Wisconsin men’s basketball: losing to Rutgers is seen as worse than beating Michigan State is good, UW falls one spot in AP Poll

Another up and down week for the Wisconsin Badgers men’s basketball team sees the squad drop one spot in the AP Poll. UW went on the road and avenged an earlier loss to Michigan State by beating the Spartans at the Breslin Center. Returning home to take on Rutgers seemed like a game Wisconsin should’ve won but the red hot Scarlet Knights upset UW and are closing in on a ranking themselves.

Wisconsin will travel to Bloomington to take on the Indiana Hoosiers on Tuesday night and then welcome the resurgent Michigan Wolverines to the Kohl Center on Sunday in another week where going 1-1 seems like a high possibility.

• AP Poll: No. 15
• NET: No. 23
• KenPom: No. 36
• T-Rank: No. 27
• Your hearts: No. 1

Here’s how the rest of the Big Ten looked in the new AP rankings:

• No. 5 Purdue Boilermakers
• No. 12 Illinois Fighting Illini
• No. 15 Wisconsin Badgers
• No. 18 Ohio State Buckeyes
• No. 19 Michigan State Spartans
• Iowa and Rutgers are receiving votes

The top of the AP Poll shifted around the teams in the top-five with Gonzaga taking over the top spot followed by Auburn, Arizona, Kentucky and Purdue. The Providence Friars can’t stop winning and now find themselves ranked No. 8 in the whole country. They host No. 10 Villanova in a huge Big East showdown on Tuesday night.

Wyoming, out of the Mountain West, and Arkansas and Alabama, out of the SEC, are the three newcomers in the poll. The Cowboys have been having an excellent season out west and the Mountain West should, hopefully, be receiving multiple bids to the NCAA Tournament this year because their conference has some FUN teams.

Marquette and Saint Mary’s, two teams the Badgers beat earlier in the season, fell out of the rankings but remain among the top four teams receiving votes.