You are right on the scheduling fluke. Ohio St. was picked near the bottom of the conference while Minnesota was considered a challenger for the top. Wisconsin has dropped off to point they haven't been in long time. Flip those over in NU's schedule and things probably look different. Not sure how they draw up the schedules but it can fall both ways. Look at Rutgers, they get Purdue, Ohio St., Michigan St., Nebraska twice and Illinois, Indiana, Iowa and Minnesota once. But they played Minnesota in early December when they were full strength. So the Scarlet Knights definitely got the worst draw.I still worry about the optics of playing our conference tourney so early, especially when there's still plenty of good bubble and tourney games while our kids will be done (win or lose). It's not good to have the entire conference sitting on its hands while the rest of the nation goes at it--out of sight, out of mind and all that.
As for scheduling...I'll just chalk this year up to a fluke. But if we continue to have our B1G schedule work against us, and we continue to see success, we're gonna need Moos to say something to the conference about how it creates schedules going forward.