Big Ten Basketball Power Rankings: January 4

It certainly looks like we’re going to try and settle things early in this year’s Big Ten race. Tomorrow night Illinois heads to West Lafayette for a top 10 matchup in Mackey Arena. We all knew Purdue would be good and the Boilers have not disappointed. Illinois has risen into the top 10 and they are fresh off of a blowout win over the one team that has beaten Purdue. It makes for a very interesting game.

If Illinois can pull the upset they will take full control of the conference. They will be two games ahead of Purdue in the loss column, have a road victory over the Boilermakers, and they still have a second game in Champaign in their back pocket later on. Should Purdue win, only Wisconsin will remain as unbeaten in the conference, and the Badgers still have to play Purdue twice.

Purdue is still the strong favorite in the league, but from the early conference results we can see that they have a very tough league schedule. They have to play Wisconsin and Illinois twice each. Nebraska and Ohio State have kind of separated themselves as the next two teams in the hierarchy and Purdue does not play either at home. Purdue also still has to go to Indiana, and the Hoosiers have won three of four against the Boilers.

This is still a league where 11 of the 14 teams are in the top 100 of the NET. Even though Purdue won by 14 at Maryland, nothing is ever easy in this league.

National Title Contenders

1. Purdue Boilermakers – 13-1, 2-1 – No one has a better resume nationally, but because of the slip up in Evanston Purdue is a slight step back in the Big Ten standings. As mentioned above, Illinois can at least make the race very interesting with an upset on the road tomorrow, and it is the infamous “Non-full Paint Crew” game that always seems to give Purdue some trouble. They lost it last year to Rutgers and in 2022 to Wisconsin. They needed double overtime to beat a sub-.500 Minnesota team in 2020. It lost to Minnesota in overtime in 2017 and Iowa in 2016 in this game. Not counting the COVID year, Purdue is just 2-4 in the non-full Paint Crew Big Ten game since the 2015-16 season. Illinois is the best team it has faced in said game yet.

Final Four Threat

2. Illinois Fighting Illini – 11-2, 2-0 – The question was how good is Illinois without Terrance Shannon Jr. Shannon might be the Big Ten’s best player not named Zach Edey, and losing his near 22 points per game looked like a tremendous blow to their league hopes. They then went out and blasted Northwestern by 30 points. Illinois’ only two losses were with Shannon and to teams Purdue beat (Marquette and Tennessee), but in the last two games the Illinois blew out the last two teams that beat Purdue by a combined 63 points by scoring a combined 200, both without Shannon. A win in Mackey Arena changes the entire dynamic of the race.

Solid NCAA Teams

3. Wisconsin Badgers – 10-3, 2-0 – Quietly it has been a very good year for the Badgers after they missed the NCAA Tournament last season. They have a very nice win over Marquette and they have only lost to Arizona, Tennessee, and Providence. On Saturday they host Nebraska with a chance to solidify that No. 3 spot in the league and stay in first place. With two of their final three games against Illinois and Purdue they will have plenty to say if the race is not decided by then.

4. Ohio State Buckeyes – 12-2, 2-1 – They pulled out a win over Rutgers last night despite a late Scarlet Knight charge. The only losses were at home to Texas A&M and at Penn State, plus they have a very nice neutral court win over Alabama. This is a team that probably won’t win the league, but they have enough talent to be safely in the field.

5. Nebraska Cornhuskers – 12-2, 2-1 – They aren’t flashy, but Keisei Tominaga & Co. are a solid team with a strong home court advantage. They had little trouble dispatching Indiana last night and the two losses to Creighton and Minnesota aren’t horrible. The win over Michigan State back in December is looking better and better, too.

6. Michigan State Spartans – 8-5, 0-2 – This rating is based solely on the way they have looked of late, but in the last four games the Spartans have finally looked like the preseason top 5 team many expected them to be. The blowout win over Baylor looks great and this week’s win over Indiana State will give them a surprising resume boost all year. The 0-2 start in league play is bad, but there is still time for them to get back in this. Next week’s road trip to Northwestern and Illinois will decide if they still have a chance at winning the league.

