After upsetting Purdue on the road, you’d have to imagine the Badgers will be moving up more than one spot next week.
The AP Poll will never make sense to me. Somehow an ugly home win versus Illinois State was enough to convince voters that Wisconsin (10-2 overall, 1-1 Big Ten) should move up in the rankings. UW has won their last two games, both at home versus non-conference opponents (Nicholls State, Illinois State) by a combined seven points. Regardless, the Badgers moved up one spot to No. 23 in this week’s AP Poll.
Following Wisconsin’s massive upset over No. 3 Purdue in Mackey Arena on Monday night, where Wisconsin entered the game a staggering 5-40 all time, the Badgers are almost certainly going to jump into the top-15 in next week’s rankings if they can take care of Iowa as well. For this week, here’s how things stand:
Here’s how the rest of the Big Ten looked in the new AP rankings:
- No. 3 Purdue Boilermakers
- No. 10 Michigan State Spartans
- No. 13 Ohio State Buckeyes
- No. 23 Wisconsin Badgers
- Illinois, Iowa and Minnesota are all receiving votes
Baylor remains the unanimous No. 1 team in college basketball following their road win versus No. 11 Iowa State, and the rest of the top five remains unchanged for the third straight week.
At 13-1, Providence is now the No. 16 team in the country, jumping up five spots from their previous ranking of No. 21. One of UW’s only two losses came at the hands of the Friars in the Kohl Center, however Johnny Davis missed the game and Wisconsin fell by five points. Suddenly that loss doesn’t look nearly as bad as it did a couple weeks ago.
1⃣6⃣/1⃣7⃣ pic.twitter.com/E34MHXt9C4
— Providence MBB (@PCFriarsmbb) January 3, 2022
After beginning the season as the No. 4 overall team, not only do the Michigan Wolverines find themselves unranked, they aren’t even receiving votes. Following a 14 point road loss to Central Florida, Michigan sits at 7-5.
As previously mentioned, the next test for the Badgers is this Thursday night against Iowa at the Kohl Center.