Big Ten men’s basketball team rankings: March 8, 2022
I posted my rankings earlier in the week listing the Big Ten men’s basketball team rankings in the overall set of rankings. Here, the numbers represents the teams’ rankings out of 358 total teams. Purdue, for example, is ranked 6th overall and first among Big Ten teams. Wisconsin is ranked 13th overall and 2nd among Big Ten teams. It’s worth noting that all fourteen Big Ten teams are ranked in the top half of NCAA D1 men’s basketball teams, with four in the top 25.
6 Purdue
13 Wisconsin
17 Illinois
23 Iowa
33 Michigan St
34 Ohio St
44 Michigan
54 Indiana
61 Rutgers
84 Maryland
104 Northwestern
112 Penn St
113 Minnesota
140 Nebraska
I also created rankings using only the Big Ten conference games, which yields a different set of rankings using a subset of the total games played. These games exclude the non-conference games, most of which occurred early in the season. In this second set of rankings, the universe of men’s D1 college basketball teams consists of the 14 teams in the Big Ten. Illinois and Wisconsin shared the Big Ten title if you look at wins and losses. The rankings consider the strength of the schedule and the quality of the wins. When these are taken into account, Wisconsin is ranked 3rd overall. (They were in 1st place before the loss to Nebraska). Rutgers finished differently in the two rankings: 9th when considering all games and 5th when considering only the conference games.
1 Illinois
2 Purdue
3 Wisconsin
4 Iowa
5 Rutgers
6 Ohio St
7 Michigan
8 Michigan St
9 Indiana
10 Maryland
11 Penn St
12 Northwestern
13 Nebraska
14 Minnesota