Good Bad/Bad Good Teams

7. Northwestern Wildcats – 10-3, 1-1 – When you have a victory over the pretty clear No. 1 team in the country that is obviously an excellent resume chip. Following that with a loss to lowly Chicago State and a 30-point blowout defeat at Illinois is not great. It is the mark of a Bad Good Team, The Wildcats have two Tier 1 wins over Purdue and Dayton. They will get a lot of mileage out of the Purdue win. The NET rating is still only 80. We’ll see how good they are with an improved Michigan State team on Sunday.

8. Indiana Hoosiers – 10-4, 2-1 – Is Indiana a good bad team? Malik Reneau is playing like a five-star recruit this year and Trey Galloway has been good at guard, but Indiana’s best win currently is at Michigan, who is at No. 75 in the NET. That has them 1-4 against the top 2 tiers and 9-0 against the bottom two. Games against Morehead State, FGCU, Wright State, and Army were also closer than expected. So far Indiana hasn’t lost to any bad teams, but they haven’t really beaten anyone good, either. They still get up for big games at home as evidenced by the close loss to Kansas. Purdue’s January 16 trip to Bloomington is dangerous.

9. Minnesota Golden Gophers – 10-3, 1-1 – The good news is that Minnesota is not nearly as bad as it has been the last four years when it has been a bottom four team in the league. They even have a good win over Nebraska. That said, they don’t have a lot of note from the non-conference portion of the schedule. That leads to a NET rating in the mid-80s. In fact, they have a non-conference schedule rating of 354. This team has work to do if it wants to make the NCAAs, but an NIT berth with a couple of league upsets will be a sign of improvement.

Dangerous on the Right Night

10. Rutgers Scarlet Knights – 8-5, 0-2 – Rutgers is a talented team. Jersey Mike’s Arena has been a house of horrors lately for Purdue. Still, they have some moments that are real head-scratchers. This past Saturday they barely got past Division I newcomer Stonehill, who is a dismal 1-13 against Division I teams. They will knock off a ranked team in conference play at home, but the way they look overall, they are not a tournament team. They have the best defense in the conference at 63.6 points per game given up, but the worst offense at just 67.8 per game.

11. Penn State Nittany Lions – 7-6, 1-1 – Penn State is not a tourney team, but you can always count on them to knock off some ranked Big Ten team that falls asleep in front of the fan at the Bryce Jordan Mausoleum. It is a unique home court advantage for them to get some team that isn’t fully locked in against 2,000 people in a 15,000 seat arena. Sure, they will lose to the likes of Bucknell there, but then they will wreck a Wisconsin (January 16), Illinois (February 21) in front of two dozen passionate Legion of Blue students.

12. Iowa Hawkeyes – 8-6, 0-3 – I maintain that Fran McCaffery is the anti-Kirk Ferentz, because his teams continue to be capable of scoring 104 on a given night, but they are just as likely to give up 106. They have the conference’s best offense at 86.7 points per game and they have cracked the 100-point barrier four times. They are also completely and utterly incapable of playing even a lick of defense most nights.

The League’s Most Disappointing Team

13. Maryland Terrapins – 9-5, 1-2 – Maryland was picked to finish third in the league this year behind Purdue and Michigan State. Now they can’t even sell out a game at home against the No. 1 team in the country and they lost by 14 when they held Purdue to their lowest scoring night of the year. The NET rating is 121 and the offense is pretty bad. What’s telling is that Purdue was held below 70 for the first time this year, but they still won with ease because the Terps shot 33.3%.

Burning Up on Re-Entry

14. Michigan Wolverines – 6-7, 1-1 – Does anyone else remember when Michigan started 3-0 and the media was really high on them because they won by 16 at St. John’s? As always, wins in the World’s Most Overrated Arena continue to be overhyped. The Wolverines are just 3-7 since then with home losses to Long Beach State and McNeese. They have taken Florida and Oregon to overtime and they won at Iowa, but they were pretty punchless last Friday in the McNeese loss.

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