9 ways Penn State can still win the 2026 Big Ten championship (and No. 1 seed)

Heading into the final Sunday of the 2026 regular season, a historic win streak has the Penn State Nittany Lions field hockey team positioned as one of three teams still mathematically in contention to win the Big Ten regular season championship and secure the No. 1 seed in the Big Ten Tournament.

Any team that ties for the best regular season Big Ten record is considered a Big Ten regular season co-champion regardless of the tiebreakers, so there are technically five teams, not just three, still eligible to win that title.

As far as Penn State goes, their recent performance makes it hard to believe that this was a team for which it would supposedly "take a few years" to even get back to the Big Ten Tournament with a top-seven finish in the nine-team conference.

But in their first season under head coach Hannah Prince, the Nittany Lions continue to prove their naysayers wrong, and if that keeps up for another week, it might well net them their first Big Ten regular season title since 2022.

Penn State is currently tied for second place in the conference at 5-1 with the Maryland Terrapins, although Maryland owns the seeding tiebreaker due to their 4-1 victory following a fourth-quarter surge in Happy Valley back in mid-September.

The two-time defending national champion Northwestern Wildcats lead the way at 6-0, after ending Maryland's unbeaten season with a 4-2 win this past Thursday night.

Here are the Big Ten standings heading into Sunday.

Big Ten Field Hockey standings

Penn State could still finish anywhere between No. 1 and No. 6 when it comes to conference tournament seeding, meaning that there are six Big Ten games left on the regular schedule that could have a direct impact on where they finish.

In fact, the only one that cannot have any impact is the game between Ohio State (1-6) and Michigan (1-6), with the winner of that set to secure the No. 7 and final seed in the Big Ten Tournament while the loser is set to be eliminated, alongside Michigan State (0-8).

Here are those six games.

It means there are 64 possible combinations of outcomes when it comes to seeding the top six teams in the Big Ten. Several of the outcomes involve tiebreakers, and 14 of them involve ties that would ultimately depend on whether or not some of these remaining games go to overtime or end in regulation.

The Big Ten's tiebreaker rules are somewhat complicated when it comes to breaking ties between more than two teams for tournament seeding.

Big Ten Field Hockey tiebreakers

According to the Big Ten's tiebreaker parameters, "Ties shall be considered separated when a team(s) emerges from the top, middle or bottom of the group and is awarded a seed(s)", and "Once a seed (or seeds) is awarded, all remaining tied teams shall restart the tiebreak process at the first criteria".

The first tiebreaker is always head-to-head, but in the event that there is a three-way tie in which Team A beat Team B, Team B beat Team C, and Team C beat Team A, rather than one team owning a head-to-head sweep over the other two, the next tiebreaker is point total.

Awarded points include "3 points for a win in regulation, 2 points for an overtime win, 1 point for an overtime loss, 0 points for a loss in regulation".

Here are the current conference regulation and overtime point totals for these six teams.

Big Ten Field Hockey tiebreaker points

In a four-way tie, "The higher winning percentage shall prevail when comparing records against a single team or group of teams, even if the number of games played against the team or group are unequal."

This means that if two of the teams are 2-1 against the rest of the group while the other two are 1-2, they are effectively split into two separate ties, and head-to-head is simply then used to break both.

If one of the teams has a better (or worse) record than each of the other three (i.e. three teams are 2-1 and one is 0-3, or one team is 3-0 and the other three are 1-2), then the team that is separated from the others at the top (or bottom) of the group is awarded a seed, and the tiebreaker process moves forward to break a three-way tie.

We're not going to go through every single tiebreaker possibility from every single one of these 64 outcomes, because we'd be here until the end of the 2029 season.

We're simply going to lay out which scenarios result in Penn State earning the No. 1 seed and thus clinching at least a share of the Big Ten regular season title, with or without ties involved.

In those 14 aforementioned scenarios that produce ties which would need to be broken by conference regulation and overtime points, Penn State would be involved in the tie in nine of them.

Three of those ties would be three-way ties for first place. However, Penn State would not own the tiebreaker in any of them, which kind of makes things a little bit easier here when it comes to the No. 1 seed in the Big Ten Tournament.

The reason for this is that all three scenarios involve them being tied with Northwestern and Maryland (two with all three teams at 7-1, and one with all three teams at 6-2). In all three scenarios, Northwestern beat Maryland, Maryland beat Penn State, and Penn State would have beaten Northwestern.

Penn State is not able to pass Northwestern or Maryland in conference regulation and overtime points if all three of them end up with the same conference record. The best they can do is tie Maryland at 19 if both are 7-1, but Northwestern would have at least 20 as a 7-1 team in that scenario. So Penn State cannot win a three-way seeding tie over these two teams.

How can Penn State win the Big Ten and earn the No. 1 seed?

Here comes the fun part.

Of the 64 possible scenarios, there are 15 scenarios which result in Penn State winning the Big Ten championship and earning the No. 1 seed in the Big Ten Tournament, including six that don't involve a tiebreaker.

However, because the results of certain games would not matter in certain scenarios, there are really only nine different possibilities to consider here.

Here's a look at each one.

If Penn State beats both Iowa and Northwestern...

