Big Ten Basketball

Big Ten Basketball Tournament 2020

The Big Ten basketball tournament was set to take place March 11 through March 15 at the Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, Indiana. Fourteen teams to compete in a single elimination style bracket to crown one Big Ten Tournament winner and get an automatic bid to NCAA Division 1 tournament later in March. The top four seeded teams would receive double byes in the tournament. These teams were Wisconsin at number 1, Michigan State number 2, Maryland at number three, and Illinois rounding out the top four. Illinois was having a huge bounce back year going 13-7 in the regular season after greatly struggling last season.

Two opening round games would be played on Wednesday, March 11. Minnesota ranked at number 12 in the tournament would take on number 13 Northwestern and number 11 seed Indiana was set to take on 14 seeded Nebraska. These two games would kick things off for the end of season tournament. Higher seeded Minnesota would take down Northwestern by a score of 74-57. Northwestern led at the half 31-29, but was not able to keep that lead through the second half. They got outlasted by Minnesota. Pete Nance was the leading scorer for Northwestern chipping in 15 points and 3 rebounds in the game. For Minnesota, it was center Daniel Oturu who led the way with 24 points and 8 rebounds. Minnesota would advance on to the next round to face five seeded Iowa. Next up was Indiana facing Nebraska. Indiana would get the win 89-64 in the post-season matchup. Nebraska’s Kevin Cross led his team in scoring with 23 points and 9 rebounds. Indiana had a total of five players scoring in double figures with Armaan Franklin leading with 13 points and 8 rebounds. Indiana advanced to play Penn State in the next round of action.

Following Wednesday night games, that was all the action we would see for the Big Ten basketball tournament in 2020. The tournament was cancelled and no more games were to be played due to the fast spreading Coronavirus. The Coronavirus was classified as a global pandemic a few weeks before the tournament tipped off. To help prevent the spread of the virus, all conference basketball tournaments were starting to be cancelled. Shortly after the cancellation of the conference tournaments, the NCAA announced that the NCAA Division 1 basketball tournament, known as March Madness, would be cancelled. The 2020 college basketball season was now over and no team would be crowned a winner.