Is this the year the Big Ten breaks the drought and wins the National Championship? Michigan and Illinois fans certainly hope so. With half of the Final Four representing the Big Ten, the conference’s odds are pretty high.
Let’s explore the domination of the Big Ten this season and see how it’s translated to recent history.
The Big Ten’s title drought since Michigan State in 2000 is well documented. However, the conference certainly hasn’t been void of Final Four participants. From 2000-25, 14 Big Ten teams
made the Final Four (not to be confused with 14 different schools). Most recently, the 2024 Purdue Boilermakers went all the way to the National Championship before falling to UConn.
Interestingly, those 14 teams came across 13 different tournaments. Just one other time since 2000 has the Big Ten had multiple teams in the Final Four — 2015. That tournament is well-known for the Wisconsin Badgers knocking off previously-unbeaten Kentucky in the Final Four. However, people forget the other semifinal matchup featured a Duke blowout win over Michigan State. Duke went on to beat Wisconsin in the National Championship.
All that to say, having multiple Final Four teams from the same conference by no means guarantees the national championship.
However, this year feels different to me.
In 2015, Duke and Kentucky were both juggernauts. Wisconsin and Michigan State were both underdogs in their Final Four matchups. This season, Illinois is currently favored by 2.5 over UConn, and Michigan is favored by 1.5 over Arizona. Michigan and Arizona are tied for the highest odds in the futures market to win the National Championship at +175 each while Illinois is in third at +400.
Vegas is telling us Michigan vs Arizona is a toss-up, while Illinois has a slight edge to make the title game. Even if you assume both games were true 50/50 probabilities, that would mean the Big Ten has a 75 percent chance at having a participant in the National Championship.
Both Michigan and Illinois are firing on all cylinders at the right time. Michigan has yet to play a game within a dozen points in this tournament, while Illinois has won all four contests by double digits. Michigan appears to have a better chance at a title than Illinois, but there is a world where the Arizona-Michigan matchup takes a physical toll on both teams while the winner of Illinois-UConn comes out unscathed.
Zooming out a bit, it’s only right to appreciate the dominance of the Big Ten in this year’s tournament.
The Big Ten currently sits at 18-7 with two teams remaining. This win percentage is almost unheard of for the Big Ten and still rare when it comes to Power 4 conferences (excluding the Big East because some of UConn’s runs skew the win percentage dramatically while the rest of the conference did nothing).
Other comparable tournaments include the ACC in 2024 (12-5), the ACC (14-5) and Big 12 (13-5) in 2022, and the ACC in 2019 (15-6). Even then, two of the seven losses by Big Ten teams this year came at the hands of other Big Ten teams (Iowa over Nebraska, Illinois over Iowa).
KenPom backs up that assertion as well, with Michigan back up top at No. 1 and Illinois at No. 4. The conference currently has four of the top-10 teams and eight of the top-25 on KenPom. It’s been a season of dominance for the conference, which has been backed up by the NCAA Tournament performance.
Can the conference pay it off with a streak-breaking national title? Let us know what you think down in the comments section.
