This actually isn't a satirical piece, if you can imagine that. No, we're actually here to give Terry Hutchens his due respect since he got something damn close to accurate -- something that we tweaked him on back in October.
It takes gracious, respectful, non-childish people to admit when they're wrong. We're none of those things, but we're going to show the Indiana University Sportswriter of the Year some respect, anyway.
Ol' Terry had the conference finishing in the order on the left, while the actual finish is on the right:
Terry Reality
1. OSU OSU
2. MSU MSU
3. Wisconsin Michigan
4. Michigan Wisconsin
5. Illinois Indiana
6. Indiana Purdue
7. Purdue Northwestern
8. Northwestern Iowa
9. Iowa Minnesota
10. Minnesota Illinois
11. Nebraska Nebraska
12. Penn State Penn State
So Terry hit four on the nose (first, second, eleventh and twelfth) and almost nailed it all with the exception of Illinois. And who among us could possibly have foreseen Illinois finishing tenth in the conference? But pull them out of the equation and Terry's crystal ball showed the correct order for Indiana, Purdue, Northwestern, Iowa, Minny, Nebraska and PSU. That's.....actually commendable. If only his crystal ball also told him what pant size to buy Tom Crean next Christmas.
Understand, this is not an endorsement of Terry Hutchens writing. We do not recommend you subject yourself to his inane ramblings, which recently have included a "What if Kentucky missed 14 more free throws against IU?" theme and has generated some hilarious additional article topic suggestions on Twitter. (Search on #futurehutcharticles.)
However, we did call Terry out and while we detest his blatant homerism and gorilla-level writing ability, we wanted to also show we're able to acknowledge when Terry find an acorn and that we were wrong to doubt him.
Of course, Purdue did finish higher that Hutch predicted....so there!