguing and exciting results. It should also set things up nicely for the Big Ten Tournament, especially considering how unpredictable play has been for the league’s top teams.

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 morning of Friday, February 17, 2017. 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 (2/17):

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, things grew insanely tight with Wisconsin’s back-to-back losses to Northwestern and Michigan. There’s now a three-way tie atop the Big Ten standings and it should leave plenty of drama in the weeks to come. Michigan State and Northwestern are also tied for fourth in the standings.

The middle of the bracket also features some close races. Michigan and Minnesota are tied and will face off this Sunday. Additionally, Iowa and Penn State are close behind those two and are separated from one another by just half a game.

At the bottom, it’s amazing to see a team as talented as Indiana currently scheduled to play on Wednesday of this year’s Big Ten Tournament. There’s still time to turn things around in Bloomington, but things aren’t looking good right now.