After an eventful Week 17 of college basketball filled with quality games, do we have a new No. 1 in the Big Ten power rankings for Week 18?
Let the tears flow down your face now as the college basketball regular season has officially come to a close and conference tournaments are now upon us. Now turn that frown upside down because we are less than a week away from Selection Sunday and less than two from the start of the NCAA Tournament.
The Big Ten, in particular, has not received much publicity this season because it’s been considered one of the weaker power conferences in 2016-17. However, if you asked Mark Turgeon of Maryland or Michigan State’s Tom Izzo, they would tell you that this season has been a deep field for the conference.
Both head coaches took the podium after their matchup Saturday and spoke about how other conference’s have teams losing to unranked opponents and they’re considered deep, but when it happens in the Big Ten, it’s because the top teams are weak. What do you think?
On that note, take a look at the Week 18 Big Ten power rankings and see if there’s a new No. 1 on the list.
Barring a deep run in the Big Ten Tournament — get your laughs out now — the Scarlet Knights are going to finish the year as the conference’s worst team. They won’t, however, finish with the worst overall record, that is unless Nebraska wins the Big Ten tourney. Rutgers still has a long way to go in order to be relevant in the Big Ten.
The Scarlet Knights did finish the regular season on a high note, though, beating Illinois by three points at home. They had just three conference victories all season long, but none came against teams that finished the regular season higher than ninth in the Big Ten standings. Corey Sanders is a nice piece to the future puzzle, if he doesn’t leave early, but this team was a mess.
There was a point in the season in which it looked like the Nebraska Cornhuskers were going to make another run at the NCAA Tournament like they did just a couple of years ago behind Terran Pittway. They were 3-0 in conference play with wins over Maryland, a then-ranked Indiana team and Iowa, improving to 9-6 overall. However, since that start, they’ve completely fallen apart.
In fact, the Cornhuskers won just three more conference games and lost seven by double figures — the last four losses to cap off the year were each by at least 15 points. Nebraska capped off a tough regular season with a 15-point loss at Minnesota and 36-point home loss to Michigan — the worst loss at home in school history. They’re hoping the Big Ten Tournament treats them better.