Conference Champions

[hunkgolden]

With the conference tournament and unbalanced schedules - who does the league officially recognize as the league champion? If it is the tournament champion, can a school really claim to be conference champions if they were in first at the end of league play?

Speaking of unbalanced schedules - there are clearly 5 quality teams in the conference this year - Purdue, MSU, Iowa, iu, and Maryland. Everyone else is a bubble team or just downright awful. Of the 4 other heavyweights, iu only plays Iowa twice. They have Purdue and Maryland at home only and MSU on the road where they got destroyed. They can beat their chest all they want about being in 1st place - just now sure how much it means with the schedule they were given. Haven't looked at the seating projections for the dance since Saturday's game but going into the game we were a 5 seed and they were an 8/9 seed. That tells you all you need to know about how legit being in 1st place means of a conference with unbalanced schedule.

 

[ss32000]

With the conference tournament and unbalanced schedules - who does the league officially recognize as the league champion? If it is the tournament champion, can a school really claim to be conference champions if they were in first at the end of league play?

Speaking of unbalanced schedules - there are clearly 5 quality teams in the conference this year - Purdue, MSU, Iowa, iu, and Maryland. Everyone else is a bubble team or just downright awful. Of the 4 other heavyweights, iu only plays Iowa twice. They have Purdue and Maryland at home only and MSU on the road where they got destroyed. They can beat their chest all they want about being in 1st place - just now sure how much it means with the schedule they were given. Haven't looked at the seating projections for the dance since Saturday's game but going into the game we were a 5 seed and they were an 8/9 seed. That tells you all you need to know about how legit being in 1st place means of a conference with unbalanced schedule.

I believe the league acknowledges both. They hand out a regular season trophy, but the whoever wins the tournament gets the automatic berth in the NCAA tournament. Unbalanced schedules are terrible, but I'm not sure I can come up with an alternative given the conference sizing. Protected rivalries would probably be the best thing, but it could have unintended consequences in down years for IU/PU, NW/Ill, MI/MSU, OSU/MI, WI/MN/IA, Maryland/RU/PSU. I'd take my chances getting Rutgers/Penn State as my guaranteed home and home every year if I'm Maryland.

 

[Chicaco1908]

With the conference tournament and unbalanced schedules - who does the league officially recognize as the league champion? If it is the tournament champion, can a school really claim to be conference champions if they were in first at the end of league play?

Speaking of unbalanced schedules - there are clearly 5 quality teams in the conference this year - Purdue, MSU, Iowa, iu, and Maryland. Everyone else is a bubble team or just downright awful. Of the 4 other heavyweights, iu only plays Iowa twice. They have Purdue and Maryland at home only and MSU on the road where they got destroyed. They can beat their chest all they want about being in 1st place - just now sure how much it means with the schedule they were given. Haven't looked at the seating projections for the dance since Saturday's game but going into the game we were a 5 seed and they were an 8/9 seed. That tells you all you need to know about how legit being in 1st place means of a conference with unbalanced schedule.
Where did you see 8th or 9th seed....5th seed now. Same as PU