Minnesota hosts Michigan in a rare Thursday encounter tonight with the series final tomorrow. The two games not only have huge implications for deciding the regular season Big Ten champions but, for Penn State fans, they pose a bit of a dilemma regarding for whom they should root.

As of the moment, Penn State sits at #15 in the Pairwise rankings which puts them right smack on the bubble for making the NCAA tournament. If the tournament were to start tomorrow, #14 Cornell would be in and #15 PSU would be out. PlayoffStatus.com figures PSU’s chances of making the tournament as about 1 in 6.

So what has to happen for Penn State’s chances to improve? Here’s where the dilemma occurs. There are two routes to getting an NCAA bid. We’ll take a look at how PSU might best situate themselves for each of those possibilities.

The first, and the simplest to understand, is to gain the Big Ten’s automatic bid. You do that by winning the post season Big Ten conference tournament. If PSU wins it, they are in no matter what any of the other teams do. However, because there are only six teams in the Big Ten Conference, the route to winning the title is decidedly easier if you place first or second during the regular seasons. Teams 3-6 each play a first round game, while the first and second seeded teams each earn a bye. Finish third in the conference and you have to win three straight games to take home the crown, finish second and you have a much easier two game path to the title.

At the moment, PSU sits in third place in the Big Ten with 29 points (and barring a monumental collapse, they will finish no worse than third). Michigan is second with 32, while Minnesota leads with 33 points. With 3 points available per game, PSU is basically a game behind the Wolverines and a game plus behind the Gophers. However, Michigan and Minnesota have both played two fewer games than us. One other very important fact is that Penn State owns the tiebreaker over Michigan but not over Minnesota, so catching Michigan would be a good bit easier than catching Minnesota. If Minnesota sweeps Michigan, PSU will be just one game behind Michigan in the standings. If both PSU and Michigan were to sweep next weekend, then things would be set for a dramatic year end finish when Penn State would travel to Ann Arbor for the season finale needing only to take one game to tie Michigan in the standings and get the second seed in the Big Ten tournament (by virtue of the tiebreaker).

So the simplest route to the NCAA would be for PSU to win the Big Ten tournament. The easiest way to do that would be to be a one or two seed and to win two games in the tournament. A Minnesota sweep would go a long way toward helping PSU take the second seed.

So we should root for that Minnesota sweep, correct? Maybe not.

The alternative way to get a bid would be for us to move high enough in the Pairwise standings to earn an at large bid (we have to at least get to #14, and maybe even higher). Cornell is currently in the 14th spot but they finish their season this weekend. Even if Cornell wins both their games, if we win three of the next four (two over Wisconsin and splitting with Michigan), we could possibly catch them in the Pairwise. However, looming just behind us in the pairwise is Minnesota at #16. Should Minnesota sweep Michigan this weekend (our first scenario), they would be sitting in pretty good shape to pass both Cornell and us in the Pairwise by ending their season with series wins over Michigan State and Wisconsin.

From that perspective, we’d be a lot better if Michigan were to sweep Minnesota. We could then go on and catch Cornell without having to worry about Minnesota catching us (we would still have to worry about Minnesota winning the Big Ten tournament and bumping us out of a bid that way though).

Personally, I think our changes of getting an at large bid are higher than us winning the Big Ten tournament, so I’m going to be rooting for Michigan tonight.

That said, the worse thing for us would probably be a split. With a split, catching Michigan for second place becomes difficult, plus Minnesota would still be in a good position to catch us in the Pairwise by winning out.

So, while I may be rooting for Michigan tonight, if they lose, I’ll turn right around and root for Minnesota tomorrow night.