Wisconsin Basketball

Wisconsin men’s basketball: UW ranked third in the official unofficial Big Ten preseason media poll

Compiled by Brendan Quinn of The Athletic and Adam Jardy of the Columbus Dispatch, this is the fourth year that various media members have voted on B1G awards.

By Drew Hamm@drewhamm5 Nov 18, 2020, 1:19pm CST

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The college basketball season is now a week away and we are getting a bunch of preseason content prepared for you here at B5Q. Elsewhere on the internet, Brendan Quinn of The Athletic and Adam Jardy of the Columbus Dispatch have gotten together a slew of Big Ten media types for the fourth straight year to vote in the official unofficial Big Ten media poll.

First things first: they selected the Wisconsin Badgers as the No. 3 team in the conference and have Nate Reuvers on their first-team all-conference. There, now you don’t even have to read the rest of this post if you don’t want to!

Here is the full result of their voting:

1. Illinois 376 (16)
2. Iowa 350 (6)
3. Wisconsin 347 (6)
4. Michigan State 323
5. Rutgers 249
6. Michigan 241
7. Ohio State 229
8. Indiana 212
9. Purdue 179
10. Maryland 141
11. Minnesota 121
12. Penn State 72
13. Nebraska 54
14. Northwestern 47

Predictably, Illinois, Iowa and Wisconsin are all clustered at the top with Michigan State not too far behind at No. 4. The Badgers even got six first place votes! Then in the second tier of teams you find Rutgers, Michigan, Ohio State and Indiana. Penn State, Nebraska and Northwestern bring up the rear in a, uh, substantial way. It’ll be fun and in no way terrifying to play those awful teams this year.

The player of the year race was pretty cut and dry: Luka Garza of Iowa received 24 votes and Ayo Dosunmu of Illinois received the other four.

The freshman of the year race was far more hotly contested as 5-star PG Khristian Lander and high 4-star SG Adam Miller are going to be dueling for this award all year.

Adam Miller, Illinois (12)
Khristian Lander, Indiana (10)
Hunter Dickinson, Michigan (4)
Zeb Jackson, Michigan (1)
Ethan Morton, Purdue (1)

Both of these players should, if not start, contribute heavily right away for their teams. Lander is a table-setting floor general who reclassified from the 2021 class and will instantly make the Hoosiers a more formidable team and Miller is a long-range bomber that will benefit from Dosunmu’s drive and kick ability as well as the attention C Kofi Cockburn commands down low.

There are six players on the all-conference first-team as Cockburn, Reuvers and Franz Wagner all tied with 11 votes.

Luka Garza*, Iowa (28)
Ayo Dosunmu*, Illinois (28)
Trayce Jackson-Davis, Indiana (24)
Kofi Cockburn, Illinois (11)
Nate Reuvers, Wisconsin (11)
Franz Wagner, Michigan (11)

*unanimous

Also receiving votes: Marcus Carr, Minnesota (7); Aaron Henry, Michigan State (7); Geo Baker, Rutgers (6); Joey Hauser, Michigan State (2); Joshua Langford, Michigan State (1); Micah Potter, Wisconsin (1); D’Mitrik Trice, Wisconsin (1); Rocket Watts, Michigan State (1); Joe Wieskamp, Iowa (1)

If there are any voters you want to yell at, here are all of their Twitter accounts which were handily listed at the end of The Athletic post and here is how everyone voted. Both Polzin (first!) and Jaypo (second) had Wisconsin picked higher than the rest of the group.

Wisconsin men’s basketball: UW ranked third in the official unofficial Big Ten preseason media poll

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