Wisconsin basketball: the revolving door of B1G teams in the top-25 continues

There have now been seven No. 1 teams in the country this year for the AP Poll. There is still half of the season left! At this point, I wouldn’t rule out Rutgers being ranked in the top spot by the time this season is all said and done. DON’T RULE ANYTHING OUT!

The Wisconsin Badgers (11-7 overall, 4-3 B1G) had another up and down week in conference play. To start, Brad Davison and the Badgers shocked the No. 17 Maryland Terrapins (14-4 overall, 4-3 B1G) at the Kohl Center with a last second three but then they traveled to East Lansing and got run over by Cassius Winston and the Michigan State Spartans (14-4 overall, 6-1 B1G).

The Badgers can’t quite piece together back-to-back wins to get the pollsters to slide them into the end of the rankings and are just “receiving votes” again this week in both major polls. Wisconsin has 28 votes and is ranked No. 31 in the AP Poll and has seven votes and is ranked No. 39 by the Coaches Poll.

Thanks to their win over the Badgers, Michigan State moved up in the rankings to No. 11 in the AP/No. 9 in the Coaches. The rest of the ranked B1G teams make up a large majority of the bottom of the poll: the Maryland Terrapins are No. 17/17, the Iowa Hawkeyes are No. 19/19, the Illinois Fighting Illini are No. 21/22 and newcomer...the freaking Rutgers Scarlet Knights are No. 24/25.

The AP Poll has Michigan, Ohio State, the Badgers, Penn State, Purdue and Indiana all receiving votes. On the other hand, the Coaches Poll has Penn State, Michigan, Ohio State, Indiana and Wisconsin.

As mentioned above, the top of the polls saw another major reshuffling. There is a new No. 1 in the AP by a mere three votes (!) and there are only four votes separating Nos. 1 and 2 in the Coaches. The Baylor Bears, Gonzaga Bulldogs, Kansas Jayhawks, San Diego State Aztecs and the Florida State Seminoles are the AP top-five while the Coaches have Gonzaga, Baylor, Kansas, SDSU and the Louisville Cardinals.

As far as other, more analytically inclined rankings go (through 1/20/20):

• KenPom - No. 22
• T-Rank - No. 25
• NET - No. 22

The Badgers will have another chance to crack the rankings this week when they take on conference bottom feeder Nebraska at home on Tuesday and Purdue, part of the conference’s robust middle class, on the road on Friday.