YOU'RE (SWEET) SIXTEEN, MN -- Let's start the Road to Selection Sunday (it could be a special one for the Minnesota Gophers) with a look at the 2017-18 B1G schedule, which the conference released July 31. I have graded/ranked each of the 14 teams' conference schedules four different ways: (1) Home 1-plays; (2) Road 1-plays; (3) Home & Homes; and (4) overall.
Each team was given a number value (lower the better) based on what I project to be their B1G Tournament seed at Madison Square Garden (Feb. 28-March 4). Those are as follows:
1 Michigan State
2 Purdue
3 Minnesota
4 Northwestern
5 Michigan
6 Maryland
7 Iowa
8 Penn State
9 Wisconsin
10 Indiana
11 Illinois
12 Ohio State
13 Rutgers
14 Nebraska
At first glance, two things stood out when perusing each teams' schedule.