Monday, July 31, 2017

Badgers' Big Ten schedule

The Big Ten finally released its conference basketball schedule today—well, at least the pairings. Here's the Badgers' schedule, ordered by Torvik Thrill Quotient:

 

Based on the current preseason T-Rank projections, such as they are, it's the 4th toughest conference slate, and T-Rank projects the Badgers to go 9-9 and tie for 5th place. 

Here's a more subjective take:

Big favorite:

IU
OSU
Illinois
Nebraska

Slight Favorite:

at Rutgers
at Nebraska
Michigan
Minnesota
Northwestern

Pick em:

Purdue
at Illinois
at Penn St.

Slight Underdog:

at Iowa
MSU
at Maryland
at Northwestern

Book an L:

at MSU
at Purdue

Based on this, we've got four games in the "should win," two games in the "won't win," and 12 games that could easily go either way. Based on that, I'd say 10 wins is the target. That would likely be enough to get into the tournament, and could well extend the "top 4" streak. If I were setting an over/under, I'd probably go with 9.5.

What do you think, Chorlton?

3 comments:

  1. Having done almost no research into next season, I would take the over. Big Ten was pretty mediocre last year and I don't think the league in general will be significantly better. Should give a young UW team a chance in a lot of games and I agree 10 wins seems about right.

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    1. I agree the conference should be similar overall. Big question to me is how good the Badgers will be. Did enough of Bo's magic rub off on Gardo that we can expect leaps from the so-far undistinguished junior class (other than Happ)?

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