Gopher Basketball
The Gophers (seeded 10th) open up against 7th-seeded Iowa at 3:30 pm on Thursday. The winner of that game gets the honor of playing #2 Michigan State in the second round. Some prize. The Minnesota-Iowa game should be the best match-up of the opening round. The tournament really gets heated up when #4 Illinois and #5 Indiana square off on Friday. That should be a great game. Top-seeded Ohio State figures to have an easy time with the winner of the Michigan-Penn State game. Of the top three seeds, Purdue’s likely second round match-up with Wisconsin has the best chance at an upset.
I think the top of the league is too strong for any major upsets to occur though. The top three seeds will advance to the semifinals. I think they’ll be joined by Illinois. Indiana is a solid team, but they’ve been struggling lately. Illinois has a lot of potential plus the home crowd, so I’m looking for them to join the final four. In a replay of last year’s tournament, I look for Illinois to upset Ohio State in the semis before falling to Michigan State (who should handle Purdue fairly easily) in the final. Any one of the top 5 teams could win it (although I’m not sold on Purdue), but this is my best at how it will shake out. Here’s the schedule for the whole weekend:
Thursday, March 9
Game 1: #8 Michigan vs. #9 Penn State, 1 p.m. CST
Game 2: #7 Iowa vs. #10 Minnesota, 3:30 p.m. CST
Game 3: #6 Wisconsin vs. #11 Northwestern, 6:10 p.m. CST
Friday, March 10
Game 4: #4 Illinois vs. #5 Indiana, 11:30 a.m. CST
Game 5: #1 Ohio State vs. winner of Game 1, 2 p.m. CST
Game 6: #2 Michigan State vs. winner of Game 2, 6:40 p.m. CST
Game 7: #3 Purdue vs. winner of Game 3, 9 p.m. CST
Saturday, March 11
Game 8: Game 4 winner vs. Game 5 winner, 1:30 p.m. CST
Game 9: Game 6 winner vs. Game 7 winner, 30 minutes following game 8
Sunday, March 12
Game 10: Game 8 winner vs. Game 9 winner, 2:30 p.m. CST
Talk about Minnesota Gopher basketball topics on the Tubby’s Barn message board.