Wisconsin men’s basketball: UW moves into the top-10 ahead of biggest game of the season

As we sit here on Monday afternoon, one day before March begins, the AP Poll has released their penultimate regular season rankings. The Wisconsin Badgers (23-5 overall, 14-4 Big Ten) men’s basketball team is now in the top-10, moving up three spots to No. 10.

The Badgers beat Minnesota at The Barn and Rutgers at The RAC this past week, no small feat to be honest, and are now set up to clinch at least a share of the Big Ten regular season title at home this week with games against No. 8 Purdue on Tuesday and most certainly nowhere near ranked Nebraska on Sunday.

• AP Poll: No. 10
• NET: No. 21
• KenPom: No. 27
• T-Rank: No. 23
• Your hearts: No. 1

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

• No. 8 Purdue Boilermakers
• No. 10 Wisconsin Badgers
• No. 20 Illinois Fighting Illini
• No. 23 Ohio State Buckeyes
• No. 24 Iowa Hawkeyes
• Michigan State is receiving votes

This weekend was a pretty crazy one in men’s college hoops. On Saturday, each of the top-six teams lost and seven of the top-10 fell in total. With that as background information you’d probably expect there to be some sort of seismic shift in this week’s AP rankings and...you’d be completely wrong!

There are no new teams in the poll, everyone from last week’s poll just shuffled around a bit. Also, No. 1 Gonzaga and No. 2 Arizona who, again, lost on Saturday, remained No. 1 and No. 2? I don’t understand that at all, but I suppose some has to be the top-two teams?

Baylor was the recipient of a big jump, up to No. 3 from No. 10, and Tennessee and UCLA dropped four and five spots respectively. Everyone else just kinda moved one or two spots up or down and that’s that! The Bears received four first place votes and No. 4 Duke received 11, but otherwise the Zags had the rest (46) and are still pretty far ahead of No. 2 Arizona.

All of this will get sorted out in the last week of the regular season and Championship Week, I’m sure.