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Well I think by now everyone has made their preseason rankings so I figured it's time I post mine as well. Besides my preseason rankings I'm going to add a few thoughts afterwards that seem to deviate from the norm, so there's that.
That being said, here's my preseason rankings:
1. Wisconsin
2. Ohio State
3. Michigan State
4. Michigan
5. Iowa
6. Maryland
7. Indiana
8. Minnesota
9. Nebraska
10. Illinois
11. Purdue
12. Penn State
13. Northwestern
14. Rutgers
And here are a few thoughts that I'm sure a number of you (most of you) will disagree on...but anyway:
- Wisconsin may be first in my preseason rankings but the Badgers will not win the Big Ten.
- Whoever wins the regular season title will not win the Big Ten Tournament (opening the door for the beloved Badgers).
- Somehow, someway...Rutgers will not finish in last place.
- Tom Crean will bounce back and get the Hoosiers back to the postseason.
- Pat Chambers team will play very, very hard, pick up a few upsets and still end up losing a lot of games.
- Illinois will surpass both Iowa and Nebraska as one of the conferences stronger middle of the pack teams once the season gets rolling.
- Purdue will continue to play inconsistently for some reason.
- Thad Matta will be seen on the court covered in sweat every night.
- Fran McCaffery will get ejected from a game due to another outrage stemming from the officiating.
- Frank Kaminsky will be All-B1G at the end of the year but someone else will take the player of the year honors.
- The conference will get more than six teams into the NCAA Tournament in 2015.
- And last of all, Thomas will go on several midseason rants on Twitter when he sees people compared the SEC to the Big Ten and claim they're on the same level. Maybe if we compare SEC football to B1G basketball that might be true, but not in basketball.
Ps. We have a bunch of Ohio State team preview posts that will be going up throughout the day, so be sure to check back in a few hours for those. The wings preview will be up at 9 AM EST, followed a few hours by the guards preview and then the bigs positional preview this afternoon.