The Big Ten has steadily gained a reputation for being a strong regular season basketball conference that does not get it done in the NCAA Tournament. The first two rounds of the 2022 tournament will not do anything to change that perception.
Sunday proved to be a bloodbath for the Big Ten, with Illinois, Michigan State, and Wisconsin all losing in the second round. The Fighting Illini and Badgers both lost to lower-seeded teams, with Illinois losing by 15 to Houston.
With those results in the book, the Big Ten has just two teams left standing of the nine that received bids. Michigan sealed a Sweet Sixteen trip with an upset victory over Tennessee on Saturday, while Purdue faces Texas later Sunday. The possibility exists that eight of the league’s nine teams could be eliminated by the end of the first weekend.
The conference’s reputation for postseason failure was already well-known, and Twitter gleefully piled on as Big Ten teams fell one by one.
The Big Ten has two Sweet 16 teams out of 18 bids over the last two years, with Purdue still to play.
And at the moment, those two Sweet 16 berths are from Michigan.
— Chris Vannini (@ChrisVannini) March 21, 2022
Let’s check in on the Big Ten pic.twitter.com/7IsXjp1Yn2
— RedditCFB (@RedditCFB) March 20, 2022
Big Ten got NINE teams in. Why isn’t this being investigated? @FBI
— Eddie Radosevich (@Eddie_Rado) March 21, 2022
https://twitter.com/alex_kirshner/status/1505704592851546114
The Big Ten today pic.twitter.com/naJMx3yaJl
— Scary Alvarez (@barryisthedon) March 21, 2022
The lowest seeded Big 12 team in the tournament just beat the “best” team in the Big Ten, I don’t want to hear any talk about conference superiority ever again
— Nate Schuster (@nateschuster10) March 21, 2022
Michigan State is the last Big Ten team to win a championship, having done so in 2000. Since then, the conference has 14 Final Four appearances and seven championship game appearances, but no national titles. Unless Michigan or Purdue pull off a ridiculous run, that does not appear likely to change this year.
Photo: Dec 4, 2021; Indianapolis, IN, USA; Big 10 commissioner Kevin Warren during the Michigan Wolverines game against the Iowa Hawkeyes in the Big Ten Conference championship game at Lucas Oil Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports
