College basketball: Kentucky, Princeton and Rhode Island win conference tournament titles

“We’ve been here before”, Koenig explained a few minutes later.

The next tournament, of course, is familiar territory for Koenig and Hayes. Derrick Walton hit him with a long pass, and Wilson made a thunderous two-handed jam for a 63-52 lead with 1:34 left. They have been 8-3-0 in their last 11 games, scoring four goals or more in eight of those contests.

Ten years later, the MI coach has made it about the ones going up.

Michigan State and Purdue were the conference’s best bets last season, but both suffered shocking first-round upsets to Middle Tennessee State and Arkansas-Little Rock, respectively.

The now Big Ten Conference odds to win the championship include Purdue at 22/1, Michigan at 25/1, Wisconsin at 66/1, Maryland, Michigan State, and Minnesota at 100/1, and Northwestern at 200/1. “Credit to Michigan. They played a heck of a game”. “Our message was somebody’s gonna do it, why not us?”

Michigan: The Wolverines enjoyed a memorable run in the tournament on the heels of a somewhat disappointing regular season in which they went 10-8 in the league, including losses to IL and Ohio State.

The Badgers don’t deserve to be as high as Minnesota, but they certainly should be above Maryland.

The incredible run through the Big Ten Tournament came after Michigan’s plane aborted takeoff and slid off the runway Wednesday night. The Wolverines are a No.7 seed, but they might be among the five best teams in the Midwest.

MI should be a popular March Madness pick with the incredible week it just had at the Big Ten Tournament, winning four games in four days after a horrifying aborted takeoff last Wednesday. While the Big Ten does not release official preseason rankings, many media people pegged the Wolverines for a fifth-place finish, around.500 in the league. Should they win, the Badgers likely would play Villanova, the defending national champion and the No. 1 overall seed in the tournament.

Happ averaged 14.7 points and 10.3 rebounds over three games. Maryland gets an always-dangerous Xavier team in the first round and would face the victor of Florida State-Florida Gulf Coast in the second round.

“We’ve got to make them as uncomfortable as possible”, junior guard Jordan Hill said. At least the committee threw them a bone that year and sent them to Milwaukee for the first weekend. Sunday wasn’t their best, but they still out-rebounded MI, 32-25.

Although Wisconsin has suffered two recent detrimental losses to the Buckeyes at the Kohl Center, there is hope for the Badgers at this weekend’s away tournament, as they are consistently more successful at away games.

None of that made any sense following the Badgers’ 71-56 loss to the streaking Wolverines on Sunday at the Verizon Center. I’m anxious to see if MI can ride this momentum into the NCAA Tournament. But a lot of these picks are based on hunches, and I have hunch that Minnesota will get to the Sweet 16 with everyone questioning their seed. The experience of Wisconsin will still benefit them in March.

After a heartbreaking 72-70 overtime loss to Seton Hall on February 8, the Providence Friars weren’t even locks for the NIT.

“That one I can never understand”, Gard said. They don’t let the outside noise or all the drama that comes with it – which obviously it’s a terrific tournament – but they do a very good job of filtering that. “I just go out and play basketball and hopefully the rest of takes care of itself”. They came off of an airplane that could have ended all their lives.

Even if total attendance this week wasn’t overwhelming, the shift to the East Coast validated the Big Ten’s desire to branch out from the Midwest. Michigan State then dropped decisions at No. 2, 4, and 6 singles while the other three remained unfinished.

Walton led eighth-seeded MI with 22 points Sunday and drew chants of “M-V-P” from the blue and gold-clad crowd as he stepped to the free throw line in the final moments.

The Hokies were eliminated from the ACC tournament last Thursday with a 74-68 quarterfinal loss to Florida State.