Darron Cummings - AP

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So tomorrow night the Illini will travel to South Carolina to take on the #18 ranked Clemson Tigers, in the ACC Big Ten Challenge, or if you will the annual referendum on the quality of the Big Ten that only reaffirms preexisting opinions.  I have a feeling this would a much harder name to make a logo out of, so the Challenge it is.

We all know the facts here. the Big Ten Conference has never bested the ACC in the Challenge, and what successes it has achieved are few and far between, and often paired with higher profile failures.See last years high profile Purdue and Michigan State losses to Duke and North Carolina respectively. These losses of course buried the fact that the Big Ten was one last second shot by the Illini away from actually winning the thing last year. It matters not of course, because the ACC did in fact win, and the media narrative of ACC superiority was preserved, the status was quoed as I like to say.

Fast forward to this year, and mighty North Carolina has lost a whole lot of talent, the entire first team All Big Ten returns, MSU is ranked #2 and over half of the Big Ten is ranked coming into the season. Even the Illini, who were one shot away from beating Clemson and taking the Challenge for the midwest look to be improved.

Fast forward yet again to this past weekend, where nearly every Big Ten team that played lost. Rankings come crashing down, RPIs take a hit, and the world is once again primed to reaffirm its belief that the Big Ten is bad at basketball because it has to play defense.

I know I am not supposed to get upset about this sort of stuff. The mature thing is not to get caught up in conference quality shouting matches and just worry about how your team does. To a certain point, I have arrived at that level of maturity with football, Ohio State can get pantsed on national television again this year for all I care. With basketball though, its not so easy. Maybe its because I think the national perception of the Big Ten by the worldwide leader and others is so so wrong that bothers me.

ESPN the magazine recently reminded America that "fewer NBA lottery picks have come out of the Big Ten than other conferences over the decade." and that this deficiency in talent was made plainly clear in the NCAA championship game last year between MSU and UNC. Yes you read that correctly, the same Michigan State that beat both Hasheem Thabeet and the now #1 ranked Kansas was clearly lacking in talent and got exposed by the Tar Heels.

I think the booyahs have gotten their college wires crossed on this one a bit. Basketball is not like the BCS, having MSU lose by double-digits to UNC in the Championship, is not the same as Ohio State doing the same in football. You know the thing everyone is clamoring for in football, the thing that's supposed to benefit the best teams and remove the handicap of having too strong or too weak of a conference from the equation, you know the playoff system? They have that in basketball. Having a team in the finals is a referendum on the quality of that team, not the weakness of the conference, and its an achievement that has happened fully 5 times over the past decade for the Big Ten, by 4 different teams.

So, let me get back to my original point, if the NCAA tournament, and the success of Big Ten teams therein is not enough to change national perception of the conference, maybe actually winning one of these damned ACC-Big Ten Challenges will.

I have thought that every year for what seems like my entire life, which is why I am always so disappointed when it doesn't happen.