Should basketball bring in the East/West divisions?

[JohnnyDoeBoiler]

For a refresher:
East: Rutgers, Maryland, PSU, OSU, Michigan, MSU, IU
West: Purdue, NW, Illini, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska

Current B1G Standings:
1: IU (East) 14
2: Iowa (West) 13
3: Maryland (East) 12
4: MSU (East) 11
5: Wisc (West) 10
6: Purdue (West) 9
7: OSU (East) 8
8: Michigan (East) 7
9: PSU (East) 6
10: NW (West) 5
11: Nebraska (West) 4
12: Illini (West) 3
13: Minny (West) 2
14: Rutgers (East) 1

Highest point total wins for strength of division (1=14 and vice versa): just for fun
East: 59
West: 46

Placing these teams in divisional brackets, you would get: it may not be accurate according to what I drew up but it's 2am and I'm not about to go through and write up every teams W/L according to this land of make believe I am in right now.
East:
1: IU
2: Maryland
3: MSU
4: OSU
5: UM
6: PSU
7: Rutgers

West:
1: Iowa
2: Wisc
3: Purdue
4: NW
5: Nebraska
6: Illinois
7: Minnesota

My idea would be to increase conference play by 4 games to 22 games. Teams would play divisional teams twice (12 games) and cross divisional 10 cross divisional games (double up 3 teams and allow for protected rivalry of Purdue/IU every year).

Initial seeding for BTT would be cross divisional for all first games. 6 and 7's would meet in first round with winners each facing a 1. 2/5 and 3/4 would play in their initial round cross divisionally as well. I drew it up on my kids dry erase board but I'll draw it out on a computer later this week. Similar to what the Big East had when they were huge. I feel this would give more credibility to the B1G during conference play and would make the BTT much more exciting.

 

[TC4THREE]

Could work if you added one game to the conference schedule. Play the other six teams in your division both home and away for 12 games and the seven teams in the other division only once for 19 conference games instead of 18. That means you're going to have an unequal number of home and road games though so the divisions would need to rotate so that all teams in that division would play ten at home one year then the teams in that division would play nine home games the next year.

Very doubtful it happens though. Also we would only play IU once every year since we are in different divisions which would suck.

 

[honey_badger]

Please put the W/L record in there. Who cares if it's 2AM, this is basketball in the state of Indiana important

 

[honey_badger]

Could work if you added one game to the conference schedule. Play the other six teams in your division both home and away for 12 games and the seven teams in the other division only once for 19 conference games instead of 18. That means you're going to have an unequal number of home and road games though so the divisions would need to rotate so that all teams in that division would play ten at home one year then the teams in that division would play nine home games the next year.

Very doubtful it happens though. Also we would only play IU once every year since we are in different divisions which would suck.

That's regressing to only play out of div. teams once. We need to go back in time instead of regression...... All big ten teams need a home and away period.

 

[TC4THREE]

That's regressing to only play out of div. teams once. We need to go back in time instead of regression...... All big ten teams need a home and away period.

We would be playing one more conference game than we do right now and one more team twice than we are right now. Not saying it will happen but if you wanted to have two divisions decided in an evenly scheduled way instead of one conference where the championship is decided largely by the schedule then that could be a more realistic scenario to playing 26 conference games.

 

[honey_badger]

We would be playing one more conference game than we do right now and one more team twice than we are right now. Not saying it will happen but if you wanted to have two divisions decided in an evenly scheduled way instead of one conference where the championship is decided largely by the schedule then that could be a more realistic scenario to playing 26 conference games.

There are some pretty smart people heading these conferences, seems like someone would figure it out. Purdue should always also play Notre Dame every year and Indiana should always play Kentucky. And then there should be the classic played in a dome where IU, Purdue, Kentucky and Lousiville play a one-off.

 

[njm8845]

I've been advocating an increase to at least 22 games since this season started.

The divisions are an interesting wrinkle.

Good idea.

How do we make our desires heard?