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‘This isn’t overrated’: ESPN’s Jay Bilas has a different word to describe B1G’s March Madness performance

Dustin Schutte

By Dustin Schutte

Published:

Nine B1G teams earned a bid into the NCAA Tournament. Five of those teams earned a No. 4 seed or higher and the conference accounted for two of the four No. 1 seeds in the field.

And yet, there are only two teams remaining in March Madness. Michigan and Maryland are scheduled to play on Monday night, and they’re the last remaining hope for the B1G to get to the Sweet 16 this year.

Throughout the regular season, the B1G was revered as the top conference in college basketball. Now, the league is being showered with “overrated” chants as seven of the nine teams have already been eliminated from the tournament.

ESPN analyst Jay Bilas doesn’t agree that the B1G is an “overrated” conference, though. Instead, he has another word for the league.

“Illinois, Ohio State, Purdue, and now, Iowa…the top Big Ten teams we saw all season did not show up in the NCAA Tournament,” Bilas wrote on Twitter. “This isn’t ‘overrated.’ This is ‘underperforming.’ Surprising.”

Through the first two rounds (so far), the B1G has just a 6-7 record in the NCAA Tournament. It’s been an incredibly rough two rounds for the B1G.

We’ll see if Michigan and Maryland can help the league’s image later tonight.

Dustin Schutte

Dustin grew up in the heart of Big Ten country and has been in sports media since 2010. He has been covering Big Ten football since 2014. You can follow him on Twitter: @SchutteCFB