CHICAGO — It’s quarterfinal Friday at the Big Ten tournament, and looks to be a grand day. The top eight seeds are all playing.
And here’s something else. Seven of the eight have played in the national championship game in the past 20 NCAA tournaments. Illinois, Michigan, Michigan State, Ohio State, Purdue, Wisconsin and UCLA. Seven. And all seven lost.
How Big Tennish is that? (P.S. UCLA was a Pac-12 citizen at the time).
BRACKET PREDICTIONS: Florida grabs No. 1 seed in latest March Madness projections
This league has glamour, money, members from sea to shining sea. What it doesn’t have is a single basketball national championship trophy from the past 25 years. The Big East over the same period has eight.
Maybe this year? Friday seemed a good time to stop by the United Center and ponder the question.
MICHIGAN 71, OHIO STATE 67
If the Big Ten had a vote on Team Most Likely To Succeed In March, it’d surely be a landslide for Michigan. The No. 3 Wolverines are 29-2, with 24 of the wins by double digits, including over Ohio State by 12 and 21.
But no romp this day. The Buckeyes have only three field goals the last 11:25 and still almost pull it off. Nothing much pretty about the game for Michigan. Big Ten player of the year Yaxel Lendeborg, a constant focus of the Ohio State defense, takes only four shots and scores only six points, but also has six assists. “I don’t care about the points... I do need to figure out ways where I can be more of an aggressor and try to make more plays for my team,” he says in the locker room afterward.
“He'll bounce back,” coach Dusty May says. “Most guys who receive those types of awards, they're going to keep firing and try to shoot their way out of a funk or whatever the case. Yax just plays the game, and he wants to win.”
Maybe there’s something to be said about having to find a way in a grinder for a team that has won 10 games by 30 or more points. That experience might be useful in a couple of weeks.
“If we win, yes, I love it,” May says of a close game.
Lendeborg thinks so, too.
“We’ve just got to figure out what works best for us when we get bogged down like that, figure out who we can lean on.”
The Wolverines might be back in this building in three weeks, playing to get to the Final Four out of the Midwest Regional. Free-flowing rout or tough rock fight, it won’t matter then. Just the score.
“Either one, we're equipped,” May says. “We're ready for the challenge to figure out a way to win that one. Hopefully more of those 30 and 40 wins are coming soon. Those are fun as well.”
WISCONSIN 91, ILLINOIS 88, overtime.
In the Illinois locker room, the guard who was named to the Big Ten all-defensive team is not happy.
Kylan Boswell was out with a fractured hand in February when Wisconsin visited Champaign and took down Illinois 92-90 in overtime. The point-producing guard firm of Boyd & Blackwell had a big night for the Badgers — Nick Boyd with 25 points, John Blackwell 24.
Boswell, unable to intercede, hated every second. Friday would be different, he vowed. But only 29 seconds into the game he gets into a tussle with Boyd. Double technical foul. Just 22 seconds later, he picks up his second foul. He’ll play only 18 minutes with foul trouble and watch it all happen again. Boyd ends with 38 points, Blackwell 31, every other person on Wisconsin a combined 22.
Afterward Boswell sits at his locker and describes his frustration.
“I wanted to make sure he understood that I was out last game,” he says of that first contact with Boyd that led to the technical. “It made me super frustrated to pick up my second foul the next possession. I didn’t get to guard him the way I wanted to. He fried us all night basically.”
Friday's game shows there is more than one way to be vastly entertaining — and a threat in the NCAA tournament.
Wisconsin has its one-two punch. Blackwell has scored 34 and 31 in the Badgers’ first two wins here, Boyd 23 and 38. They are unafraid to fire away, taking 20 of Wisconsin’s 41 shots from the 3-point line Friday. But they are also composed. Blackwell scores 31 points in 44 minutes without a single turnover.
“The game is a guard's game, especially this time of year,” coach Greg Gard says. “To be able to have two really, really good ones like we do, I'd be an idiot not to put the ball in their hands more often than not.”
But Illinois can also do what it does. Six players score at least nine points Friday. Eight different Illini have led the team in scoring in a game this season. It is a relentless, balanced assault that the KenPom ratings have as No. 1 in the nation in offense.
But there is an issue. Consider some Illinois scores from the past month.
An 85-82 loss in overtime at Michigan State.
The 92-90 overtime home loss to Wisconsin.
The 95-94 overtime loss at UCLA.
