The last week has been rough for bubble teams, but with less than an hour before the NCAA Tournament brackets are announced, those bubble teams finally got a break.

The Big Ten Tournament final went just the way the bubble teams wanted today, as No. 1 seed Wisconsin pummeled No. 10 seed Illinois, preserving an at-large bid that would have vanished if the Illini had made the Big Dance.

The game went pretty much the way you'd expect an Illinois-Wisconsin game to go: The Illini played hard and kept it close for a little while, but the Badgers' superior talent ultimately made for an easy victory. Wisconsin has been the class of the Big Ten all season, and now they're the class of the Big Ten in the postseason as well.

Illinois went on a nice little three-game run to get the chance to play on Sunday of the Big Ten Tournament, but that run wasn't enough to get an NIT berth, and that means one of the most disappointing seasons the Illini have ever had is now, mercifully, over.

Illinois beat Minnesota 54-50 today in the Big Ten Tournament semifinals, using a solid defensive performance to get one game away from earning a spot in the Big Dance.

Tomorrow the Illini will play Wisconsin, and if they win they'd be in the NCAA Tournament despite a 17-18 record. So can the Illini beat the Badgers?

It's not very likely. Wisconsin beat Illinois twice in conference play, once by 10 points and once by 14, and there's a reason that Wisconsin is the No. 1 seed in the Big Ten Tournament and Illinois is the No. 10 seed.

Two points, however, are in the Illini's favor:

1. Wisconsin has nothing to play for -- the Selection Committee will likely have the Badgers slotted before tomorrow's game -- while Illinois has everything to play for.
2. For the conspiracy-minded, the Big Ten referees will know going into the game that an Illinois win would be a good thing for the conference.

But realistically, Wisconsin is the better team and the team everyone should expect to win -- and the team that everyone on the bubble will be rooting for.

The Big Ten Tournament is down to four, and the top half of the bracket has gone as expected, with Wisconsin and Michigan State meeting in today's first semifinal.

But on the bottom half of the bracket, chaos reigns. In the quarterfinals, Illinois upset Purdue and Minnesota upset Indiana, meaning that two teams with losing records in conference play this season will play each other in the conference tournament semifinals today.

And tomorrow, chaos could really reign. The Illinois-Minnesota winner will play the Wisconsin-Michigan State winner in the Big Ten Tournament final. And since the Big Ten Tournament final ends just as the Selection Sunday show begins, that means the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee is going to have a tough task.

Neither Minnesota (RPI 87) nor Illinois (RPI 104) has any business getting an at-large Tournament berth, so the Selection Committee will be forced to work with a contingency plan: Basically, they'll have to make up two brackets, one if the Illinois-Minnesota winner wins the Big Ten, and one if the Wisconsin-Michigan State winner wins the Big Ten. If you're a fan of a bubble team, you're rooting for Wisconsin or Michigan State tomorrow.

If Illinois or Minnesota ends up in the Big Dance, what seed will they get? I'm guessing a 13 or a 14. And if I were a fan of a 3 or 4 seed, I wouldn't want to play them.

The Illinois Fighting Illini extended their season Friday night by doing something they have done very few times this season: Actually holding on and winning a game they were in position to win.

The Illini's 74-67 overtime victory over Purdue in the Big Ten Tournament isn't likely to mean much in the grand scheme of things -- the Illini would have to win two more times to make it to the Big Dance -- but it was a solid showing for a team that has had a knack for losing close games this season.

Purdue is is already in the Tournament and didn't particularly need this game, although a loss to an inferior Illinois team deflated any momentum the Boilermakers might have built up, and it probably knocked them down a bit in Tournament seeding. It wasn't an impressive showing for the Boilermakers, but there were some good individual efforts, especially from E'Twaun Moore, who was outstanding from behind the arc.

For Illinois fans, this is a season they didn't think would last into the weekend portion of the Big Ten Tournament. But there's good news ahead: Freshman Demetri McCamey was the Illini's leading scorer with 26 points, including the three-pointer that sent the game into overtime, and freshman Jeff Jordan looked surprisingly comfortable for a player who has rarely had substantial minutes. Maybe next year an Illini victory in the Big Ten Tournament quarterfinals won't be a shocking upset.

To the extent that an often badly played game between two bad teams can be exciting, Illinois' 64-63 win over Penn State in the first round of the Big Ten Tournament was exciting.

How's that for a ringing endorsement?

Illinois' Chester Frazier hit a layup with seconds to go, and the buzzer-beating shot from Penn State's Talor Battle missed, allowing Illinois to win a game in which they blew a 62-52 lead, bumbling and stumbling around on the court while Penn State went on an 11-0 run in crunch time. It was reminiscent of the Illini's loss to Virginia Tech in last year's NCAA Tournament, except for the Frazier game-winner, which represented Illinois' only points of the last four minutes.

No, it wasn't pretty, but the ending was exciting enough to rouse the fans at Conseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, which had resembled a mausoleum for most of the game, and for the Michigan-Iowa game that preceded it. The game was live blogged at Deadspin, and the commentary there pretty well sums up how the game could be both ugly and exciting. For Penn State, the season is over; for Illinois, the season will end, one can only assume, with a loss tomorrow against Purdue.

Michigan State beat Illinois 59-51 Thursday night to improve its record to 24-7 and 12-5 in the Big Ten. The win, Michigan State's second in a row, puts the Spartans on much more solid footing than they were just five days ago, when I noted that they were coming off a brutal February.

