{"id":169304,"date":"2025-12-10T08:30:24","date_gmt":"2025-12-10T13:30:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/?p=169304"},"modified":"2025-12-09T18:28:00","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T23:28:00","slug":"college-basketball-big-ten-rankings-december-10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2025\/12\/10\/college-basketball-big-ten-rankings-december-10\/","title":{"rendered":"College Basketball Big Ten Rankings for December 10"},"content":{"rendered":"

Another year, another chance for the Big Ten to end its 25-year Championship drought. And this year brings as good of a chance as ever, as numerous teams in the league look like legitimate contenders. Also, shout out to the Big Ten for already beginning Conference play! While most of the other Power-4 conferences are filling their December schedules with Quadrant 4 opponents, the Big Ten is playing conference games, and that should be commended.<\/p>\n

NCAA Basketball: Big Ten Rankings<\/h2>\n

1. Michigan<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The Wolverines are a legitimate National Championship threat, coming off their Players Era Festival Championship and currently ranking #1 on KenPom. They also topped our recent Big Ten Power Rankings<\/a>. It will be interesting to see how they handle their 3 big man rotation, with Lendeborg, Johnson, and Mara all being great players but not necessarily fitting well on the floor at the same time.<\/p>\n

2. Purdue<\/h3>\n
\"\"
Photo Credit: Gary Cosby Jr.-Tuscaloosa News<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Boilermakers were handed their first loss this past weekend \u2013 in rude fashion \u2013 as Iowa State came into Mackey Arena and won by 23. But this team still has one of the nation\u2019s best point guards in Braden Smith and one of the best big men in Trey Kaufman-Renn, and that duo can still power this group to a National Championship.<\/p>\n

3. Michigan State<\/h3>\n

\"Big<\/p>\n

The Spartans own 4 wins over the KenPom top-30, but none of them are in the top-15. This has me feeling that Michigan State is a genuinely good team, but might not have the firepower to be a great one, and that was exhibited in their loss to Duke on Saturday. Jeremy Fears has to improve his shooting for this offense to really click.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

4. Illinois<\/h3>\n
\"\"
Photo Credit: Steve Roberts-Imagn Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Get this Illinois team some Cortizone \u2013 because they\u2019ve got a lot of \u201c-ic\u201ds. Brad Underwood chose to build this roster not from the transfer portal but through Europe, and the experiment appears to be working thus far. And the scary part is that this team is not even fully healthy yet, and they\u2019ve already beaten Tennessee and Texas Tech.<\/p>\n

5. Wisconsin<\/h3>\n

\"Big<\/p>\n

This Wisconsin team may have the best top-3 players in the Big Ten: John Blackwell and Nick Boyd are dynamic and elite guards, and Nolan Winter is one of the nation\u2019s best centers. But whether or not this Badgers team makes it to the Final Four will depend on the development of the rest of the roster.<\/p>\n

6. UCLA<\/h3>\n
\"\"
Photo Credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Mick Cronin\u2019s Bruins hold the distinction of sitting in first place in the Big Ten as of this writing \u2013 they are the only team at 2-0 through two games. And Mick Cronin is still doing Mick Cronin things, as he\u2019s already benched his entire starting five once. But don\u2019t be fooled, this team has the talent to compete at the top of this league.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

7. Iowa<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The Ben McCollum era is already in full swing, as Iowa is one of the slowest teams in the country and plays point guard Bennett Stirtz almost the complete 40 minutes, which were two staples of McCollum\u2019s style while at Drake. The ability to put competent pieces around Stirtz will determine how far this team can go.<\/p>\n

8. USC<\/h3>\n
\"\"
Photo Credit: Craig Strobeck-Imagn Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Eric Musselman\u2019s Trojans were the surprise champs in Maui, and it\u2019s a testament to how good a coach he really is. This roster, built almost entirely through the transfer portal, has a lot of \u201cOh yeah, I remember that guy. He\u2019s here now?\u201d players on it, and they are all playing the best basketball of their careers in Musselman\u2019s system.<\/p>\n

9. Indiana<\/h3>\n
\"\"
Photo Credit: Robert Goddin-Imagn Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Good news: The Hoosiers are 7-2 in the first year of the Darian DeVries era<\/a>. Bad news: they\u2019re on a two-game losing streak, and it was the two best teams they have played so far. We still don\u2019t know how good this Indiana team is, but their roster looks good on paper. They\u2019re going to need to prove it by beating someone good.<\/p>\n

10. Ohio State<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The Buckeyes are 1-0 in the Big Ten, and their only loss overall was on an insane buzzer-beater by Pitt. Bruce Thornton is one of the best point guards in the conference, and this team is in good hands as long as he is healthy.<\/p>\n

For more great college basketball analysis, check out DrRoto.com<\/a>!<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another year, another chance for the Big Ten to end its 25-year Championship drought. And this year brings as good of a chance as ever, as numerous teams in the league look like legitimate contenders. Also, shout out to the Big Ten for already beginning Conference play! While most of the other Power-4 conferences are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5637,"featured_media":169319,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1608,773],"tags":[2785,4136,2889,2548,805,866,1619,877,828,885,875],"class_list":["post-169304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-basketball","category-college-basketball","tag-big-ten-basketball","tag-illinois-fighting-illini","tag-indiana-hoosiers","tag-iowa-hawkeyes","tag-michigan-state-spartans","tag-michigan-wolverines","tag-ohio-state-buckeyes","tag-purdue-boilermakers","tag-ucla-bruins","tag-usc-trojans","tag-wisconsin-badgers"],"modified_by":"Doug Henderson","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5637"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169304"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169304\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":169323,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169304\/revisions\/169323"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}