Big Ten Power Poll: 2/2/09

The weather is still cold in Madison, Wisconsin's win column is still frozen shut and now even more colleagues in the Big Ten are accumulating important wins for their tournament résumés.

While the Badgers are still hostages of the amazing "Deep Freeze of 2009", Penn State's upset over Michigan State means that Wisconsin can now at least claim one win against the Big Ten's top five teams. I never thought I would see UW in the bottom three of the conference with Bo Ryan at the helm, so I guess it's good that there is still half of the conference schedule left to improve.

Ohio State, Michigan, Iowa and Indiana are the remaining teams who have not yet knocked off one of the conference leaders (MSU, Purdue, Minn., Ill., PSU). This has been a rollercoaster year for most teams in the league. As long as Michigan State and Purdue stay the course, I think this bodes well for the league overall ... though you would like to see a third heavyweight emerge, I don't think there is one this year.

The Big Ten has the second-highest conference RPI thanks to the top strength of schedule rating. Conversely, the Big Ten seems pretty locked in at fifth among the big boys (ahead of the SEC) when it comes to Ken Pomeroy's method of ranking conferences by the average rating of their members.

	Rk	Team	Record (Conf)	Poll Avg (Feb. 2)	Pomeroy Rank	Key Wins
	1	Michigan State	17-4 (7-2)	13.5	21	Texas, Ill, @Minn, Kan
^	2	Purdue	17-4 (6-2)	12.5	11	BC, David, @Wis, @Minn
v	3	Illinois	18-4 (6-3)	22	24	Mizzou, OSU, @Purd, Wis
	4	Minnesota	18-3 (6-3)	19	34	L'ville, @Wis, Ill, OSU
	5	Penn State	17-5 (6-3)	30.5	57	@MSU, Mich, Purd
^	6	Ohio State	15-5 (5-4)	42.5	52	@Miami, ND, @Mich
	7	Northwestern	12-7 (4-5)	-	62	Minn, @MSU, Fla. St., Wis
v	8	Wisconsin	12-9 (3-6)	-	42	@VT, @Mich
	9	Michigan	14-8 (4-6)	-	82	UCLA, Duke, Ill
	10	Iowa	12-10 (2-7)	-	84	Iowa St., Wis
	11	Indiana	5-15 (0-8)	-	204	TCU