And Friday, when the Illini let a 15-point lead get away in the second half. That’s 0-4 in overtime in the past nine games, each with a lot of points both scored and allowed.
Oddity or trend? It’s a bad time for the latter if the Illini are to use that high-powered offense to contend for a Final Four.
“I don’t think the problem is overtime,” Tomislav Ivisic says. “We should have closed the game way before overtime when we had the chance. It just looked like they wanted it more which cannot happen in this type of games. When you get into overtime and you’ve played bad for the last 10 minutes it’s hard to just change that. You can’t go, `let’s start playing now.’ It doesn’t work like that.”
AQ TRACKER: Track every men's basketball auto-bid for 2026 March Madness
Coach Brad Underwood has an opinion, too.
“Sometimes I think, when we make shots, we get casual on the other end, and we think it's just easy. I had that feeling today. Then all of a sudden they get going, and now it's a shootout. I don't want shootouts.”
It is Tomislav who sums up the situation.
“The next time this happens, we’re going home.”
PURDUE 74, NEBRASKA 58.
It’s midway through the second half and two Nebraska 3-pointers have just cut a 16-point Purdue lead to 10. Timeout. Braden Smith wants to have a word with his guys. Lots of them matter of fact. Something about lack of communication on ball screens.
“We know the one thing that limits us and why we lose basketball games is because of communication,” he will say later in the locker room. So the All-American says his piece in the huddle. Let his coach describe that.
“He was losing his mind because they weren't calling left, right, whatever,” Matt Painter says. “Sometimes you get guys in there that lose their (mind) and they don't say anything that makes any sense. You're like, `Hey, I'm glad the guy cares. What locker room are you in, though?’ What he was saying, he was accurate. So sometimes it's just shut up and sit there. Players that lead the right way and are talking about the things that we're drilling and trying to get out there, it's better coming from them. It just simply is.”
Order is quickly restored and there is no further danger.
Purdue is back.
Or were the Boilermakers ever away? Well, they did go from No. 1 in the nation to a No. 7 seed in the Big Ten. Their record dipped from a 17-1 start to a 6-7 regular season finish.
But the Big Ten tournament seems to have perked them up. This makes two wins without them trailing for one second. Seven consecutive opponents had peppered them with 52.7 percent shooting, but for the Huskers it’s only 39.3. Maybe they’re just in time to return to their menacing selves.
“We didn't have the conference season that we planned to have, but we also didn't have that because we've got great teams in our league, and we didn't defend well enough to have a better record,” Painter says. “I thought we were much better for 40 minutes tonight. That part of it has hopefully got to carry over into the NCAA tournament.”
A confidence boost? Smith sat by his locker and maintains none was needed.
“We know the type of team we are. We know we’ve kind of had some letdowns in some games we thought we should have won and we haven’t played the best basketball that we should have but we have a really high understanding of who we are as players and what we’ve done here.”
Only five points for him Friday on 1-for-8 shooting, but 10 assists. Bobby Hurley’s NCAA record is only 21 passes away.
“I’m not scoring a lot of points,” Smith says, “but we’re winning a lot of games.”
UCLA 88, Michigan State 84.
These brackets with triple byes have unusual quirks. When Michigan State finally takes the floor for the first time in the Big Ten tournament Friday night, 13 teams have already been eliminated. And look who the Spartans are playing — the team they walloped last month.
That was UCLA’s low-water trip; lost by 30 at Michigan, then by 23 three days later in East Lansing. Times have changed. The Bruins have won six of seven since. “They played desperate,” Tom Izzo says. A night after UCLA beat Rutgers with defense, the Bruins outscore Michigan State. What about that, Mick Cronin? “You can't win the dance contest if you can only slow dance. You've got to be able to tango, too.”
Indeed, UCLA seems newly revived and dangerous for the NCAA dance floor, though the sight of leading scorer Tyler Bilodeau leaving the court Friday with a knee injury is worrisome. Meanwhile, Izzo has to find what buttons to push after such a puzzling display for a team many consider Final Four material. It is the opponent that is smarter and tougher and Izzo says afterward, “I just did not think that was a Michigan State effort. I really didn't.”
That can’t happen. Not now.
“We're going to have to get ready,” Izzo says. “But it ain't going to be tonight."
The long day has seen three of the top four seeds fall, and all three were ranked in the top 11 of the latest AP poll. Might that suggest a deep league and why the Big Ten will have so many names called Sunday? Or untimely wobbles with the top tier?
Answers coming soon, for a conference so hungry to fill a void.
