Wisconsin basketball: the Badgers are receiving votes in the polls, baby!

The Wisconsin Badgers are coming off of their biggest win of the season, beating former No. 5 Ohio State Buckeyes on Friday night, and now have a few votes to show for it in the AP Poll and the Coaches Poll.

The Badgers (9-5 overall, 2-1 B1G) are No. 31 in the AP Poll with 17 votes and No. 34 in the Coaches poll with five votes. Pretty impressive for a team that less than a month ago was 5-5 coming off a loss to Rutgers.

The rest of the B1G has a few teams in the rankings as well: the Michigan State Spartans are back to being the highest ranked team in the conference at No. 8 in the AP/No. 8 in the Coaches, Ohio State is at No. 11/No. 12, Maryland Terrapins No. 12/No. 14, Michigan Wolverines at No. 19 in both and Penn State Nittany Lions at No. 20 in both.

The Iowa Hawkeyes fell out of the rankings after losing a close game to the Nittany Lions and they sit one spot out of the rankings in the AP Poll and two out in the Coaches Poll. The Purdue Boilermakers are receiving three votes combined in both polls, which is almost as many points as they scored against Illinois on Sunday night.

The top-five is the same in both polls with the Gonzaga Bulldogs, Duke Blue Devils, Kansas Jayhawks, Baylor Bears and Auburn Tigers (‘sup quality loss!) leading the way. Auburn (13-0) and the No. 7 San Diego State Aztecs (15-0) are the only two undefeated teams left in the country.

As far as other, more analytically inclined rankings go (through 1/5/20):

• KenPom - No. 24
• T-Rank - No. 25
• NET - No. 26

Being ranked that highly in all three of those polls shows that the Badgers should have a good shot at an at-large bid if they keep up this level of play. Wisconsin has a chance to make some serious noise this week with games against Illinois (at home, similar ranking to Wisconsin) and Penn State (on the road, ranked higher than Wisconsin).