Big Ten Scenarios and Tournament Seeding

The B1G hoops season has one week to go with five teams in the mix for a piece of the title and one of the top four seeds in the conference tournament.  Indiana has locked up at least a share and can win the conference outright with either a win at home against Ohio State or at Michigan.  The other four, Michigan, Michigan State, Ohio State and Wisconsin are also battling for a Thursday bye in the conference tournament as they jockey for a more favorable NCAA seeding.

In the next week, these five teams play seven games amongst themselves. Seven games means there are 128 potential possible endings (2^7) to the regular season.  The games to be played are:

March 5: OSU @ IU
March 6: UM @ Purdue
March 7: UW @ MSU
March 10: UW @ PSU, UI @ OSU, IU @ UM, NU @ MSU

128 possibilities is far too much to look at but luckily each outcome is not equally likely.  Four of the above games are "handle your business" games (they are the un-bolded games); if those teams handle their business, the league finish will get decided by three games with eight (2^3) more or less equally likely scenarios.  I know it's the B1G and handling your business is not always just that.  Should any one of the teams lose games they are expected to win they would likely drop to fifth place and lose a bye in the conference tourney.  If multiple teams fail to handle their business, well it becomes a shit-storm and you can throw this whole thing out the window.

Bullet Points:

• Today, Indiana has a better than 75% chance of winning the conference outright.  Tuesday's game against OSU will decide a lot and is arguably the least in doubt of the big three (yellow bolded) games.
• If all teams handle their business, Michigan will need to beat Indiana to avoid the 5-seed regardless of anything else. They really get stung by tie-breakers having lost their only game against Wisconsin.
• If Indiana beats OSU on Tuesday, the title is decided leaving the other teams scrapping for a tournament bye with four scenarios.  In two of those scenarios, Michigan falls to the 5-seed. In another scenario, OSU gets the 5-seed.  In the final scenario where MSU loses to Wisconsin, MSU and OSU would go deep into tie-breakers for fourth place relying on the finish of Minnesota and/or Illinois.
• If OSU and Michigan both beat Indiana, it likely creates a four-way tie and the MSU-UW game becomes very important with the winner sharing the B1G title and the loser falling to the 5-seed.  Wisconsin would also get the #1 seed with a win over MSU.

Disclaimer: This all relies on my proper interpretation of the B1G tie-break procedures which I got here.  Go State.