Road to the NCAA ...

[KODK]

Purdue has made it difficult to get an NCAA bid because of its early-season losses to Maine, Villanova, Southern Illinois and IUPUI, plus the lack of a marquee victory, the best being the pair of wins vs. Michigan State, a bubble team at best. But at 14-8, 5-3, with an RPI around 80, there are probably three narrow paths to the Dance, as I see it.

1. Beat Maryland Thursday, with it being one part of a 5-3 record in the second half. Win a game in the BTT. That'd put Purdue at 20-12, with a NCAA-bumping win vs. the Terps, which would help negate the early loses.

2. Lose to Maryland, but win the other seven remaining games. Win a game in the BTT. That'd put Purdue at 22-10, perhaps with an RPI in the high 50s or low 60s, and with wins in 10 of final 12.

3. Do whatever the rest of the regular-season. Win the BTT.

Not sure which scenario is most likely, because all are fairly unlikely. But at least at the halfway point of the Big Ten, Purdue has given itself a chance after a horrible start.

 

[TC4THREE]

They needed to pull that Ohio State game off to give themselves a decent chance. Like you said, all of these scenarios are varying degrees of unlikely. I'd rate them all as extremely unlikely myself. #2 might be slightly more realistic to me than #1 and #3 is always technically a possibility since every team makes the tournament.

I think that any scenario that involves us likely having to beat Maryland is less likely than any scenario that doesn't. Nobody would be stunned if they won any of their last 7 conference games but winning all of them is a very tall task.

 

[illiniboiler]

Good analysis=NIT