It is finally KenPomSZN

Tuesday was one of the happiest days of the year for men’s college basketball fans as Ken Pomeroy published his preseason rankings for the 2020-2021 season. Your Wisconsin Badgers are ranked No. 7 and are the highest rated Big Ten team, according to Pomeroy. Baylor, Gonzaga, Duke, Villanova and Kansas are the top-five.

In a shocking discovery, Pomeroy has the Badgers listed with a 35.5% chance to end the season with zero wins and...wait...oh. After a deep-dive into the numbers it appears that the Badgers currently only have one game on their publicly available schedule, which they are favored to win!

The Badgers have the No. 2 rated defense, behind only Virginia, and the No. 19 rated offense. The Big Ten is rated as the second best conference in the country behind only the Big 12, who have three of the top-six teams in the country (Baylor, Kansas, Texas Tech) according to Pomeroy.

As far as the B1G rankings go after Wisconsin:

Ohio State (No. 10 overall)
Iowa (No. 12)
Michigan State (No. 15)
Michigan (No. 17)
Illinois (No. 18)
Purdue (No. 25)
Indiana (No. 26)
Rutgers (No. 27)
Minnesota (No. 35)
Maryland (No. 51)
Penn State (No. 64)
Northwestern (No. 70)
Nebraska (No. 118)

The Hawkeyes, Spartans and Wolverines are all predicted to have top-10 offenses, with Iowa clocking in at No. 2, while the Buckeyes have the No. 10 rated defense and Rutgers clocks in at No. 12.

If you missed this tidbit from Barry Alvarez’s media availability earlier this week, he said that there were no reported COVID-19 cases with the basketball teams and they are still on schedule to start their season on Nov. 25th with the rest of the country.