
As mentioned in the NCAA Tournament Friday TV Schedule I just posted, today is a big day for the Big Ten. All five Big Ten teams that made the 2010 Big Dance play their first round games this afternoon and evening.
The conference has been much maligned in recent years, yet has a tremendous opportunity to assert itself with a strong first round performance. All the Big Ten needs to do is the exact opposite of what the Big East did yesterday.
The mighty Big East, renowned as the best conference in the nation, saw purported powerhouse Georgetown, along with Notre Dame and Marquette, go down in first round Thursday action. The conference’s lone winner, Villanova, needed some friendly officiating to escape being only the fifth #2 seed in history to lose in the first round.
The Big East still has teams like Syracuse and Pitt to play today, but a strong showing by the Big Ten’s Big Five today would obviously help the conference look much better in comparison.
Let’s quickly break down the schedule, assess what Big Ten fans should expect their conference today, and analyze why this is yet another day for Indiana fans to pull their hair out and lament what was…and what could have been.



Minnesota basketball is enjoying unseen success, since the addition of Tubby Smith. The team has exploded out of the gate to 11-0 and entered the nation’s top 20. They are sitting at 16-1, now, with their only loss coming to a seriously tough Michigan State team. They notched another gutsy win in Wisconsin last night, and I’m trying to find out what’s responsible for this team’s performance on the court, the inspiration seems to be on the bench, though.
