The Big Ten must win their first NCAA Tournament since 2000 to justify all the Hype

The last time the Big Ten won the NCAA tournament was Bill Clinton in the White House, Destiny’s Child’s No. 1 song was on the Billboard chart and Tom Izzo was 45 years old.

Friends, Frasier and ER they were still among the top shows in America. The Sopranos he was in his second season. The first iPhone was still seven years away.

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Get the picture?

It has been a while since Mateen Cleaves and The Flintstones cut the nets in Indianapolis.

I’ll take this memory series down now to make this argument: With all the hoopla around how loaded the Big Ten is this season, the conference must an NCAA champion to prove the hype.

By any metric, the Big Ten is loaded.

On Monday, it became just the second conference to rank nine teams in the AP Top 25: No. 6 Wisconsin, No. 10 Iowa, No. 14 Rutgers, No. 15 Illinois, No. 16 Michigan, No. 17 Michigan State, No. 19 Northwest

NWE
, No. 21 Minnesota and No. 25 Ohio State.

Thirteen of the 14 teams in the league are in the top 54 KenPom rankings (Nebraska is ranked 115th).

In his latest experience, Joe Lunardi has 11 Big ESPN teams in the Big Dance: the nine recorded teams in addition to Indiana and Purdue.

“The Big Ten from top to bottom is the toughest conference to win every day in a long time,” said Richard Pitino of Minnesota, whose team has then won – No. 4 Iowa and no. 17 State of Michigan, I told. “Things are not easy. Depth is the biggest thing that stands out. All 14 teams strongly believe they are fighting for an NCAA Championship spot. ”

If the 14-team Big Ten (that still feels weird) puts 11 teams in the Big Dance, that would be 79 percent of the league.

The Big East set the record for the most submissions from a single conference in 2011, but that was a 16-team league (69 percent). The 15-team ACC has had a few nine-offer years lately, but that’s still “just” 60 percent.

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However, the only thing people remember from 2011 is that Kemba Walker led UConn to five winners in five days in the Big East Championship at Madison Square Garden, and then led the Huskies to an NCAA tournament over Butler in Houston.

Pitino and several other Big Ten head coaches politely declined to comment on the idea that the conference had to win an NCAA title in April in Indianapolis to prove the hype of the league.

And understandably so. It’s not even January yet, conference play has just begun and coaches are not targeting the NCAA Tournament yet.

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But here are the facts. Since Michigan State last won the conference title in 2000, here ‘s how the 19 NCAA tournaments were divided (the 2020 NCAA Tournament was not due to the pandemic:

ACC – 8

Great East – 6

SEC – 3

Large 12 – 1

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America – 1

For worth it, the Pac-12 did not win an NCAA title from Arizona in 1997.

Izzo, now 65, has a very good knowledge of how stable the Big Ten is on the highest levels.

With Michigan State losing to Texas Tech in the 2019 Finals, Izzo walked away from his eighth Final Four appearance with just one NCAA champion.

“We haven’t been able to do it,” Izzo then said. “I feel like I’m part of that, so I’ll put on my big boy shoes and say, yeah, you’ve been here eight times, you’ve won one, so that’s part of the problem. “

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WCC’s Unbeaten and No. 1 Gonzaga look like their favorites to cut down the nets in April, while Baylor’s No. 2 (Big 12), Villanova’s No. 3 (Big East) and No. 1 . 4 Kansas (Big 12) main competitors.

For what it’s worth, Iona’s Rick Pitino, who won NCAA titles at Kentucky and Louisville, doesn’t think the Big Ten needs to win a title to prove the hype.

“No,” he said. “The conference is very strong but Gonzaga and Baylor are the two strongest teams in the country far too soon.

“A one-match match in a NCAA Tour does not prove the strength of the league. The league is very strong with 6-7 great teams but none in the class with Gonzaga or Baylor. ”

Izzo, who owns the 0-3 team in the Big Ten for the first time since 2001-2, still wants his conference to see another title.

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“One of those days,” he said in 2019, “we have a lot of teams knocking on the door, we’re going to find a way to win one.”