The game between Indiana and Rutgers would also not factor into these scenarios, meaning that these three scenarios technically include six total possible outcomes.

The game between Indiana and Rutgers would also not factor into these scenarios, meaning that these three scenarios technically include six more possible outcomes (for a total of 12).

If Penn State beats Northwestern, but not Iowa...

Penn State would finish 6-2 and have three possible paths to earning the No. 1 seed on a tiebreaker. Here are those three, all of which involve every remaining game.

This would give Penn State a head-to-head sweep over Indiana and Northwestern to claim the No. 1 seed. Northwestern would slot in at No. 2, due to their head-to-head win over Indiana, which would be No. 3. The three-way tie between Maryland, Rutgers, and Iowa at 5-3 would depend on conference regulation and overtime points.

This would give Penn State a head-to-head sweep over Rutgers and Northwestern to claim the No. 1 seed. Rutgers would slot in at No. 2, due to their head-to-head win over Northwestern, which would be No. 3. Indiana would win the three-way tie over Maryland and Iowa due to a head-to-head sweep for the No. 4 spot, and Iowa's head-to-head win over Maryland would give the No. 5 spot over the Terps at No. 6.

That leaves us with one more scenario of pure chaos...

Yes, this is the one outcome in which Penn State would actually come out on top of Maryland in a scenario involving a seeding tiebreaker.

Penn State, Northwestern, Maryland, and Indiana would be compared based on their records against one another. Penn State and Northwestern would both be 2-1, while Maryland and Indiana would both be 1-2. Penn State would own the head-to-head tiebreaker over Northwestern for the No. 1 seed, leaving Northwestern at No. 2, while Indiana would own the head-to-head tiebreaker over Maryland for the No. 3 seed, leaving Maryland at No. 4.

Note that this scenario would not work in Penn State's favor if Rutgers beats Indiana, even though it would also create a four-way tie. We'll get into that one more in a bit, but under that scenario, it would be Penn State and Maryland with 2-1 records against the rest of the group, and Maryland would be awarded the head-to-head tiebreaker over Penn State for the No. 1 seed.

That said, this is indeed still one scenario in which Penn State would tie for the Big Ten lead and thus be awarded a share of the regular season championship, even without earning the No. 1 seed.

There are seven such scenarios in total, including four with the Nittany Lions as a 7-1 team and three with them as a 6-2 team.

Here's how they'd miss out on the No. 1 seed at 7-1 but still clinch a share of the Big Ten regular season championship.

Why does this count as four different outcomes? Because the game between Indiana and Rutgers, plus the game between Northwestern and Rutgers, would not change anything.

A Northwestern win over Rutgers would simply create a three-way tie at 7-1, while a loss would keep things tied between just Maryland and Penn State.

And here's how Penn State would miss out on the No. 1 seed at 6-2 but still clinch a share of the Big Ten regular season championship.

This counts as three scenarios since the first line is applicable whether Rutgers beats Indiana or Indiana beats Rutgers; that game would simply determine whether Rutgers is involved as a fourth team, along with Penn State, Maryland, and Northwestern, in the tie at 6-2.

The reason that this is not the case for the second line is because that scenario would produce an outcome in which Penn State actually would get the No. 1 seed, as we already discussed above.

All pretty easy enough to understand, right?

What's the worst-case scenario?

And to put anybody's mind at ease, regarding the worst-case scenario of a No. 6 seed in the Big Ten Tournament for Penn State (which, despite head-to-head wins over both Indiana and Rutgers, is still completely possible), that would require a lot to happen.

There are two possible ways it could happen, and both involve huge ties.

Under the first scenario, there would be a four-way tie for third. Penn State would need to lose to both Iowa and Northwestern, and Maryland would need to lose to both Indiana and Iowa. Rutgers would need to beat both Indiana and Northwestern.

That would make Northwestern the Big Ten champion at 7-1, followed by Rutgers at 6-2. Penn State, Maryland, Indiana, and Iowa would all be tied at 5-3.

Indiana and Iowa would both be 2-1 against the other three teams involved in the tie, whereas Penn State and Maryland would both be 1-2. Therefore, Indiana would get the head-to-head tiebreaker over Iowa for No. 3 seed, leaving Iowa at No. 4, and Maryland would get the tiebreaker over Penn State for the No. 5 seed, leaving Penn State at No. 6.

Under the second scenario, there would be a five-way tie for second. Northwestern would have to beat Rutgers instead, which would bring Northwestern to a perfect 8-0 while Rutgers would become the fifth team involved in the tie at 5-3.

Rutgers, Penn State, Maryland, Indiana, and Iowa would all be 2-2 against one another, meaning that conference regulation and overtime point totals would come into the mix, and it's mathematically possible for Penn State to end up being the lowest of the five in that category.

If both of Penn State's losses to Iowa and Northwestern come in regulation, they'd stay at 13 points, while the other four teams could all end up with either 14 or 15 at the same time depending on whether their games are decided in regulation or overtime.

Simple enough.

Tune in to the penultimate game of Penn State's 2026 regular season on Sunday, October 25 at 12:00 p.m. ET. Live coverage from Iowa City is set to be provided by B1G+.

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