MINNEAPOLIS — If there were ever a season for the Big Ten to reach the Final Four, this would be it, right? Because Big Ten coaches didn’t fight through the gauntlet of the last three months for every one of them to be sitting at home come April.
Calling this Big Ten women’s basketball season a gauntlet would still be underselling it. More accurately, it has been a grueling 12-week marathon with an obstacle course sprinkled throughout. Why simply run 26.2 miles, when you can also do hurdles and monkey bars for good measure? While no Big Ten team has ranked No. 1 nationally this season — a spot that South Carolina never relinquished — the top quarter of this league has clawed one another to remain among the best and most competitive conferences in the nation. It has been a series of game-planning routines against top-10 team after top-10 team, only to receive as a reward for getting through that — congrats! — a game against yet another top-10 team.
Though the Big Ten championship game left a bit to be desired from Ohio State, Saturday’s slate of semifinals between Iowa and Maryland, Ohio State and Indiana — the conference’s top four teams — left every witness in the Target Center in awe, including AP voters who placed four Big Ten teams in the top 12 this…
