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It is Saturday of the Big Ten Tournament and Chicago is littered with the corpses of 10 teams. Four are left, and one happens to be our Boilermakers. Purdue's win over Penn State most likely locked up the Boilers as an NCAA Tournament team, barring an absolute disaster today against Wisconsin and a rash of unexpected major conference title winners. Since the ACC, PAC-12, and Big 12 all have locks left there won't be a surprise winner stealing an auto-bid there, so just about the only thing that keeps Purdue out is a 56 point loss where all five starters get injured.
So why don't we start thinking about winning the Big Ten Tournament. We have to go through Wisconsin and their magical ability to not foul anyway, so let's beat them, then win tomorrow to hang another Big Ten banner in Mackey Arena. Seems like a nice way to salute this team, as they were given up for dead in December only to win a conference tournament title.