But Vegas oddsmakers have an even grimmer view of the conference’s chances.
There are 16 teams left in the Men’s NCAA Basketball Tournament; four of them hail from the Big Ten Conference. However, as the remaining squads fight for a spot in the Final 4, it is logistically and mathematically impossible for all four spots in the national semifinals to be from the league of Leaders and Legends.
That is because the Mitten State siblings of Michigan State and Michigan both find themselves in the South Region. While the two teams could match up for a spot in the Final 4, obviously, they both can’t make it.
Of course, that still means that three of the four final spots in the tournament could be claimed by B1G combatants. However, because everyone outside of the Rust Belt (and now the West Coast) hates everything that the Big Ten stands for, it does not appear that there is much faith in the B1G running the table to claim 75% of the Final 4 invites.
Today, our friends from SB Nation Reacts are revealing the groundthink predictions from their latest survey. They asked who hoops fans expected to emerge from each region, and only one Big Ten squad got the nod, and even that is an upset.
Unfortunately, the fan predictions are even more pro-Big Ten than what the experts at the FanDuel SportsBook are predicting. The biggest difference to my eye is that the oddsmakers have Auburn as the favorite to emerge from the South. They have the Tigers at -155 and Sparty at +310. That’s a much bigger margin than the 5% in the SBN Reacts poll.
In the West, the fans are favoring Maryland far more than the bookies are. FanDuel has Florida as -120 favorites while the Turtles are in third in the region at +470. Then, Vegas has Purdue as the least likely team to emerge from the Midwest. They have Houston at -120 and the Boilermakers at +700.
South Region:
Chalk one up for the good guys.
West Region:
As if I don’t always want to see the Gators get upset, it would be even sweeter if the Terps pulled it off.
East Region:
No Big Ten teams… who cares? Rooting for anyone other than Duke… or Alabama… or BYU. Ok, I’m rooting for Arizona.
Midwest Region:
This is the MIDWEST Region and people are picking someone other than Purdue to emerge? That just don’t make no sense.
Bonus Question:
Continued Big Ten Supremacy!
