Only one time in history has a team seeded outside the top-four won the Big Ten tournament.
That honor belongs to Iowa, which won the league's annual end-of-season tournament as a No. 6 seed way back in 2001. Every other league tournament champion, however, has been seeded either No. 1, 2, 3 or 4.
That doesn't exactly bode well for Ohio State's chances this weekend.
The Buckeyes are the No. 11 seed for year's Big Ten tournament in Washington D.C. — the lowest seed ever under head coach Thad Matta. It's been a trying year filled with more downs than ups, so the odds of a deep tournament run were kind of a longshot anyway, but what, exactly, is Ohio State looking at?
Dating back to 1998 — the first year the Big Ten tournament was played — just twice has a double-digit seed advanced to the championship game. The first was in 1999 when Illinois got to the final as a No. 11 seed before falling to top-seeded Michigan State. The second came in 2008 when the Fighting Illini advanced to the final day of the tournament as a No. 10 seed before losing to No. 1 seed Wisconsin.
So, just twice out of 17 Big Ten tournaments isn't exactly a highly successful rate. But it's not just the Big Ten. Across major conferences, league tournaments are won by top seeds at a rather alarming rate.
Take the Big 12, for example. Like in the Big Ten, a team seeded outside the top-four has never won the Big 12 tournament. A No. 4 seed has just one Big 12 tournament championship, too. A No. 1 seed won the Big 12 tournament nine times, two-seeds have five titles and three-seeds also have five titles. A double-digit seed reached the finals of the Big 12 tournament just once —10th-seeded Missouri way back in 1997.
The lowest seed to ever win a Pac-12 tournament championship was fifth-seeded Arizona in 2015. Other than that, every team claiming a league tournament title was seeded inside the top-four.
The most well-known exception to this "rule" came back in 2008 in the SEC, however. Georgia was just 4-12 in league play that season — the No. 6 seed from the SEC East — as it tied with Auburn for the worst conference record. The Bulldogs finished the regular season with a dismal 13-16 overall record.
But four-straight wins in the SEC tournament gave Georgia the league's automatic berth to the NCAA tournament. The Bulldogs were NCAA tourney qualifiers at 17-16 overall. They were bounced in the first round by Xavier, but the run to a tournament appearance was impressive nonetheless.
Ohio State begins its Big Ten tournament 7 p.m. Wednesday against a Rutgers team it beat by just six points earlier in the season. As surprising as it may seem, even this matchup with the Scarlet Knights isn't a gimme.
Should the Buckeyes win — Ken Pomeroy's advanced statistical ratings give them a 70 percent chance and predict another six-point victory — they'll matchup with sixth-seeded Northwestern on Thursday. A potential game against the Wildcats seems fairly winnable, as well.
But those two contests would only be the beginning for Ohio State. A deep Big Ten tournament run would require even more work.
And as we've seen, history isn't exactly on the Buckeyes' side when it comes to that. Double-digit seeds haven't fared all that well in conference tournaments.
