The Wisconsin Badgers have seen a nice stretch in January, winning seven of their last eight games, as they head into February with a 16-6 record and an 8-3 record in Big Ten play.
That has the Badgers
tied for fifth in the conference, and they have quite the tough stretch ahead of them, with matchups against Indiana (road), Illinois (road), Michigan State, Ohio State (road), and Iowa up next. It’ll be a telling stretch for a Badgers team that has looked quite good in some games (see Ohio State win), but is still piecing together the consistency part.
With how strong college basketball looks as a whole this season, it’s tough to see what exactly the ceiling for this Wisconsin team will be. It feels like they can beat any opponent on a given night (especially after the Michigan win). But it also feels like they can fall short, which raises questions about the team’s ceiling.
ESPN’s Jeff Borzello and Myron Medcalf recently broke down the top college basketball teams this year into tiers when discussing March Madness, ranking them amongst the following groups: National Championship Favorites, Final Four Contenders, Second Weekend Threats, Final Four or First Round Exit, Can Win A Game, and Potential Cinderellas.
Wisconsin fell into the ‘Can Win A Game’ tier alongside 16 other teams, which mainly have teams that have shown serious flashes this year, but also could be near the bubble come Selection Sunday.
“This is a deep group, but all of these teams have shown flashes of being able to win a game in the NCAA tournament — even if some find themselves sweating on Selection Sunday,” Borzello and Medcalf wrote.
“Some have already shown they can beat high-level teams on a given night: Auburn won at Florida over the weekend and has wins over Arkansas and St. John’s. Wisconsin handed Michigan its lone loss thus far in Ann Arbor. UCLA has been mostly inconsistent, especially against good teams, but beat Purdue and has won four of five entering the week. And Georgia blew out Arkansas.”
Back before the season, ESPN had Wisconsin as a second-weekend threat team in the third tier alongside some of the best teams in college basketball this season (Arizona, Illinois, Gonzaga, Alabama, Kansas, Iowa State, Michigan State, etc.).
They’ve struggled to beat top competition, with Michigan being its lone Quad 1 win to date, so it makes sense that their ceiling feels dampened compared to the beginning of the season. But this team is playing much better as of late and could start to get hot at the right moment.
