Wisconsin cracks AP Top 25 basketball poll

After a 3–0 start to the season, the Wisconsin Badgers have propelled themselves into the latest release of the AP Top 25 poll.

Wisconsin comes in at No. 25 in the latest rankings released on Monday. The Badgers secured a tough 77–68 road win at Xavier last Tuesday before dominating Houston Baptist in a 96-59 victory at the Kohl Center on Saturday night.

Sitting at No. 25, the Badgers join a cluster of Big Ten teams at the bottom of the rankings looking to move up over the next few weeks. Iowa comes in ranked No. 20 after its run in the 2K Classic, Ohio State is No. 23, and Purdue sits right in front of Wisconsin at No. 24.

Additionally, the three leading vote-getters that just missed cracking this week’s rankings are from the Big Ten as Nebraska, Indiana, and Maryland are all on the outside looking in. With Michigan making the leap from No. 18 to No. 9 after its win over Villanova and Michigan State still sitting at No. 11, it appears that the Big Ten is one of the deepest conferences from top to bottom in the AP voters’ eyes at the moment.

Wisconsin will have a great opportunity to keep climbing the polls this week as it heads to the Bahamas to partake in the Battle 4 Atlantis tournament, which the Badgers won in 2014.

The Badgers open the tournament against a rebuilding Stanford group on Wednesday (1:30 p.m. CT, ESPN/ESPN2). They will then take on the winner or loser of the Florida/Oklahoma contest on Thursday afternoon.

The rest of the field is pretty deep, as the other side of the bracket includes Butler, Dayton, Middle Tennessee, and No. 4 Virginia. If Wisconsin is able to make a run in Atlantis, you could see the Badgers positioned even higher in the rankings this time next week.