Big Ten should get more respect in national tournament

Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany made a good point during the weekend concerning the love (or lack thereof) his conference gets from the national media.

Delany told a few members of the media assembled in Detroit for the weekend’s NCAA men’s Final Four, which North Carolina eventually won last night, that the treatment his conference gets just isn’t justified.

“Whoever the basketball analysts are, they need to look at the record,” Delany said, before questioning the “acumen” of those “talking heads.”

And while I haven’t always agreed with Delany’s moves – I miss the nostalgia and un-corporate grandeur of seeing the Hoosiers play on the local ESPN-Plus affiliate instead of Big Ten Network – he’s spot-on in his assessment of the conference: Big Ten basketball simply doesn’t get the respect it deserves.

Need proof? Just take a look back at the recent history of the only true test of conference ability – this little thing we call the NCAA Tournament.

Tossing in Michigan State’s latest run to the Final Four, the closing weekend of the Big Dance has seen a team from this oh-so-terrible Big Ten in eight of the past 11 editions. The 1999 Final Four saw both the Spartans and Ohio State fill half of the field, while three of the past five championship games have also seen a Big Ten school.

Sure, there’s little doubt that Michigan State with a full, healthy roster is the best of the 11-team conference this season. Heck, the Spartans have beaten two of the tournament’s No. 1 seeds. But that doesn’t mean it was light-years ahead of the rest for its conference counterparts – like the case for a certain Tennessee school in Conference USA.

Seven teams from the Big Ten played their way into March Madness, and the case for the eighth (Penn State) to make the field was cemented in how the Nittany Lions rolled to the NIT championship against teams like Notre Dame and Florida.

Much of the season’s attention has been tossed in two directions – the ACC and the Big East – and most of it has been deserved. But just because those two conferences have sported some above-average talent, is it really hard for a 16-team Big East conference not to have at least four or five talented basketball clubs? That doesn’t mean the Big Ten can just be thrown by the wayside.

After all, most of the criticism of the Big Ten comes as a result of relatively low-scoring games that the “talking heads” deem as a lack of offense output. But there are two sides to every coin, and to me, those low-scoring affairs have a lot more to do with defense and a lack of it in the “powerhouse” East Coast schools.

Was the Big Ten a tremendous conference in the 2008-09 season? I wouldn’t say so, but it’s hard for any conference to always be in top form, whether it’s with 11 teams or 16.

The conference deserves a whole lot more respect than it has been given lately, but I’d imagine the only way that will change is with more on-court success in future years.

In the meantime, though, the Big Ten will just have to settle for eight trips to the Final Four since 2000 – one behind the illustrious ACC.
That’s a pretty terrible conference, huh?