Maryland basketball's Big Ten Tournament double-bye, likely seeding, game times and NCAA bracketology
Maryland enters the postseason playing as well as anyone in the Big Ten for the past two months, winning 13 of its past 16 games. Where do they stand for next week's Big Ten Tournament?
Maryland basketball ended a sensational second half of the season on Saturday, beating Northwestern, 74-61, at Xfinity Center on Saturday. With the win, the Terps clinched one of those prized double-byes for the top four Big Ten finishers and no worse than third place in the standings.
Their final fate will be determined by the result of No. 17 Michigan's game at No. 8 Michigan State on Sunday at noon. Maryland (24-7 overall, 14-6 Big Ten) sits in third place in the Big Ten standings, behind Michigan (14-5) and MSU (16-3), which has clinched the conference title. Maryland holds a tiebreaker over Michigan thanks to its win over the Wolverines last week in Ann Arbor. So if the Spartans win tomorrow, Maryland will finish second and be the No. 2 seed in the Big Ten Tournament ($20 off tickets with code "IMS" at checkout).
Either way, the double-bye means they'll play their first Big Ten Tournament game on Friday. If they're the No. 2 seed, they'll play at 6:30 against the winner of the Thursday game between the seventh seed and whoever wins between the No. 10 and 15 seeds on Thursday. If Michigan wins at MSU tomorrow, which seems unlikely how hot Tom Izzo's team has been and how cold Michigan's been, they'll be the No. 3 seed, playing in the 9 p.m. game against the winner of the Thursday game between the No. 6 seed and the previous day's winner between No. 11 and 14.
If Maryland finishes second, it would be its fourth top two finish in 11 seasons since joining the conference. But only one of them, that first-place tie in the Covid-shortened season of 2019-2020, has happened in the past eight seasons.
With six Big Ten games left on the schedule, projecting their opponents is difficult, a wide array of possibilities remaining. If the favorites were to win all of the remaining games (MSU over Michigan, Ohio State over Indiana, UCLA over USC, Nebraska over Iowa, Rutgers over Minnesota and Oregon over Washington), Maryland would play at 6:30 Friday against the winner of Illinois vs. the earlier USC-Indiana winner. If Michigan State wins tomorrow, the Terps will avoid the Spartans until the finals if they advance, good news considering they've lost the past seven against Tom Izzo's team.
Maryland enters the postseason playing as well as anyone in the Big Ten for the past two months, winning 13 of its past 16 games. And all three of those losses came on buzzer beaters, against Northwesterm, Ohio State and Michigan. Before that, their only four losses came by a combined 19 points against Marquette, Purdue, Washington and Oregon. All but Washington are no worse than sixth seeds in NCAA Tournament projections.
So, there might be no team in college basketball so few points away from a dominant season. That, of course, only matters for discussion purposes; there's no close loss column in the standings. Still, their NCAA Tournament resume is strong. Maryland is a No. 4 or 5 seed in most projections but could climb with a strong showing next week in Indianapolis.
