Big Ten Baseball Tournament 2017: Schedule, TV Info and Predictions

Big Ten regular-season champion Nebraska comes into the conference tournament with the No. 1 seed and an impressive chance of burnishing its postseason resume.

The Big Ten championship will be held on the campus of the Indiana Hoosiers at Bart Kaufman Field in Bloomington, Indiana.

The eight-team double-elimination tournament will get underway Wednesday with third-seeded Minnesota meeting sixth-seeded Indiana at 10 a.m. ET. All games in the tournament will be televised by BTN.

The Cornhuskers (34-18-1, 16-7-1) are led by Big Ten coach of the year Darin Erstad, a former outfielder with the Anaheim Angels and a one-time punter with the Cornhuskers football team.

The Huskers should have confidence in the tournament, as they have a 7-4-1 record against the rest of the field. 

Scott Schreiber comes into the tournament with a .335 batting average, a .483 slugging percentage, five home runs and 46 RBI. He is joined by Angelo Altavilla, who is hitting .323 with 37 RBI, and Jake Meyers, who is hitting .298.

Meyers is also one of the keys to the Nebraska pitching staff. He has an 8-1 record, a 3.09 earned-run average and opponents are hitting .257 off of him.

Second-seeded Michigan (42-13, 16-8) is a legitimate threat to Nebraska, as the Wolverines had a 5-4 record against the other tournament teams.

The Wolverines are not a heavy-hitting team, but they get it done with pitching and their speed and aggressiveness on the base paths. They led the conference with 3.22 ERA during the regular season and the team stole 118 bases.

Second baseman Ako Thomas is Michigan's biggest threat, as he led the league with a .363 batting average while stealing 21 bases.

Third-seeded Minnesota has been a solid team in the Big Ten again this year, and the Golden Gophers (33-19, 15-8) have hopes of stealing the title from the Cornhuskers or the Wolverines.

If Minnesota is going to make a run, it appears that its hitters are going to have to come through. The Gophers led the Big Ten in team batting average during the year with a .293 mark, but they were quite ordinary on the mound.

Minnesota ranked fifth in ERA with a 4.01 mark, and the pitching staff could have a hard time slowing down opposing hitters in this tournament. The Gophers have strength behind the plate with catcher Cole McDevitt, who led conference backstops with a .308 average.

Minnesota struggled to a 3-6 record against tournament teams.

Stephen B. Morton/Associated Press

Maryland (34-19, 15-9) has a chance to make some noise in the tournament because it is a power-hitting team (52 home runs) with solid pitching.

The problem for the Terrapins is that they have lost four of five games coming into the tournament. Brian Shaffer had a terrific year on the mound, recording a 7-3 mark with a 1.67 ERA and 98 strikeouts.

Prediction

The double-elimination nature of the tournament is likely to prevent any of the four lower-seeded teams from pulling out a championship run.

Iowa, Indiana, Northwestern and Purdue are all respectable teams, but they don't have the consistency of the top four.

Maryland might have a chance if the Terps weren't cold coming into the tournament. Look for Michigan and Nebraska to battle for the championship, and Erstad's Cornhuskers should have enough pitching, defense and clutch hitting to come through and win the championship.

Statistics courtesy of BigTen.com and school websites.