What seeds are still possible for Ohio State in the Big Ten Tournament?
The final weekend of the regular season is nigh.
Starting with Saturday night’s Minnesota game at Northwestern, all 14 Big Ten teams will play their final games before converging on Minneapolis for the Big Ten Tournament. Six league games will be played Sunday with Maryland’s 7:30 p.m. game at Penn State serving as the capstone to the 20-game league schedule.
It likely won’t be until then that the league’s tournament bracket will be set. With 19 games down, 11 Big Ten teams have between 8-12 conference losses, making tiebreakers all the more pertinent when it comes to the five-day postseason tournament.
Ohio State sits in the heart of the mess that is the majority of the league. With one game to go, the Buckeyes are 8-11 in Big Ten play and sit in 10th place, tied with Penn State. Ohio State and the Nittany Lions are one game ahead of Maryland and Rutgers (both 7-12) and one game behind Indiana and Minnesota (both 9-10).
Here are Ohio State’s seeding scenarios for the Big Ten Tournament. If you want to play with potential outcomes and see for yourself, here's a handy website.
What is possible if Ohio State beats Rutgers?
Ohio State closes the regular season Sunday at 2 p.m. inside Jersey Mike’s Arena against a Rutgers team that has lost five of its last six with each of those losses by double digits. The lone outlier for the Scarlet Knights is a 30-point beatdown of last-place Michigan.
With a win, the Buckeyes would close the season 9-11 in the Big Ten but would not be guaranteed to avoid the opening day of the conference tournament. There is a scenario where Ohio State, with a win, finishes as one of the four lowest seeds and would have to play one of the two Wednesday games to open the event.
The Buckeyes could finish as high as the No. 9 seed. Should Ohio State win, Northwestern beat Minnesota and Michigan State beat Indiana, all three teams would finish 9-11. The Hoosiers would earn the No. 8 seed based on a 4-0 record in their meetings between the other two teams. Ohio State and Minnesota both went 1-3 in such meetings, but the Buckeyes would earn higher seed based by virtue of the tiebreaker that yields to the team with the highest winning percentage against No. 1 teams.
Ohio State is 1-0 against Purdue and Minnesota is 0-1.
The Buckeyes could still drop to No. 11 with a win, and the scenario starts with Penn State beating Maryland. If Ohio State and Penn State both win and Michigan State beats the Hoosiers, the Buckeyes lose the round-robin tiebreakers with both teams and would drop to the No. 11 seed. Among those three teams, Penn State went 3-1, Indiana went 2-2 and Ohio State went 1-3.
There is no scenario where Ohio State wins and does not avoid the first day of the tournament without Penn State also beating the Terrapins at home. But if the Buckeyes and Nittany Lions both win, there is a scenario where Ohio State earns the No. 10 seed: If Indiana and Minnesota both win and finish 10-10, Ohio State and Penn State would be tied on record but the Buckeyes would earn the tiebreaker based on being 1-0 against Purdue while the Nittany Lions went 0-1.
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What is possible if Ohio State loses to Rutgers?
The Buckeyes could still avoid the first day of the tournament with a loss. If Rutgers beats Ohio State and Maryland beats Penn State, all four teams would finish 8-12 in league play.
In that scenario, Ohio State and Maryland tied for the best round-robin record at 3-2 but the Buckeyes would again own the tiebreaker by going 1-0 against Purdue while the Terrapins went 0-1. It would push Ohio State to the No. 10 seed, ahead of Maryland at No. 11, Penn State at No. 12 and Rutgers at No. 13.
But if Penn State beats Maryland and Ohio State loses, the Buckeyes would finish as the No. 11 seed and draw No. 14 seed Michigan on Wednesday.
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Where is Ohio State most likely to be seeded?
Twitter user Matt Hackman (@mjhackman) created a graphic with the final 128 possible seeding scenarios for the Big Ten Tournament.
In those 128 possible outcomes, the Buckeyes finish with the No. 10 seed in 64 of them (50.0%). Their next-most likely outcome is the No. 11 seed, where the Buckeyes finish in 48 of the possible 128 outcomes (37.5%).
Ohio State has only a 12.5% chance of finishing with the No. 9 seed, appearing there in only 16 of the possible outcomes.
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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Where could Ohio State be seeded in the Big Ten Tournament?