Big Ten Men's Tournament: Schedule, results and how to watch

As has been tradition, the last automatic bid handed out to the NCAA Tournament each year goes to the Big Ten champion. The conference has had its championship game air on CBS right before the brackets are revealed on Selection Sunday, serving as an appetizer to the big dance.

March Madness has not been kind to the Big Ten in recent years as the conference routinely sends a large contingent dancing but hasn't won a national title since Tom Izzo's Michigan State Spartans cut down the nets in 2000. Having a 25-year drought makes the Big Ten the most due to crown a champion (not counting the Pac-12, which is out this year and re-constituting with new membership in 2026 after failing to produce a champion since Arizona in 1997), so the Big Ten Tournament will play a big hand in setting up the league's top teams for a ptoential March Madness run.

Big Ten Men's Basketball Tournament Schedule

The addition of four former Pac-12 schools (UCLA, USC, Oregon and Washington) to the conference has not significantly altered the tournament's schedule. Rather than expanding the event to include all 18 teams, the Big Ten has opted to allow only the Top 15 teams to participate, leaving the bottom three schools out of the competition.

All games at the tournament will be held at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis between Wednesday, March 12 and Sunday, March 16. The first round, which will feature matchups between the six lowest-seeded teams, will stream on Peacock starting at 3:30 p.m. ET.

The second round and quarterfinals are slated for the next two days in two separate sessions beginning at noon ET and 6:30 p.m. ET. Big Ten Network will handle coverage for all eight games on the slate.

CBS takes over on the weekend with coverage of the semifinals starting at 1:00 p.m. ET on Saturday before televising the championship at 3:30 p.m. ET on Selection Sunday. Once the Big Ten's regular season ends and the bracket is locked, the full bracket will be added to this post.

Top Contenders And Teams To Watch

While the Big Ten may not have a national title contender on par with the top SEC teams or Duke, there are plenty of programs capable of making noise in March Madness. The top dogs look to be the Michigan schools as the Spartans and Wolverines have posted tremendous regular seasons while flashing the ability to beat top competition all over the country.

Reigning national runner up Purdue will also look to use the Big Ten Tournament as a platform to showcase what they are capable of without dominant big man Zach Edey, who went pro after falling to UCONN in the title game last April. Wisconsin has also run up a gaudy regular season record without a ton of substance behind it, leaving this tournament as a valuable proving ground for their ability to be a significant factor in the NCAA Tournament.

One potential sleeper among the top seeds is Maryland, which has a high-powered offense centered around a dominant big man in center Derik Queen. Most of the Terrapins' big damage has come at home, however, so seeing how they fare against the conference's best programs on a neutral floor is certainly worth tracking.

In addition to those programs, teams that have shown flashes of brilliance at points this season but struggled with consistency include Illinois, UCLA and Oregon. While all three programs feel like safe bets to land in the 7-9 seed range, a good showing in Indy could help improve their position in the bracket.

Bubble Watch and NCAA Tournament Implications

While the aforementioned eight teams are in good shape to make the field, the Big Ten does have three teams hovering around the bubble with Ohio State, Nebraska and Indiana. The Buckeyes have good metrics and entered March with six Quad 1 wins, but they also carried 13 losses at that point, which is dangerously close to no fly territory with the selection committee if the Buckeyes get bounced early.

A questionable non-conference schedule has left Nebraska in a position where they can ill afford bad losses, making suspect defeats at Iowa and at Penn State sting their resume much more than they should. Indiana has been surging of late, which coincides with an announcement that head coach Mike Woodson will be stepping aside at the end of the season, but a slow start to conference play leaves the Hoosiers with work to do in Indianapolis.

There are also significant seeding implications for the top of the conference as well. Michigan State could secure a No. 2 seed if they win the Big Ten Tournament while Michigan, Purdue, and Wisconsin all have cases to land inside the top four seed lines if they do enough damage in the bracket.

Past Big Ten Tournament Champions and Historic Trends

Aside from the 2020 season, when the tournament was canceled after one day due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Big Ten Tournament crown has been a parity-driven affair with six different schools claiming the last nine titles. The concerning trend for Big Ten programs is that winning the tournament hasn't led to sustained NCAA Tournament success over the past few years.

The last four Big Ten Tournament champions have failed to get out of the first weekend of March Madness, with the last three getting knocked out in the Round of 64. That trend includes some fairly notable upsets, including Purdue getting knocked out by 16-seed Fairleigh Dickinson as the top overall seed in 2023 while Illinois got knocked out as a 1-seed by 8-seed Loyola Chicago in 2021.

Prior to the pandemic, the Big Ten Tournament champ made significant noise in most years of March Madness, with Michigan reaching the title game in 2018 while Wisconsin did so three years earlier. The Badgers denied history in their title game run, knocking off an unbeaten Kentucky team headlined by Karl-Anthony Towns at the Final Four, but fell short against Duke on Monday night.

Some of the recent struggles of the Big Ten champion in March Madness could be related to the way the tournament is scheduled, wrapping up as one of the last events prior to the tournament and requiring its champion to win at least three games in three days to cut down the nets. With a quick turnaround to the Round of 64 that includes quickly scouting a potential opponent and traveling to their tournament site, the Big Ten Tournament champion may not get enough rest to fully prepare for a one-and-done March Madness game. Time will tell if the 2025 Big Ten Tournament champion can buck the recent trends and at least get out of the first weekend.