This week they slip past Michigan State into the third spot and number 22 nationally. Matt Painter has a stranglehold lock on the Big Ten coach of the year award and is making a huge bid for that honor nationally.
Almost as amazingly, Illinois continues to maintain a strong power ranking climbing six spots nationally to 32nd. They absolutely must be the most underachieving team in the country based on their power ranking. To give you an idea of how screwed up that is, there are only TWO teams with losing records in the top 85 in the power ranking. Illinois at #32 and Georgia Tech at #64. Illinois is four games under .500. You have to drop all the way to South Florida at #98 to find the next team four games under. Something doesn’t make sense.
Here’s the actual rankings for the Big Ten:
| # | Team | Pace | Off | Def | Pwr | Rank |
| 1 | Wisconsin | 63.5 | 1.14 | 0.83 | 1.38 | 5 |
| 2 | Indiana | 67.7 | 1.16 | 0.87 | 1.32 | 13 |
| 3 | Purdue | 67.8 | 1.11 | 0.87 | 1.27 | 22 |
| 4 | Michigan St. | 66.3 | 1.12 | 0.89 | 1.26 | 25 |
| 5 | Ohio St. | 65.3 | 1.08 | 0.87 | 1.24 | 29 |
| 6 | Illinois | 63.7 | 1.08 | 0.87 | 1.23 | 32 |
| 7 | Minnesota | 69.1 | 1.09 | 0.92 | 1.18 | 49 |
| 8 | Penn St. | 65.6 | 1.06 | 0.96 | 1.10 | 97 |
| 9 | Iowa | 60.7 | 0.97 | 0.90 | 1.08 | 106 |
| 10 | Michigan | 66.0 | 1.07 | 1.00 | 1.08 | 112 |
| 11 | Northwestern | 63.0 | 1.02 | 1.04 | 0.98 | 174 |