But I'd rather talk about Illinois, which fell to 12-18 and 4-13 in the Big Ten, good for 10th place in the conference. Considering that the Big Ten isn't very good this year, 10th place in the conference is pretty bad, and every Illinois fan agrees that this season has been a mess.

So it's a little jarring to look at the Ken Pomeroy ratings, which are probably the single best snapshot of the college basketball season, and see Illinois ranked 39th in the country. The Illini are the highest-ranked team with a losing record, and they're ahead of teams like 25-5 St. Mary's, 25-5 Vanderbilt and 23-6 Davidson. How is that possible?

Or at the very least, he is sick of the standoff between the Big Ten Network (BTN) and cable providers.

"I make more calls than I ever have this year to people who write me, really upset about it," Izzo told reporters.

Izzo also described the BTN as "a PR nightmare" and said, "I think it has hurt all of us."

Unlike college football which had most of the major teams endure only one of their 12 games on the BTN, college basketball has had a larger percentage of their games being not seen by most people on the BTN. Michigan State has been one of the Big Ten's top teams all season. They have had 9 of it's 18 conference games on the BTN and 4 of its 13 non-con games. That's a lot of games that few have seen for a top-25 team in a major conference.

Beyond simply dealing with pissed off fans and alum who can't see the games, it stands to impact recruiting. Players want to play for successful programs, but they also want to play at schools that they know will get plenty of TV exposure. If over 1/3 of the games are showing up on a channel no one has, then that is going to take a toll.

The money the schools are getting from the BTN means that this is an empty complaint from Izzo in the short term. The longer the stalemate with the major cable companies draws this out, the more you will read coaches complaining.

Cable companies want the BTN on the sports tier package, while the BTN and Big Ten insist it should be on the expanded basic level. Time is on the side of the cable companies.

It hasn't been a particularly good season in Champaign. The Fighting Illini are 3-10 in the Big Ten and, unless they have a miracle run in the conference tournament, poised to snap an eight-year run of dancing. Those are just on-court problems, though, which pale in comparison to the situation the team found themselves at this time last year. That was when Jamar Smith drunkenly crashed his car, drove home and left injured teammate Brian Carlwell inside because he was dead.

Thankfully he wasn't and came back to play this year (Smith is quite rightfully suspended) before injuring his knee in November. He hasn't played since then and today ended his tenure at the school. He'll finish the semester before looking to transfer somewhere else.

"I am going to miss these guys, but I feel this decision is what is right for me at this time. I want to show my teammates the same support that they've given me, so I will continue to come to Assembly Hall and cheer them on as I finish the semester in good academic standing."

You can't blame the guy for wanting a fresh start. He deserves to enjoy and embrace his time in college, something he'd never get to do as the guy who almost died in Jamar Smith's car. It also gives the Illini a chance to put the incident further behind them, especially if they tell Smith to find another school before next season.

Though the Big Ten is having a down year, thanks to the play of the very real Purdue Boilermakers, it's likely that the conference is going to get five teams in the NCAA tournament this March. The way the Minnesota Golden Gophers had quickly turned things around under Tubby Smith this season, there was even a possibility the conference could sneak in six teams.

Granted, it wasn't likely, but it was still possible. I say was because there's no way it's going to happen now. Not after the butt kicking the Gophers received from the Fighting Illini in the Barn on Tuesday night (The 18th straight time Illinois has bested Minnesota). The Gophers were completely outplayed during their 84-60 loss to the Illini.

As Tom (what an outstanding name) over at Gopher Nation put it,

When did Dan Monson take over the basketball program? That was the ugliest game of the Tubby Smith Era. A team that has controlled effort all season was out efforted 94-3 by my official count of effortness.

Defense? - awful
Rebounding? - bad
Hustle? - $%*$, S*#@, $*I%

Fortunately for Minnesota, I don't think "effortness" is something the selection committee considers when making their choices. Unfortunately for the Gophers, they do look at key wins and losses, and you'd have to look pretty hard to find a key win for the Gophers. Army? North Dakota State? Northwestern? None of those are going to impress anybody.

The fact is when you don't beat anybody of value, and you get blown out at home by a team as bad as the Illini, it doesn't matter how many times you beat Kennesaw State: You aren't going to the dance.

Here's the way the crowd in Champaign greeted Indiana guard Eric Gordon Thursday night:

It got worse from there, with some rowdiness and some profanity, and the University of Illinois has released the following statement from Athletic Director Ron Guenther and basketball coach Bruce Weber:

"There was a great college basketball game played Thursday night between the University of Illinois and Indiana University, but the game has been somewhat diminished by inappropriate behavior by a number of fans in attendance. We value the enthusiastic support of the sellout crowds at the Assembly Hall, but above all we take very seriously the reputation of our basketball program and the University of Illinois. The profanity and behavior by a small segment of fans Thursday night is disappointing and intolerable, and for that we apologize to fans of both teams."

That's all well and good, but apologizing "to fans of both teams" is the wrong approach. If someone deserves an apology, it's Gordon, the guard who first committed to Illinois and then changed his mind and went to Indiana. Illinois fans were enraged, and he received the lion's share of the "inappropriate behavior" referenced in the statement, so he's the one who should be named in the apology.

As for Gordon himself, a brief thought: Although honoring one's commitments is an admirable quality that Gordon apparently lacks, he's far from the only high school athlete who commits to one school and then attends another. The Illinois football program's stellar recruiting in recent years has been fueled in large part by such players. Illinois fans weren't booing those guys when they got the Illini to the Rose Bowl.